The island sits off the coast of the Bronx and City Island, and for over 150 years it has served as a potter's field for the unknown, or unclaimed dead of the city, or for those whose families have no means to provide for a private burial.
It is possible I have either an aunt or an uncle who might be buried there. There's no one left in the family to ask, but my father remembered a small child that came after him and his youngest brother, who passed away in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.
My father, Ted, was born in 1915, and his younger brother, Jimmy, was born in 1916. There were two older brothers in the family, born in 1907 and 1909, Angelo (Andrew) and George.
Thus, the child born after Jimmy, would have been quite young when he or she passed away due to the 1918 pandemic. My father would tell me the story, but remembered no name, therefore no gender, and nothing more than when they passed away and why.
At the family flower shop, old timers would always remember the coffins piled up high outside the cold water flats that were prevalent in the city then. My father's family was not of any means, and in 1918 probably lived in such a cold water flat on Second Avenue and 33rd Street.
By then, my grandfather and his brother were florists, and the shop was probably on Irving Place and 18th Street, soon to be a cover for the speakeasy that Pete's Tavern became when prohibition went into effect in 1920.
Mr. Kilgannon's piece on Hart Island is an eye-opener to those who know nothing about the island and its use. Over the years I've read stories about it and how a good part of the 101 acre island was an arboretum and greenhouse, tended to by the Rikers Island inmates. The trees planted in the city can come from the Hart Island arboretum.
As the need for space for potter's field burials has increased over the years, the land devoted to the arboretum and gardening aspect has shrunk. Melinda Hunt of the Hart Island Project is quoted as saying at a normal rate, the island can provide space for burials for several more decades. What would happen after that is not disclosed.
There are two other islands in the East River that are not being used for anything, North and South Brother Island. However, it is more likely they will be declared some kind of nature preserve that would prevent their use as a potter's field.
Without knowing what a potter's field is, you might think some '60s rock festival was held there. I first heard the term when I was with my mother on a trip in the 1950s back to Tampico, Illinois where she grew up.
An aunt mentioned something about someone in a potter's field. I remember visiting a cemetery with her and my mother, and there were only footstones, no headstones. I don't know whose grave or graves we visited, and I don't know if it was a potters' field.
Apparently the term potter's field comes from the Bible, where a paupers or common grave site was used that had once been a site of clay used by potters in making ceramics.
I'm sure for some it is hard to believe that within New York City's heavily developed borders, there is space devoted to the burial of the unclaimed, unknown, or the poor.
Hart Island sits under a flight path to LaGuardia airport, where the noise from the jets, however intense, is still not enough to wake the dead to complain.
http://www.onofframp.blogpsot.com
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