Hart Island – Million Graves of the Poor

New York · United States · Cemetery

Over a million nameless dead lie in trench graves on the island no mourners could visit – Hart Island is America's largest potter's field, and boaters shun its shores at dusk.

East of the Bronx, in Long Island Sound, lies New York's most forbidden island. Since 1869 the city has buried its unknown, poor and unclaimed on Hart Island – over one million people in long trenches, coffin stacked upon coffin, long dug by inmates ferried from Rikers Island for pennies an hour. The island has also served as a Civil War prison camp, a cholera quarantine, a women's asylum, a tuberculosis sanatorium and a reformatory – institutions whose buildings now stand as ruins among the burial fields. For over a century the island was closed to mourners; only in recent years have brief visits been allowed. Fishermen and sailors in the Sound tell of pinpoints of light moving between the ruins at night and weeping drifting across the water – the protest, it is said, of those laid in the ground without so much as a name.

FAQ

Where is Hart Island – Million Graves of the Poor located?

Hart Island – Million Graves of the Poor is in New York, United States.

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Accounts are drawn from local folklore and visitor reports.

Image: Bjoertvedt · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons