Hart Island, sometimes referred to as Hart's Island, is a small island in New York City at the western end of Long Island Sound. It is approximately a mile long and one quarter of a mile wide, and located to the northeast of City Island in the Pelham Islands group. The island is the easternmost part of the borough of the Bronx.
History
In the middle of the 19th century, the island was called Lesser Minneford Island. The island was part of the 9,166-acre (37.09 km²) property purchased by Thomas Pell from the local Native Americans in 1654.[1] In 1868 New York City purchased the island from the Hunter family of the Bronx for $75,000.[2] It is believed that British cartographers named it "Heart Island" in 1775, due to its organ-like shape, but that the middle letter was dropped shortly thereafter.[3]
Throughout its history, Hart Island has had a workhouse, hospital, prisons, a Civil War internment camp, a reformatory and a 'Nike missile' base. The island's land area is 0.531 km² (0.205 sq mi, or 131.22 acres) and had no permanent population as of the 2000 census. Currently it serves as the city's potter's field and is run by the New York City Department of Correction Prison
At various times, the New York City Department of Correction has used the island for a prison, but it is currently uninhabited.
Hart Island was a prisoner of war camp for four months in 1865. 3,413 captured Confederate soldiers were housed. 235 died. Their remains, along with those of Union soldiers buried on Hart Island, were relocated to Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn in 1941. [1]
[edit] Cemetery
It is the location of a 101 acre potter's field for New York City, the largest tax funded cemetery in the world. [4] Burials on Hart Island began during the American Civil War. Hart Island was sold to New York City in 1868. In 1869, a 24-year-old woman named Louisa Van Slyke became the first person interred in the island's 45 acre graveyard.[5] More than 750,000 dead are buried thereâ??approximately 2,000 a yearâ??more than half of them infants and stillborn.[6][7][2] The dead are buried in trenches. Babies are placed in coffins of various sizes, and are stacked five coffins high and usually twenty coffins across. Adults are placed in larger pine boxes priced according to size, and are stacked three coffins high and two coffins across.[6] Burial records on microfilm at the Municipal Archives in Manhattan indicate that babies and adults were buried together in mass graves up until 1913 when the trenches became separate in order to facilitate the more common disinterment of adults. The potter's field is also used to dispose of amputated body parts, which are placed in boxes labeled "limbs". Ceremonies have not been conducted at the burial site since the 1950s, and no individual markers are set except for the first child to die of AIDS in New York City who was buried in isolation.[8][9] In the past, burial trenches were re-used after 25-50 years, allowing for sufficient decomposition of the remains. Presently, historic buildings are being torn down to make room for new burials.[10]
Because of the number of weekly interments made at Potter's Field and the expense to the taxpayers, these mass burials are straightforward and conducted by Riker's Island inmates. Those interred on Hart Island are not necessarily homeless or indigent, as hearsay has it, but people who could either not afford the expenses of private funerals or who were unclaimed by relatives who are frequently not notified within a two week period. Approximately fifty percent of the burials are children under five who are identified and died in New York City hospitals. Many others have families who live abroad or out of state and whose relatives search for years. Their search is made more difficult because burial records are presently kept within the prison system. A Freedom of Information Law request for 50,000 burial records was granted to Melinda Hunt on March 13, 2008.[11][12] These records contain all burials from 1985-2007 except adult burials October 15, 1985-April 29, 1988. A second FOIL request for these missing book(s) in addition to records from September 1, 1977 to December 31, 1984 was submitted to the Department of Correction on June 2, 2008 by the law office of David B. Rankin. A law suit concerning "place of death" information redacted from the Hart Island burial records was filed against New York City on July 11, 2008 by the Law Office of David B. Rankin.
The New York City Department of Transportation runs a ferry service with one boat, to the island from the Fordham Street pier on City Island. Prison labor from Rikers Island is used for burial details, paid at 50 cents an hour. Inmates stack the pine coffins in two rows, three high and 25 across, and each plot is marked with a single concrete marker. The first pediatric AIDS victim to die in New York City is buried in the only single grave on Hart Island with a concrete marker that reads SP (special child) B1 (Baby 1) 1985.{{[13]}}--> A tall white peace monument erected by New York City prison inmates following World War II is at the top of what was known as "Cemetery Hill" prior to the installation of the now abandoned Nike Missile Base at the north end of Hart Island.
The American novelist Dawn Powell was buried on Hart Island in 1970, five years after her death, when her executor refused to reclaim her remains. Academy Award winner Bobby Driscoll was also buried here when he died in 1968 because no one was able to identify his remains when he was found dead in an East village tenement.[2].
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Originally Posted by SheeBee
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