St. John's Historic Cemetery

The churchyard is where Thibodaux's planting families went to lie together. It covers about two-thirds of a city block, and its ornate tombs stand beside unmarked graves. An iron fence was built around it in 1889. The Nicholls family tomb is here, and so are family plots from several of the plantations along Bayou Lafourche. The church beside it was occupied by Union troops during the Civil War. Separate markers inside the grounds tell individual lives, from a Presbyterian pastor to a congressman.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center — steps away
  A Jean Lafitte National Historical Park center on Bayou Lafourche with Acadian and bayou-life exhibits, a 200-seat theater and ranger-guided boat tours to the E. D. White house.
• Laurel Valley Village — 2.2 mi
  A sugar plantation's workers' village south of Thibodaux, with cabins of about 1845, shotgun houses, a store and cemetery, and the 1887 strike and massacre in the parish around it.
• E. D. White Historic Site — 5.7 mi
  A National Historic Landmark house of about 1790 on Bayou Lafourche, built by enslaved people and home to two Whites, a governor and a Chief Justice, with an exhibit on the bayou's history.
• Southdown Plantation and Terrebonne Museum — 15 mi
  A Greek Revival sugar plantation house in Houma, worked by 233 enslaved people by 1852, with the last Terrebonne mill's story and a worker's cabin of about 1885.

More markers nearby

• John Carlton Beatty — steps away
• Marcus Pennington Zills — steps away
• Whitmell Pugh Martin — steps away
• Felix Grundy Winder — steps away