{"id":29642,"date":"2013-11-12T14:58:46","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T20:58:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.genealogyblog.com\/?p=29642"},"modified":"2013-11-12T14:58:46","modified_gmt":"2013-11-12T20:58:46","slug":"hart-island-the-largest-mass-grave-site-in-the-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogyblog.com\/?p=29642","title":{"rendered":"Hart Island, The Largest Mass Grave Site In the U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

The following excerpt is from Gizmodo.com<\/a> website, 11\/07\/13<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a place where few living New Yorkers have ever set foot, but nearly a million dead ones reside: Hart Island, the United States\u2019 largest mass grave, which has been closed to the public for 35 years. It is difficult to visit and off-limits to photographers. But that may be about to change, as a debate roils over the city\u2019s treatment of the unclaimed dead. Never heard of Hart? You\u2019re not alone\u2014and that\u2019s part of the problem.<\/p>\n

\"Hart-350p\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hart Island is a thin, half-mile long blip of land at the yawning mouth of Long Island Sound, just across the water from City Island in the Bronx. Depending on who you ask, it was named either for its organ-like shape or for the deer (or hart) that thrived here after trekking across the frozen sound in the 18th century. Hart is dense with history; it\u2019s been used as a prison for Confederate soldiers, a workhouse for the poor, a women’s asylum, and a Nike missile base during the Cold War.<\/p>\n

\"ku-xlarge-350p\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Its most important role has been to serve as what\u2019s known as a potter\u2019s field, a common gravesite for the city\u2019s unknown dead. Some 900,000 New Yorkers (or adopted New Yorkers) are buried here; hauntingly, the majority are interred by prisoners from Riker\u2019s Island who earn 50 cents an hour digging gravesites and stacking simple wooden boxes in groups of 150 adults and 1,000 infants. These inmates\u2014most of them very young, serving out short sentences\u2014are responsible for building the only memorials on Hart Island: Handmade crosses made of twigs and small offerings of fruit and candy left behind when a grave is finished.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the full article.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following excerpt is from Gizmodo.com website, 11\/07\/13 It\u2019s a place where few living New Yorkers have ever set foot, but nearly a million dead ones reside: Hart Island, the United States\u2019 largest mass grave, which has been closed to Continue reading Hart Island, The Largest Mass Grave Site In the U.S.<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,53,387],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cemeteries","category-new-york","category-preservation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29642"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29647,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29642\/revisions\/29647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}