Families of city’s unclaimed dead receive more access to graves on Hart Island
© 2010 Melinda Hunt/The Hart Island Project
Relatives of people buried at a New York City island that serves as the largest mass grave in the United States will have increased access to the cemetery under a modified lawsuit settlement announced on Tuesday. Hart Island, a mile-long strip of land in the Long Island Sound that sits at the eastern edge of the Bronx, has housed the cemetery for people who cannot afford burials or for unclaimed bodies since the late 1800s. Around 1 million men, women and children have been interred at the island in unmarked graves.
