This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

Morin-Cuevas family established
Rotten Bayou Cemetery
Qmel cemeteries are spotted uilh crumbling monuments that tell a story to those n ho J top lor a moment. Hales go hjtk — IHSO — IHIf — INI7 and older. Many tiI the names and inscription! are french, tome Spanish.
Italian — all a part ol the rich history of our beloved city.
Hancock \s
EDITOR’S NOTE:	The
following report ou establlsb-
meut of Ibe Kotteo Bayou Cemetery was submitted by
Mrs. Olea Mauffray Delpb of Bay St. l^ouls.
1 should like to request that j you publish tlie findings I am submitting as a follow-up on the article presented by Joe Piiet (Echo 9-21-80) on Rotten Bayou Cemetery and its history.
She gave us an interesting* story on the uniqueness of the cemetery, but I should like to present data through official registrations.
Incidentally, some of our early church and county
registrations refer to the Rotten Bayou area by its Indian name Benashiva.
Our Courthouse records diow that Francois Cuevas acquired this section of land (<0.69 acres) by patent No. 5178 tlie 5th of January, 1841.
The act was filed on the 19th day of November, 1875, Book G, Pages 31 and 32.
Apparently it had become a family cemetery and it was here he was buried in 1863.
His wife, Feliclte', was placed beside him In 1890. It
may have been her intent to give tlie site as a public cemetery, but the act was accomplished by her children.
On August 7, 1893 their nine children “heirs of Frank Cuevas" conveyed to Hancock County the 40 acres of land as a public cemetery in perpetuity “to protect and preserve the graveyard grounds where repose the remains of our deceased parents as well as other kindred and friends” and that the timber now growing on
said land “is donated to the Catholic Church on Rotten Bayou in said county known as St. Joseph Church” Deed Book P, Pages 427-428.
Since about the year 1870, St. Joseph Church in Fenton has been a mission church in the Annunciation parish of Kiln.
The baptismal recording on Felidte’ Morin is in the archives of the St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans, La. Book of Baptisms No. 5, Page 51, Act 696. The registration is
in Spanish telling that “Felititas Morin was baptized the 28th day of November, eighteen hundred and eight, born the first day of May of this present year.”
The baptismal registration of Francois Cuevas, bom in 1799, also written in Spanish, is in the archives of the Im-maculate Conception Cathedral in Mobile, Ala.
Francois Cuevas was the second son of Juan de Cuevas, bom in Seville, Spain and a resident of Cat Island, whose
loyalty to the American cause in the War of 1812 caused him great pain at the hands of the British because he would not direct the British flotilla through the lake waterways to New Orleans.
It is interesting to note that during the years 17G3-1S10 the government of this coastal area was British, then Spanish, but the language ot the people continued to be French and their sympathies wholly American.
Morin-Cueva* grave