![]() Pemaquid was a colonial settlement dating to the early decades of the 17th century, with a succession of conflicts leading the site to be attacked on several occasions and entirely abandoned twice. Located in New Harbor near Bristol, the Colonial Pemaquid State Historic Site includes the reconstructed Fort William Henry, along with archaeological remains of 17th- and 18th-century village buildings and fortifications. We were hopeful we could find a place to grab dinner afterward. I persuaded my husband to drive over to Colonial Pemaquid so I could get a good look at the Old Burying Ground (that’s what they call it). However, I knew I had a good chance of stopping by another cemetery on our way back up the Pemaquid peninsula. Due to poor construction, it was rebuilt in 1835. 14 Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1784-1831 (City of New York 1917), 2:92, 102, 351, 365 Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York (Valentine 1856), 465 The Iconography of Manhattan Island: 1498-1909 (Stokes 1915-1928), 5:1313, 1474, 1494 Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America’s Most Storied Hospital (Oshinsky 2016), 11-28 “Twenty Dollars Reward”, New York Evening Post, “Park Once Potter’s Field, New York Times, J“Unearth Skeleton in Park,” New York Times, Sep 11, 1930.The original lighthouse was commissioned in 1827 by President John Quincy Adams and built that year. Excerpt of 1930 New York Times article reporting discovery of remains of the potter’s field in Madison Square Park. Burials may still be present beneath the park. government built a powder-and-shot magazine at the site in 1808, L’Oracle (one of the city’s early 19 th century newspapers) reported that “persons employed in digging the foundation of the Magazine in the Old Potter’s Field daily dig up coffins and dead bodies which are disposed of in the most indecent and disrespectful manner.” On several occasions in the early 20 th century, construction workers uncovered human remains at the north end of the park during excavations for sewer lines and water pipes. Some burials were disinterred when the U.S. ![]() Though the burial ground was used only for a short period, hundreds of people likely were interred there during this calamitous time. The site’s history as a potters field was recognized even after it was converted into an arsenal, as evidenced in this 1809 notice of a deserted soldier. In 1847, the site was leveled, sodded, and enclosed to create Madison Square Park. The abandoned potter’s field at Post and Bloomingdale roads transferred to the United States government for an arsenal in 1806 later it was the location of the House of Refuge for juvenile delinquents. Opposition to transporting the dead on the busy roads leading to the potter’s field compelled the city to discontinue its use in May 1797 and open a new public burial ground at what is now Washington Square Park. The public burial ground at Post and Bloomingdale roads-the vicinity of present-day 26 th Street between Fifth and Madison avenues-was used for just three years. Randel’s 1820 map shows the potter’s field located at the triangular piece of ground formed by the junction of Bloomingdale and Post Roads. The site became a graveyard for interment of paupers, the unknown, and those dying of contagious diseases. In August 1794, the Common Council ordered that the “Triangular Piece of Ground at the junction of the Post & Bloomingdale Roads be appropriated to the use of the Alms House for a Burying Ground.” A month later, the council directed that the hospital at Bellevue be permitted to bury their dead at this same site. The city also found a new burial place for the poor, interred in grounds adjacent to the Almshouse since the 1750s. In response to this situation, the city opened a new, larger almshouse just north of the first Almshouse in City Hall Park and established a yellow fever hospital at Bellevue, along the East River north of the settled city. ![]() The rising number of indigent residents and ailing poor placed a strain on the crumbling, sixty-year-old Almshouse, which housed close to 800 people by 1795. Though yellow fever endangered all New Yorkers (750 fell to it in 1795), the city’s poor were most susceptible to the disease. The city was in a growth spurt that would double its population to 60,000 by the end of the decade at the same time, it was ravaged by annual outbreaks of yellow fever. New York City’s municipal Almshouse was under siege in the 1790s. The public burial ground, or potters field, at the junction of Post and Bloomingdale roads, now Madison Square Park (Randel 1820)
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