Is it St. Mary's Cemetery or Saint Marys Cemetery, Raceland, Louisiana?

Question

St. Mary's Cemetery in Raceland, Lafourche Parish, Louisiana is on Find A Grave.

It, like a number of other cemeteries, have a name of St. or Saint.  In this case, while Find A Grave uses Saint Marys.  The photo of the cemetery name on the main page is clearly St. Mary's Cemetery.  A review of other sites shows that St. Mary's is the prefered name.

For categories on Wikitree - it seems that the correct category is St. Mary's.

It is now set up.  St. Mary's Cemetery, Raceland, Louisiana

For some reason there are quite a few cases like this - just a reminder, every source needs to be checked.

Answer 1

Hi Philip:

Findagrave has a style manual - no apostrophes or periods in the names of cemeteries.

Regards, Ann

Comments

Ann,

That is good to know.  As Wikitree does not follow that manual we will see a number of differences - something we need to watch for.

Thank you.

Phil

Answer 2

Since St. is the abbreviation of Saint, it seems to me that regardless of the fact that it may be abbrevated in many instances, even a preponderance of instances, the actual name of the cemetary (or any other similarly named place) is Saint Mary's Cemetary. The fact that the name was abbreviated on their signage doesn't mean that the cemetary's official name is abbreviated.

Since the Styles and Standards for Category Place Names doesn't address the issue, I recommend that a standard for handling frequently abbreviated terms be established.