For those interested in genetic genealogy, DNA genealogy, and those interested in discovering family origins resulting from adoption or unknown parentage. You can become a DNA Detective.
National Geographic: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/04/unclaimed-coronavirus-victims-being-buried-on-hart-island-long-history-as-potters-field/ (Hart Island, 131 Acres)
Hart Island is an island in the Bronx, at the western end of Long Island Sound in New York. During the Civil War, the Union Army used the island as a camp for prisoners. Later, a sanitarium was built on the island to treat and house tuberculosis patients. The island has housed numerous institutions including, a psychiatric hospital, a reform school for boys, and a substance abuse center. The island now serves as a “Potters Field,” a place where the disadvantaged and disconnected end up when they die.
New York City purchased the island from a private party in 1868 and set aside 45 acres as a burial site. There are at least one million people buried on Hart Island. Recently, the average number of burials increased from 25 per week to 25 per day.
Prisoners from Rikers Island have been responsible for burying the deceased in mass graves. Each grave can hold 1000 infants or 150 adults. Burials during the COVID 19 pandemic, are being done by hired contractors with hazardous material suits. Presently, 150 people each week are buried due to the COVID 19 pandemic.
Over one million people buried in these communal graves on this island, some of which died of various epidemics over the years including, yellow fever, the white plague, AIDS, tuberculosis, Spanish Flu, and now, COVID 19.
The Hart Island Project created a searchable database, allowing families to search for their lost loved ones. The burial information on each individual includes a clock, which tracks the amount of time the person has been buried in anonymity. The clock stops when someone (a family member or volunteer) adds information about the person, thus ending their anonymity.
Leroy Clayton, One in a Million (1895-1986) Plot 172
When Leroy Clayton was born on August 22, 1895, in Finleyville, Pennsylvania, his father, Joseph, was 36 and his mother, Frances, was 33. He married Mabel E Spencer on December 22, 1915, in Brooke, West Virginia. He died on August 29, 1986, in New York at the age of 91, and was buried in Bronx County, New York.
Leroy Clayton enlisted in the Army in 1917 when he was 22 years old. He served in Company A of the 317 Engineering Division.
Leroy Clayton died on August 29, 1986, at New York, Presbyterian Hospital.
Rest in Peace-Kathleen
Ronald Barbeire, One in a Million (1939-1980) Plot 120
Ronald Barbeire was born on June 9, 1939, in New York City, New York. He married Josephine Davila in Manhattan, New York in 1968. Rest in Peace-Kathleen
The Social Security Administration has the following information, which would allow the family to request information about his parents:
Name: Ronald Barbeire Social Security Number: 109-32-8682 Birth Date: 9 Jun 1939 Issue year: 1957-1959 Issue State: New York Last Residence: 10302, Staten Island, Richmond, New York, USA Death Date: Jul 1980
Forrest Blake, One in a Million (1937-2004) Plot 319
Forrest Blake was born in Maryland in 1937. He was one of six children born to Russell Blake and Margaret Forrest. Forrest’s grandparents came from St. Inigoes, Maryland. It was a small fishing, farming, and crabbing community. Forrest’s youngest surviving brother died in 2013 and is buried in Garrison Forest Veteran’s Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland. Rest in Peace- Lisa & Kathleen
Irwin Gerstner, One in a Million (1934-1980) Plot 120
Irwin Gerstner was born Sept. 21, 1934, in New York City. He was the youngest child born to David Gerstner and Lina Grosin, immigrants from Russia and Romania. His older brother, Bernard, died at the age of 45 while serving in the United States Army Air Forces in WWII. Bernard was a 1st Lt. whose team was shot down during a mission near Yokohama, Japan. The middle child, Murray, died in 1929 at the age of 9. Bernard is buried at the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Missouri. Irwin’s parents and brother, Murray, are buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Queens, New York. Irwin died on July 21, 1980. Rest in peace, Irwin -Kathleen Hill
Abraham Loorstein, One in a Million (1908-1980) Plot 120
Abraham was born in Poland and was living in New York in 1940. He was living with his cousin and aunt while working as an operator in a suit factory. Rest in Peace, Abraham -Kathleen Hill
Michael Siomkin, Jr., One in a Million (1937-1980) Plot 120
Michael John Siomkin, Jr. was born on October 21st, 1937, in Long Island, New York. He was the first child born to Michael John Siomkin Sr. and Sonia Conshick. Michael’s younger brother was named John Michael Siomkin. John’s grandparents, John, and Mary (Bobb) were immigrants from Russia. John enlisted and served in the Army from 1954 to 1955. Michael died on June 1, 1980. Michael is no longer an anonymous person buried on Hart Island. Rest in Peace, Michael- Kathleen Hill
In December 2019, the New York City Council signed legislation allowing the property to transfer from the Department of Corrections to the Parks and Recreation Department. The full transition is expected by July 2020. Plans are being made to memorialize the island and build a public park for family members and visitors to pay their respects.
