This past weekend I had the honor of attending the Grand Opening of the Monument for the Forgotten at the Museum of disABILITY History in Buffalo, New York (http://museumofdisability.org/). This monument is the creation of Brian Nesline and is made up of the images of over 1,000 headstones belonging to individuals who died in institutions like almshouses, asylums and prisons and were buried in what have become unmarked and forgotten cemeteries.

Many of the individuals were not buried with headstones, or even numbered markers like the ones seen below.  For example, the Erie County Poorhouse marked the burial location of inmates who died there with a numbered wooden stake.  The number on the stake corresponded with the same number in a ledger that included the individuals personal information (name, age, cause of death and occupation, among other details).  That stake remained to mark the grave for a year in the event that a family member or friend  might claim the body for reburial in a private cemetery, or, at the very least, reimburse the county for the burial in the almshouse cemetery.  However, at the end of the year, the stakes were all pulled up to be re-used during the upcoming year, thus leaving the individual interred there forgotten forever.  The Monument for the Forgotten is just part of a larger and continued effort of behalf of the Museum of disABILITY History and its parent company, People, Inc., to recover and restore institutional cemeteries across the state of New York and provide identity to those buried there.  This is important because many of these individuals, particularly poorhouse inmates, were employed in occupations such as masonry, carpentry, brick laying, etc., before circumstances beyond their control forced them to seek refuge in the county poorhouse.  In the case of the Erie County Poorhouse, many of the inmates there likely contributed to the building of the city of Buffalo, which was expanding rapidly throughout the nineteenth century.  

I touched on the anonymity of institutional burials in my novel, Orphans and Inmates.  In the later decades (post 1850) of the Erie County Poorhouse inmates were buried in coffins, some very elaborate.  However, it is unknown how the dead were interred during the early years in which the book took place (1830's).  I borrowed from what little I know of the Monroe County Poorhouse Cemetery, in Rochester, New York, and described the inmates as buried in shrouds rather than coffins.  Often these shrouds were made by other inmates as part of the daily chores which all able-bodied persons were assigned.  In the book, Ciara is shocked that most inmates were buried without any religious service or even an individual to say a prayer over their grave. Sadly, this was often true of real burials at the Erie County Poorhouse and even became an issue of public concern in the later decades of the nineteenth century.  The slogan of the Museum is "Forgotten No More" and I am honored that my story contributes in some small way to providing at least some understanding of the lives and deaths of poorhouse inmates.