The Unmarked Graveyard: Documenting an Invisible Island

Radio Diaries

Radio Diaries & Radiotopia

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 October 2023

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For more than a century, it was almost impossible to find out much about people buried on Hart Island. But in 2008, that all changed — thanks in large part to a woman named Melinda Hunt.

Melinda is a visual artist who has spent more than 30 years documenting America’s largest public cemetery, and advocating for families with loved ones buried there. She is the founder of The Hart Island Project, a searchable database of more than 75,000 burial records.

This week, producer Alissa Escarce sits down with Melinda to discuss the history of Hart Island and how it’s changed over the last few decades. This is episode four of our series The Unmarked Graveyard. New episodes published each week.

Transcript

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0:00.0	On a recent rainy Saturday morning, I visited Heart Island for the first time.
0:20.2	It's New York City's potter's field, there are more than a million people buried there
0:24.2	on a narrow strip of land, and it's not easy to visit.
0:27.9	You have to get permission from the city.
0:29.8	If they grant it, you show up at an industrial dock in the Bronx and ride a small ferry to
0:34.1	the island.
0:35.1	Um, everybody has a designated area where they visiting they love one, we will take you
0:39.3	to that area.
0:40.3	Then you get on a bus, a guard escorts you to the specific grave that you're signed up
0:45.2	to visit.
0:46.3	In my case, plot 414, you're not allowed to just wander around.
0:52.8	Everywhere you look, you can see simple white posts with numbers on them, no names.
0:57.8	plot 414, 383, 201, each post represents a mass grave containing about 150 coffins.
1:09.6	The guards give you a little time to pay your respects, then the bus picks you up and takes
1:14.2	you back to the ferry.
1:24.6	This is the Unmarked Graveyard, a series where we untangle mysteries from America's largest
1:29.7	public cemetery, Hamjo Richmond.
1:32.6	If you've been listening to our series, you've already heard a few stories about people
1:35.6	who ended up on Heart Island and the people they left behind.
1:39.6	We have more stories coming up in the series, but today we're doing something different,
1:43.4	a bonus episode about Heart Island itself.
1:49.2	For more than a century, Heart Island has been mostly off limits.
	...

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