Potter's Field

How strange and sad a name is "Potter's Field".   Defined as  place for the burial of unknown, indigent or unclaimed people, no one knowingly wants to be laid to permanent rest in one.  

I have several family members buried in a paupers' grave and each time I find one, it saddens me a little more.  I guess the one that bothers me the most is our little Anna Krings.  She died shortly after birth on Feb. 11, 1906 and for whatever reason, found her final resting place in the Potter's Field on Hart's Island, a small island off of Manhatten in New York.  At least she was given a name.  Probably named for her mother, Anna Marie, who had already had three sons and another unidentified child previously.  Jim Murphy, a diligent researcher and expert on Hart's Island burials, obtained her burial location from microfiche and gave  me all I needed to add her data to the Find A Grave Index.  Sadly, Anna didn't live long enough to have a biography and so there isn't one.  This photo below is of a burial trench on Hart's Island.  More than one million people are buried here, including our little Anna.

  

Anna wasn't the only family member to be buried in common ground.  Her father, Arthur C.H. Krings, is also in an unmarked grave.  He died on May 27th 1909 and lies in St. Michael's Cemetery located in East Elmhurst, Queens.  A letter from the cemetery revealed that he shares a plot with two other men in an unmarked portion of the cemetery.  The men are buried on top of one another and there is no marker.  I inquired about placing a marker, however, the cemetery would not allow it.  Why was Arthur buried like this?  His plot is pictured below.  I believe that he and my great grandmother were no longer together when he died and she may have "washed her hands of him" as he was an alcoholic.  His COD was peritonitis due to "typhoid perforation of the illeum".  He died at St. Luke's Hospital at the age of 33.

Martha Kerner, daughter of Louis Kerner and Elsa Wilhelmina Spatz, was born the 24th of October in 1899.  She was sister to my grandmother, Rose Kerner Krings.  Martha died of diptheria on the 17th of June in 1901 having lived a mere year and a half.  Buried in the Hebrew tradition (her father was a Russian Jew), little Martha was laid to rest the next day by the Chevra Chaset Shellemis Society in the Mt. Zion Cemetery in Maspeth, New York.  While not a Potter's Field in the traditional sense, the Chevra Chaset Shellemis Society stepped in and buried persons who could not afford burials.  They had to plots within the cemetery for this purpose and the graves are unmarked.  Martha is the only person in the family to be interred here.  She was buried in Range 16, Grave 25 on either Path 18R or Path 38 R.  The cemetery has no record.