“A place where his­to­ry comes alive among the dead.”

This is how Ed­u­ca­tion and Out­reach of­fi­cer of the Na­tion­al Trust of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Mar­lon Green de­scribes the Lapey­rouse Ceme­tery in Port-of-Spain.

Green led a tour of about thir­ty peo­ple through the ceme­tery yes­ter­day. The ceme­tery is lo­cat­ed on the out­skirts of the cap­i­tal city on 20 acres of land that was once a thriv­ing sug­ar es­tate.

Its ar­chi­tec­ture in­cludes graves, tombs and mau­soleums mod­elled af­ter chapels that may bring to mind the set of a hor­ror film at first glance but on clos­er in­spec­tion, one re­alis­es that many of those who helped shape and mould T&T are buried with­in its walls.

The walk last­ed just over an hour and Green spout­ed his­tor­i­cal facts and even a lit­tle wis­dom when ques­tioned by at­ten­dees.

He took the group to plots that serve as the fi­nal rest­ing place for the French Do­mini­can Sis­ters, nuns who came to Trinidad in 1860s to care for lep­ers on the is­land of Cha­cachacare.

Green said years lat­er, the nuns were re­spon­si­ble for form­ing the Notre Dame school, which lat­er be­came Holy Name Con­vent.

In an­oth­er street, the ex­pan­sive and beau­ti­ful mau­soleum of the Siegert fam­i­ly left many of the group in awe.

Dr Jo­hann Siegert cre­at­ed An­gos­tu­ra Bit­ters in 1824 while in Venezuela to treat stom­ach ail­ments. When he and his fam­i­ly set­tled in Trinidad years lat­er, Siegert pur­chased the Wood­brook Es­tate from the is­land’s rich­est man at the time, William Bur­ne­ly. Many of the streets in Wood­brook are named af­ter the Siegert fam­i­ly.

Bur­ne­ly’s grave is lo­cat­ed on a street away but un­like the Siegert’s, the mon­u­ment mark­ing his spot is fad­ed and moss-cov­ered.

Marlon Green, Education Officer at the National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago points to a grave with historical importance during a tour of the Lapeyrouse Cemetery in Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

SHARLENE RAMPERSAD

Green said Burn­ley was once con­sid­ered the rich­est man on the is­land and the largest slave own­er. Bur­ne­ly is al­so cred­it­ed as be­ing one of the first to sug­gest In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers be brought to the is­lands to re­place slaves on the plan­ta­tions.

When one mem­ber of the group re­marked on the con­di­tion of Burn­ley’s grave, Green said: “In as much as we are tak­ing a his­tor­i­cal tour through Lapey­rouse, it al­so re­minds us of our own po­si­tion in life that at some point, in spite of what we ac­cu­mu­late here on Earth, there comes a point when we go ei­ther above or be­low and if you don’t have some­one tak­ing care of your stuff af­ter, it is re­al­ly like the wise King Solomon said, ‘It’s all van­i­ty.’”

A short dis­tance away was the grave of Cap­tain Arthur An­drew Cipri­ani—the man de­scribed as the pi­o­neer of the na­tion­al­ist move­ment in T&T. Artist Michel-Jean Caz­abon was al­so buried in Lapey­rouse and his grave is marked by a small paint­ing on the tomb­stone. Caz­abon died in 1886 at the age of 75 and his works are in­ter­na­tion­al­ly renowned.

But among the graves of the na­tion’s greats al­so lie two most­ly-un­marked mass graves, where hun­dreds were buried in 1853 af­ter they died from cholera. Louis De Ver­teuil, who is cred­it­ed to have cared for hun­dreds of cholera pa­tients, al­so lost three of his chil­dren to the dis­ease. Those three were not buried in the fam­i­ly tomb in Lapey­rouse but placed in one of the un­marked graves.

De Ver­teuil and his fam­i­ly would lat­er in­stall plaques to re­mem­ber his chil­dren along the wall that bor­ders the mass graves.

Even as many bore som­bre ex­pres­sions on learn­ing the fate of their coun­try­men who went be­fore them, Green was able to share a lighter sto­ry as well.

He said among the symp­toms of cholera was a co­ma-like state be­fore death. One man was mis­tak­en­ly tak­en to be buried, on­ly to move at the last minute, prov­ing he was alive af­ter all. At that time, the ceme­tery al­so had a prob­lem with fer­al goats, that tore in­to graves and dis­turbed the fi­nal rest­ing places of the dead.

The lucky man was giv­en a job to cap­ture the goats and stop their ram­page and earned him­self the nick­name “Lapo” for his trou­bles.

Green told Guardian Me­dia that the Trust will con­tin­ue its Lapey­rouse Tours in the com­ing weeks as there is a long wait-list of peo­ple who want to take the tour.

Green said the Trust al­so has tours up­com­ing in Paramin, on Nel­son Is­land and in Ran­cho Que­ma­do.