The wind didn’t care. It would howl as it wished. Baltic-like icy blasts gunned tiny splinters of snow in our direction as we waited by the water. Removing gloves, we signed forms with hands tinted blue by the unseasonal spring winds. My scarf, last worn in November, when I attended a football match in Liverpool, did little to protect me from this ill wind that blew nobody any good. Clenching it in a pumped fist as Mo Salah scores a winner is one thing, wrapping it faceward to protect against climatic Atlantic dread is another.
The documentation we were signing most likely relieved anyone with a connection to the adventure we were to undertake of responsibility were anything untoward to happen to any of us in the subsequent few hours.
With stamping feet and clapping hands, we were Freddie Mercury lyrics come to life, as efforts to do something to push back the elements were attempted, yet defeated by Mother Nature.
The “we” in question was a dozen or so New York-based individuals who’d signed up for a ferry ride to visit Hart Island, the site of what is reputed to be the largest “potter’s field” cemetery in the world. That is, a graveyard for unknown people, unclaimed bodies, and individuals who did not have the finances to afford a “proper” burial.
Located about 20km northeast of midtown Manhattan, Hart Island has operated under numerous guises over the years. Once the location for a civil war-era prisoner-of-war camp, a quarantine station during an 1870 outbreak of yellow fever, an army barracks, a women’s psychiatric hospital and an industrial school for “delinquent” boys, since the mid-19th century it has primarily been utilised as a cemetery.
Controlled by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, who took the reins from the city’s Department of Correction (whose prison inmates dug the island’s graves for over a century) in 2019, visitors are welcomed, after it being off-limits to the public for decades.
Just one mile long by a third of a mile wide at its broadest point, the partly-forested island has no (human) residents, no electricity, and an estimated one million bodies organised in trench-like mass graves, each marked by a simple white stone, containing up to 150 coffins (many more in the babies’ plots).
Annually, the number of burials fluctuates up to 1,500 or so, with the occasional spike in figures, such as during the Aids epidemic of the 1980s/90s and the more recent Covid-19 pandemic. Bodies are sometimes disinterred and buried elsewhere, usually when a family member is informed of their loved one’s predicament, having been unaware at the time of their passing.
Among my fellow ferry passengers that morning were Louise and Katherine, retirees and long-term friends, members of a Long Island camera club. Excited, yet a little nervous, they couldn’t wait to get out there, and hoped they could get some shots, not only of the island’s wildlife, which includes geese, deer and raccoon, but landscape snaps of the New York skyline and of the many old buildings still evident on the island.
“It’s fascinating,” said Bronx-born and raised Diego, another ferry-rider, who travelled with his college-age daughter Anna. “All these stories on our doorstep, yet hardly anybody knows about it.” The pair were visiting for the first time, despite being lifelong New Yorkers with an obsession with local history.
Also present was Steven, who hoped to pay respects at the gravesite of an uncle of whom he’d only heard stories. “He came to New York in the early 60s. For a while he wrote home, but the communication ended. A few years back, I found his name on the Hart Island Project’s website. Sadly, he seems to have died alone during a harsh New York winter back in the 70s.”
Steven knew there was no personal marker, but thanks to the Hart Island Project (HIP), an online directory and source of invaluable information about the island, he was able to determine roughly where his uncle had been laid to rest.
The HIP is a non-profit organisation aimed at raising awareness, lobbying politicians and attempting to improve conditions at Hart Island, not only for those buried there, but for loved ones attempting to pay respects. Indeed, the continued uptick in awareness of the island’s existence among New Yorkers and non-natives alike, is very much thanks to the continued efforts of activist and HIP founder Melinda Hunt and her team of volunteers.
Others found were men like world-travelling Belfast native Gerald Beirne, who died in 1983 after a lifetime in the shipping industry, war veteran Jimmy Dullaghan of Co Louth, and construction worker John Monaghan of Co Fermanagh
The ferry is the only way to access the island. It departs on select Tuesday mornings, weather permitting, several times a month. For access, one must sign up in advance (at the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation’s official website nycgovparks.org) and hope for the best. Spaces are limited.
It’s a short journey, and in the right conditions, can be a beautiful one. Depending on the weather, it may be charmingly serene, as the sun glistens off the waters on their way towards the Atlantic. A slight wind, however, can result in choppier waves, and a somewhat less relaxing voyage.
Hart Island for me was more than a simple “bucket list” box-ticking exercise. I’d researched it extensively, and written about it numerous times. Having estimated that there were thousands of Irish-born emigrants buried there (the presence of dozens of Dempseys, Fitzgeralds, Donovans, Flanagans and Murphys in the HIP’s online directory confirms that), I’d previously penned a feature about such individuals, even solving one long-term missing persons case, where I was able to “join the dots”, and identify a young Dublin man whose family had not heard from him in almost 30 years.
Others found during research were men like world-travelling Belfast native Gerald Beirne, who died in 1983 after a lifetime in the shipping industry, war veteran Jimmy Dullaghan of Co Louth, and construction worker John Monaghan of Co Fermanagh. Where possible, I made contact with their families.
[ How much does the Government spend supporting Irish emigrants in the US?Opens in new window ]
Upon disembarking from the ferry, we strolled respectfully, always aware that a mass grave might have lain just feet from where we walked. Indeed, our guides, the park rangers, reminded us that, while it was expected that we’d take photographs, we should put cameras and phones away if we encountered a burial taking place. That afternoon, we saw two.
Distant seagulls taunted us over the gently lapping waves, while our photographers kept on alert for curious deer, or the more elusive osprey, known to swoop over the island. Disused buildings, crumbling after decades of neglect, dot the landscape, and every so often, flowers, not native to the island, are evident, left by previous visitors at the graves.
We’d pass animal bones, usually the remnants of deer, and occasionally, the heartbreaking sight of mementoes, such as teddy bears and toy cars, by the foot of the white stones, remembering those who never got to grow old.
After a few hours quietly rambling the lands, marvelling at the views, our questions answered by the rangers, and doing our best not to be utterly overwhelmed by what surrounded us, our visit was done. We’d reconnected with our history, nature and even the occasional long-lost relative.
As we made our way back to the ferry, the biting winds were no longer what occupied our minds.
I thought of the burials I’d come across during my research. Oscar-winning child actor Bobby Driscoll, whose body was found by children playing on a Manhattan construction site, having succumbed to heroin addiction. Sheila Terry, a glamorous actress who featured alongside John Wayne in early western films, and “regular” New Yorker Dennis Walsh, whose daughter Diana left a tear-jerking tribute by his entry on the HIP’s directory.
They and a million others, permanently at rest, in a city that never sleeps.
How to locate remains on Hart Island
Individuals are buried on Hart Island for a number of reasons. It can be because their identity is unknown at the time of their death and a next of kin could not be located to arrange for burial services. It can be because the individual’s family could not afford burial costs.
It can also be because the individual’s family declines to claim the remains for any reason.
Hart Island records are searchable through a database with information dating back to 1977, enabling members of the public to determine if a person’s remains are buried on the island. Individuals can be searched for by name, age, birth date, date of death, or by using the assigned medical examiner number. The medical examiner number may be obtained through the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City.
If a plot number is known, it can be located on the Island by referencing a map of Hart Island burial locations, either Hart Island Map 1 or Hart Island Map 2.
Unfortunately, some records were destroyed in a fire in the 1970s, and location information cannot be determined for these particular burial sites.
More information about an individual record, or assistance locating a record, can be obtained by submitting a request online.
