Many people have heard of the New Orleans city of the dead with its daily tourist tours. Lapeyrouse Cemetery is Trinidad’s city of the dead and in fact it is a city with buildings, alleys, grid streets and residents, although most of the residents are not moving, but each official resident has a fixed address . In Lapeyrouse it is almost possible to trace the entire economic life of Trinidad and who made the money as the rich bury their dead in grandiose style and here you can see more than fancy tombstones but raised tombs, crypts, mausoleums and statues. .
Lapeyrouse Cemetery is on the western edge of Port of Spain, but with the expanded metropolitan area that Port of Spain has become, it can really be considered more of a city center. This cemetery is bounded by Tragarete Road to the north, Park Street to the south, Colville Street to the west, and Phillip Street to the east. At the south entrance of the cemetery there is an inscription intended to remind us all that our days are numbered and reads “Stop, traveler, every time you pass, So you are now, so I was, As I am now, soon you will be.”
The cemetery is laid out in a nearly rectangular pattern with numbered streets running through the area. As you tour this final resting place of Trinidad’s prominent and not-so-prominent citizens, certain structures catch your eye, some designed to look like churches, some mini-houses, and others simply solid resting places. Among the larger structures are the tomb of the Famille Agostini, the tomb of the Herrera family, the 1886 resting place of Carlos Robertson, the vault of the Cabral family, and the church-like structure for Famille Comte LAA de Verteuil . Another interesting family tomb is that of the Jodhan family, which has chairs, candles, statues, chaplets and images all inside and arranged so that family members can come and sit and remember the deceased or possibly converse with them. .
After the British conquest in 1797, Port of Spain needed a new cemetery, so land was acquired in a small area bordered by Tragarete Road, Richmond Street and Fraser Street. A wall was erected around it and, in 1813, it was named ‘Old Cemetery’. As the town grew, more land was needed, so the land was acquired from Picot de la Peyrouse, a French nobleman who had come to Trinidad in 1778 under the Cédula de Población and established a sugar cane estate on the outskirts of Trinidad and built the first factory for the production of muscovado sugar (brown sugar). Picot de la Peyrouse had allotted 20 acres for the creation of a cemetery and had a dedication ceremony in 1823. By 1831 this cemetery had acquired the name Lapeyrouse because it was on the lands of the old estate. Within a few years, the cemetery was expanded again, this time by purchasing land from the Shine family. In the years that followed, more land was acquired from the Dert (pronounced Der) family, who had started the first coffee estate in an area between Queen’s Park south and Tragarete Road in the 1770s (they are remembered across the street). with his name just north of the cemetery).
The northern entrance to Lapeyrouse Cemetery is called the Perry Gate and is named after US Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry who died near Trinidad on August 23, 1819 and was buried in Lapeyrouse Cemetery, Port of Spain. In his honor there is a monument adorned with historical details and the metal gate leading to the cemetery is decorated with silver-plated coats of arms of Great Britain and the United States. The monument was completed and dedicated on April 11, 1870, in the presence of Governor and Mayor John Bell-Smythe. In April 2012, the United States government renovated The Perry Gate.
