Potter Field facts

While investigating facts about Potter's Field and Potter's Field Nyc, I found out little known, but curios details like:

Washington Square Park in NYC was once a potters field cemetery and where the fountain is today was the location the gallows where the cities guilty were hanged. There are still approximately 20,000 bodies still buried there.

how did potter's field get its name?

A Potter's field is a place where unclaimed bodies are buried. The Potter's field for New York is Hart Island in the Bronx and it is home to over one million bodies.

What is a potter's field?

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where is potter's field located at?

1. Apart from her illustrated children's stories which always featured whimsical drawings of animals and plants, Potter was also respected for her scientific illustrations, especially in the fields of mycology of archaeology.

2. A "potter's field" is a term for a common grave used for burials of unknown or indigent people, referring to a field for extracting potter's clay that was afterwards unsuitable for agriculture and therefore could be used as a burial site.

3. Oscar winning child actor Bobby Driscoll died alone and broke at 31 of heart failure caused by longtime drug abuse. His body was not claimed and he was buried New York City's Potter's Field on Hart Island

4. In the late 19th century Chicago’s Lincoln Park was a cemetery that was to be moved out of city limits. Over 20,000 corpses were moved, but nearly 12,000 are still unaccounted for in what was a Potter’s field. They are still there, under what is now baseball diamonds.

5. Hart Island, the potter's field cemetery in New York City with over 1 million burials, has only one individual marker- for the first child to die of HIV in NYC.

6. Patricia Cornwell continued to write books in the Scarpetta series including Body of Evidence (1991), All That Remains (1992), Cruel and Unusual (1993), The Body Farm (1994), From Potter's Field (1995), Cause of Death (1996), Unnatural Exposure (1997), Point of Origin (1998), Black Notice (1999), The Last Precinct (2000), Blow Fly (2003), Trace (2004), Predator (2005), Book of the Dead (2007), Scarpetta (2008), The Scarpetta Factor (2009), Port Mortuary (2010), Red Mist (2011), The Bone Bed (2012), Dust (2013), and Flesh and Blood (2014).

7. Washington Square Park in NYC used to be a potter's field (public burial ground) and it is likely that over 20,000 people were buried in the land. The bulk of the bodies were never disinterred and they remain to this day under the grass and pavement.

8. A "Potter's Field" is a paupers' cemetery chosen because it was land that had been excavated for pottery clay, and was good for little else. The practice dates to biblical times.

9. There are over a million people buried in common graves in NYC's potter's field on Hart Island.