St. Martin de Tours Churchyard — The Mother Church

The flags tell you what you need to know: five nations flew over this ground, and the dead beneath it remember every one. Founded in 1765, St. Martin de Tours is the Mother Church of the Acadians — the oldest church community established by the exiles who came south after the British expelled them from Canada. They settled here, in what became the heart of Cajun Country, and built a parish that has outlasted empires. The present building was completed in 1840 and is the third oldest church in Louisiana. The churchyard holds burials spanning the entire sequence of sovereignty — French colonial, Spanish, English, the short-lived Republic of West Florida, American. Stones in five languages. Families who came with nothing and stayed. In the churchyard is the grave of Emmeline Labiche, believed since the 19th century to be the real Evangeline. Pilgrims have been coming since then, looking for the woman behind the poem. Whether the tradition holds or not, the grave has become what pilgrimage sites become: a place where the story and the ground fuse, where you stand over someone who was real and ask what exile cost. The church is open daily. The churchyard is accessible. Go to see what five flags look like flying together, and what it means that they all came down but the graves remain.