Hart Island

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Were any of you aware of this island in NY? It is located at the western end of Long Island Sound. It was discovered by the British in 1775. Is only about a mile long by 0.33 miles wide. During the Civil War prisoners were kept there and blacks were trained there as well. In the late 1800s psychiatric hospitals were so overcrowded in NY that a women's only lunatic asylum opened there because both Blackwell and Bellville had become so overcrowded. (It is interesting to note here that a lunatic asylum pertained to women and the insane was what men were called at that time.)They closed in 1895. At about this same time NY started using Hart Island as a dumping ground for unclaimed bodies. Also, during the Tuberculosis outbreak, people were so afraid of being around the bodies that they used the island to bury these patients because they wanted all the bodies in one place. They were actually put in trenches with 150 bodies in each. In 1920 Coney Island became a very popular spot but only whites were allowed. A millionaire real estate speculator from Barbados proposed building an amusement park on Hart Island that would serve the primarily black community of Harlem. Hart Island is the resting place for so many that a "searchable database" was developed in 1977. The public can go to and using name, date, and place of death find some burial records.