New York City's Hart Island: A Cemetery of Strangers

by Michael T. Keene

Overview

The story of the nation’s largest mass graveyard and the nearly one million people buried there—based on new documents and advances in DNA technology.

Once a Civil War prison and training site and later a psychiatric hospital, among other incarnations, Hart Island, just off the coast of the Bronx in the Long Island Sound, eventually became the repository for New York City’s unclaimed dead. The island’s mass graves are a microcosm of New York history, from the 1822 burial crisis to casualties of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and victims of multiple epidemics. Among the indigent and forgotten, important artists who died in poverty have also been discovered to be interred there, including Disney star Bobby Driscoll and playwright Leo Birinski.
 
In this wide-ranging exploration touching on many aspects of the city’s past, Michael T. Keene reveals the history of New York’s potter’s field—and the stories of some of its lost souls.
 
Includes photographs

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439668221
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	12/07/2021
Series:	Landmarks
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	275
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Michael T. Keene is the author of eight books about unusual but true stories. Michael is also the producer of the documentary video Visions: True Stories of Spiritualism, Secret Societies, and Murder, as well as eight audio books. Although employed for more than twenty-five years as a financial advisor, Michael has combined his interest in local history, writing, music and filmmaking to explore unique and fascinating chapters of nineteenth-century New York folklore and stranger-than-life legends. The events that bubbled out of this period included the Anti-Masonic movement, the origins of the modern Spiritualist and paranormal movements and the women's rights and antislavery movements, as well as the founding of seven new religions and utopian communes. His "Talking Hart Island" podcast delves deeper into the book's content and can be found at michaeltkeene.com and major podcast platforms.