Milam Street, Shreveport Confederate soldiers, merchants,
clergymen, mayors, and many of the city’s early settlers inhabit
the graves in Oakland Cemetery. Located on the edge of the
former St. Paul’s Bottoms, Oakland Cemetery was created by an
ordinance on July 20, 1849, although burials had been occurring
on the land since 1840. Most burials took place on private
burial grounds or in churchyards, but Shreveport had no
churchyard burial ground within the city limits. In 1847 Mayor
Lawrence Pike Crain, leading the Shreveport City Council,
decreed that all people buried within the city limits of
Shreveport had to be buried in the southeast corner of the city
graveyard. Some bodies were moved here from an earlier graveyard
at the corner of McNeill and Fannin Streets. Jews escaping the
anti-Semitic feelings came here from Europe in the 1840s. In
1859 the Hebrew Mutual Benevolent Association bought one acre of
the cemetery for $160 and dedicated it as the first Hebrew
cemetery in the city. Simon Marks was the firs