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SEA COAST ECHO-SUNDAY, SEP
- f* j Morin-Cuevas family established Hancock's Rotten Bayou Cemetery
EDITOR?S ">TE:	The
Mowing rep*'' on establish-
ment of the Cemetery was
Rotten Bayou	Mrs. Olea Mauffray Delph of
submitted by	Bay St. Louis.
I should like to request that you publish the findings I am submitting as a follow-up on the article presented by Joe Pilet (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 earlv church and county
registration* refer to the Rotten Bayou area by its Indian name Benashiva.
Our Courthouse records show that Francois Cuevjis
I
y have been her intent to e the site as a public cemetery, but the act was accomplished by her children. ^'On August 7, 1893 their nine
acquired thi* section of land ^children ?heirs of Frank (40.69 acres) by patent No.'-'Cue1
5178 the 5th January, 1841.
The act was filed mi the 19lh 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, Felicite?, was placed beside him in 1890. It
Sevas? conveyed to Hancock iunty the 40 acres of land as a | public cemetery in perpetuity ?to protect and preserve the graveyard grounds where repose the rejnains of our deceased ? ents as well as other idred and friends? and that timber now growing mi
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 Felicite? 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 ?Felidtas 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, born 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, born in Seville, Spain and a resident of Cat Island, whose
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