By Wesley Harris
Covered by the heavy boughs of old cedar trees, the center of the Vienna Cemetery possesses a garden-like feel. St. Augustine grass thrives under the shadowing canopy and the air is much cooler than the sunny portions of the 175-year-old cemetery.
Vienna was incorporated as a village in 1848, but settlers moved into the area much earlier. A post office named “Colvin’s” was established in 1838 but families from Georgia and the Carolinas had moved into the area a decade or two before. At that time, Vienna was in Jackson Parish. Vernon served as the parish seat, a ride that took most of a day.
Little is known of the early history of the Vienna Cemetery. Some graves are marked only with native stones and a neighbor reported many stones have been removed over the years. With no other cemetery in the area of significant size, there’s likely many lost graves from the 1840s and 50s.
The widening of U. S. 167 a few years ago encroached within feet of marked graves. It is possible unmarked graves now fall outside the fence in the highway right-of-way.
The earliest marked grave is dated 1862 but the date is misleading. It is a monument to a Confederate soldier who died and was buried in a prisoner of war camp near Chicago in 1862. The marker for Private George A. Davidson is next to a nearly identical stone for his mother, Sarah Glanton Davidson who died in 1916. It’s likely both monuments were erected at the same time.
The second oldest date in the cemetery marks the grave of Huptial Hulvatus Howard. Howard journeyed south from Massachusetts as a young man, reaching Vicksburg in 1835 with fifty cents in his pocket. After marrying and living in Mississippi for a time, Howard moved the family to Vienna where he likely continued his profession as a merchant.
Howard caught typhoid fever in 1862 and was buried in Vienna Cemetery upon his death. His family left its mark on Lincoln Parish after his passing. Sons Eugene and Edgar Howard both served terms as Lincoln Parish sheriff. Grandson Harry Howard was Louisiana Tech’s first graduate and later a longtime treasurer of the school.
Through the trees at a nearby private residence is the grave of Frances Greene, 12-year-old daughter of Allen and Mahala Greene. She was buried in 1854 at what was the Greene family residence at the time. Allen Greene became a Louisiana state senator, a powerful so-called Republican “scalawag” in the 1870s who controlled every aspect of Lincoln Parish politics. While the Greenes could afford a marker for little Frances, perhaps other families resorted to home burials. The placement of the grave at the home just yards from Vienna Cemetery raises the question of whether the graveyard existed at that time.
Vienna sits on an old east-west Indian trail that morphed into a thoroughfare eventually known as the Wire Road due the telegraph line strung along it in the 1850s. The road was the route of the Monroe-Shreveport Stage Line, the only commercial transportation across north Louisiana until the Vicksburg, Shreveport & Pacific Railroad was completed from the Mississippi River to Shreveport in 1884.
The railroad missed Vienna to the south and a new town—Ruston—sprung on directly south of the parish seat. Businesses and families wasted no time moving to the new town. Many former Vienna residents were buried in Ruston’s Greenwood Cemetery rather than in the old family plot in Vienna.
Vienna Cemetery remains an active burying ground with some of the surrounding woods removed recently to make way for more internments.
One Ruston resident who was returned to Vienna to be laid to rest was James H. Mays. Before his death in 1911, Mays dictated an inscription for his grave. Carved into the concrete slab covering his grave is:
“Born spiritually Oct. 18, 1839 under no eyes save the Lord’s and my horse’s.
Joined the Methodist Church on Oct. 18, 1839, and feel that I have been an unworthy member but hope to join the redeemed above in the first resurrection.”
If one wanted to study Lincoln Parish history, Vienna Cemetery would be a good place to start. Those entombed there have fascinating stories. Sisters Eda and Minnie Tims ran a millinery, dressing Ruston’s ladies in the latest fashions. Think Lewis’s department store for the late 1800s. Lieutenant James Turner of Alabama died in Vienna in 1864, possibly a patient in the nearby Civil War hospital. His story is yet to be discovered.
The pastors, doctors, businessmen, soldiers, teachers, mothers and fathers buried there have stories integral to the history of the community, stories we should learn and preserve.
Was he a wounded soldier in Vienna’s Civil War hospital? Or stationed at the Confederate camp there? Usually markers saying “In memory of…” do not contain the remains but serve only as a memorial to the deceased. Why would an Alabama soldier earn such an honor in Vienna? Did he die in Vienna but was taken by to Alabama?
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