A retired high school educator, a small church community and a university geographer have joined forces to shine a light on the forgotten victims of a haunting 1903 train wreck in the tiny Tangipahoa town of Kentwood.
Accounts of the fiery crash involving two northbound passenger trains and the subsequent arrangements, or lack thereof, for the bodies laid to rest are poignant and heart-rending.
Ann Trappey, the storyteller
"Fast Express Train Crashes Into Local: Death and Destruction" — New Orleans Item, Nov. 15, 1903
"Wreck at Kentwood. Thirty Victims Are Now Dead - Heart-rending Scenes Mark Work of Rescuers. Most Horrible Wreck That Has Ever Occurred on the Illinois Central." — Canton (Miss.) Times, Nov. 20, 1903
"The fast train hit, and the engine disappeared … you couldn't see anything but fire." — Clyde Morris, express agent, as told to local historian Irene Morris for Kentwood News Local Lore & Legend, 1963
It was Morris who first related the details of that horrific November evening to Kentwood High School teacher Trappey. A history buff, she was immediately fascinated. Using Morris' newspaper recollections and her own research, Trappey has retold the account to the town's junior high and high school students since.
"Many of them cut through that cemetery on the way home," Trappey said. "On the main road coming in on (La.) 38 from the interstate (I-55), there's a grocery store, and then there's a pathway. They go through this section of old houses, and then the church is there, and then there's a cemetery."
That would be the Oak Grove African Methodist Episcopal Church's graveyard where 120 years ago, the charred bodies or body parts of the 30 victims, mostly Black railroad construction crew workers, were interred. Makeshift wooden coffins all unloaded into one mass unmarked grave, covered and essentially forgotten, save for the few who thought their story important enough to tell and retell.
How did it happen? Illinois Central local No. 32, carrying about 200 rail workers from Mississippi and running behind schedule, stopped at the Kentwood depot to pick up two more passengers.
The train was instructed to sidetrack in Osyka, Mississippi, so that the fast IC train No. 6 could pass. However, while No. 32 still sat on the single track at Kentwood, the No. 6, estimated speed 50 mph, plowed into the two rear coach cars and halfway through the third one before overturning and catching fire. The work crews in the rear cars had just been paid and were heading home for a day off, several passing the time playing cards.
Described as a war zone, rescuers pulled the dead and injured from the wreckage. The depot and nearby store, converted to a temporary hospital and morgue, filled up quickly with the dead and the dying. A load of 2-by-12 lumber arrived with which to build rudimentary coffins. First buried in a hole nearby determined to be too shallow, the dead were transported to and reburied in the aforementioned cemetery.
Some of the injured were eventually loaded onto another train for transport to New Orleans hospitals; several died en route.
The list of the dead and the injured in some instances included names and hometowns: "Jerry Austin - Canton (body shipped home)". Others, as was customary at the time, simply stated "Unknown 'mulatto' in Fern’s crew, or "16 blacks taken to Charity, 1 died en route (unidentified)".
Now retired, Trappey continues to be the storyteller, still visiting local schools to pass down this horrific, yet important part of Kentwood's history. She's also teamed with a committee at Oak Grove to right this 120-year-old wrong.
Oak Grove AME Church: Small, but steadfast
Athalina Hudson, a longtime Oak Grove church and cemetery committee member, recalls her father, also a church member, telling her about the train wreck and mass grave when she was growing up in the 1960s.
Hudson said interest in the events of 1903 has sparked in the last few years.
The Rev. Shelton Myers, church pastor since 2018, heard the story while the history of the church, whose cemetery headstones date to 1899, was being compiled.
"I have worked with cemeteries throughout my ministry, other historic cemeteries," Myers said. "Just to know that the church was that sympathetic to the families back then was really impressive."
Hudson, Myers and several other church members, along with Candace Picard, another historian immersed in the cause, were on hand when a team from the University of Southern Mississippi's School of Coastal Resilience spent a steamy June day pinpointing the mass grave's location. The church offered food, drinks and breaks from the sweltering heat.
Hudson said she appreciated the opportunity to be a part of the effort.
"Like history coming to life," Hudson said. "I would love to see that we'll be able to get the memorial marker and that we'll be able to connect with the loved ones of those who were lost and be able to celebrate their lives."
Hudson said they'll turn to social media, print and other avenues to possibly make those contacts.
With an active church membership of just 75-100 and limited resources, Myers knows "we can't go full museum."
"But to have a memorial, a historical marker, what it does — it puts a highlight on Kentwood, also," he said.
Anyone wishing to join the congregation's efforts can call the church, (985) 614-5007.
Trappey also stood in the modest country cemetery that day and observed as the first step to honoring the victims of the Nov. 14, 1903, tragedy unfolded.
Trappey said the goal is to get two state historical markers to tell the story of the train wreck, one for the site of the former depot and the other in front of the church — and then place a headstone at the unmarked mass grave to prevent future burials in the same area.
A Q&A with Dr. David Holt
Dr. David Holt, an associate professor of geography, has taught at USM's Gulf Coast campus since 2008, and previously taught at Miami University. He and a group of students identified the exact location of the mass grave site in Kentwood in June.
Do you do this type of work often? We see there was a project at a cemetery in Monroe. Any other Louisiana locations?
We mapped the cemetery at West Monroe (Hasley Cemetery), where we also scanned it for unmarked graves. I have worked in Alexandria, too, looking for possible burial locations surrounding the Lee Street Riot of 1942. Most of my other work is in Mississippi and Alabama.
In layman's terms, walk us through the process in Kentwood to locate the mass grave site.
The burial site had a description of being a perpendicular trench from the road, just on the outside of the cemetery, and near a stand of cedars. Kentwood historians and community members had general ideas of where it could be located, but there wasn’t any evidence on the surface. We came in for a full day survey of the cemetery looking for relevant targets. The ground penetrating radar will show anomalies under the surface, and we can mark those anomalies to estimate what size they are.
Certain size anomalies will be indicative of burials or unmarked graves. At this location, these victims were buried in untreated, probably pine, wood boxes. In our humid environment, these boxes and the interred would have decayed naturally over the last 100 years. Further, the evidence of the victims being burnt adds to the state of the interred. More specifically, the targets we are looking for are mostly decayed.
Using the GPR, we were not necessarily looking for caskets or even significant remains, but we were looking for the disturbance of the substrata that is indicative of a trench. If you dig up the soil and then put it back into the ground, that soil does not look like the layered soil around it. The stirred up dirt becomes the anomaly.
So, we identified a trench with returns of about 4-7 feet deep that was 18 feet long and about 8 feet wide that was perpendicular to the road, just outside of the existing cemetery in 1903 (based on headstones still there), and near cedar stumps.
Further, we surveyed all other areas, except the overgrown area in the back of the cemetery and found no evidence of any other trenchwork or unmarked graves. We can then make an educated guess that the trench we discovered was indeed the site of the interment of the victims of the train wreck.
Have you done any such mass grave projects previously?
We have discovered several slave cemeteries (in Mississippi and Alabama) over the years that tended toward a systematic burial that is similar to a trench burial. We have another project coming up on an historic battle site near Jackson, Mississippi.
How did you get interested in this aspect of geography?
Mapping cemeteries and using Geographic Information Systems is very similar to mapping city parcels or even states. Just more data in a smaller area.
How many students did you bring with you? Was this part of a class or extra credit?
We brought three student volunteers who just wanted experience with the GPR and have worked on other projects. It was pro bono for them, just like myself, on this project.