As COVID 19 spreads across the world, self-isolation allows us to research our history, seeking knowledge. The “Spanish flu” pandemic that spread across the United States in the early 1900s seems pertinent now.
Why was it called the Spanish Flu?
“Spain was one of only a few major European countries to remain neutral during World War I. Unlike in the Allied and Central Powers nations, where wartime censors suppressed news of the flu to avoid affecting morale, the Spanish media was free to report on it in gory detail. News of the sickness first made headlines in Madrid in late-May 1918, and coverage only increased after the Spanish King Alfonso XIII came down with a nasty case a week later. Since nations undergoing a media blackout could only read in-depth accounts from Spanish news sources, they naturally assumed that the country was the pandemic’s ground zero. The Spanish, meanwhile, believed the virus had spread to them from France, so they took to calling it the “French Flu.”1
When was it first seen in the United States?
In April of 1918, a weekly public health report notified officials of influenza in a military camp located in Haskell, Kansas. This would be the first documentation of the “Spanish flu” in our history. There were eighteen soldiers afflicted with severe influenza symptoms and three deceased.2
Why is the Spanish flu suspected of originating in China?
Although the first documented case of “Spanish flu” was in the United States, Mark Humphries of Canada’s Memorial University of Newfoundland believes the “Spanish flu” originated in China. Humphries is the author of, “The Last Plague: Spanish Influenza and the Politics of Public Health in Canada.“ Humphries’s research revealed a severe respiratory illness in Northern China in November of 1918. Physicians in China described a highly contagious, respiratory infection, causing headaches, fevers, pneumonia, and shortness of breath. The disease seemed more deadly to middle-age, otherwise healthy, individuals. Chinese authorities never issued travel restrictions or quarantines and referred to it as a “winter sickness.” The disease caused dozens of deaths in China, each day and spread 300 miles in six weeks.
How did the Spanish Flu move from China to the United States?
During World War I the British Government formed the Chinese Labor Corps to assist France with the war effort. Beginning in April of 1917, men from Northern China, of “perfect physique” were recruited and shipped to France. The ships arrived with laborers who were subsequently shipped via railcar to various locations. There were 94,000 men shipped from China to Southern England and France.
Shipping the laborers around Africa was too time-consuming and tied up too much shipping, so British officials turned to shipping the laborers to Vancouver on the Canadian West Coast and sending them by train to Halifax on the East Coast, from which they could be sent to Europe. So desperate was the need for labor that on March 2, 1918, a ship loaded with 1,899 Chinese Labor Corps men left the Chinese port of Wehaiwei for Vancouver despite “plague” stopping the recruiting for workers there. In reaction to anti-Chinese feelings rife in western Canada at the time, the trains that carried the workers from Vancouver were sealed, Humphries says. Special Railway Service Guards watched the laborers, who were kept in camps surrounded by barbed wire. Newspapers were banned from reporting on their movement.3Dan Vergano
Who was Lucy?
In November of 1918 the Spanish flu reached Brevig mission, a tiny outpost in Alaska. It was brought into the village by the weekly mail carrier. Within five days 72 of their 80 residents were dead, leaving only eight children and teenagers. August 23, 1997 Lucy was discovered.
In August 1997, a scientist named Johan Hultin from San Francisco traveled to Brevig Mission and, with permission of the town’s elders, excavated the local cemetery to try and unearth a victim of the outbreak buried deep within the frozen tundra. He hoped to extract a sample of human tissue that contained a hibernating specimen of the 1918 flu virus. On August 23, Hultin found a female body seven feet down that was remarkably well preserved. “I sat on a pail—turned upside down—and looked at her,” Hultin recalled in Gina Kolata’s 2001 book Flu. She was an obese woman; she had fat in her skin and around her organs and that served as a protection from the occasional short-term thawing of permafrost. Those on the other side of her were not obese and they had decayed. I sat on the pail and saw this woman in a state of good preservation. And I knew that this was where the virus [sample] has got to come from, shedding light on the mysteries of 1918. With an autopsy knife, Hultin sliced out most of her lungs and immersed the sections in a chemical solution. Then he and his crew carefully reburied the woman he’d named Lucy. Once he returned to San Francisco, Hultin sent the samples to Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C. Taubenberger was able to decode the virus’ entire genetic sequence, a historic achievement in itself. Later, Taubenberger and his team reconstructed the Spanish flu’s complete gene sequence and in 2005 successfully re-grew the virus, a feat never before accomplished with an extinct disease. That raised obvious ethical and security issues, since the virus—which is 25 times more deadly than the regular seasonal flu—could conceivably be used as a biological weapon or accidentally released. But Taubenberger believed the benefits of studying the live virus outweighed the dangers. “It’s clear that the 1918 virus remains particularly lethal,” Taubenberger said after bringing about its Lazarus-like resurrection, “and determining whether pandemic influenza virus strains can emerge via different pathways will affect the scope and focus of surveillance and prevention efforts.” Deciphering how a particular virus operates opens up insights into other viral strains and reveals how they grow, mutate, jump from animal to animal, and attack their hosts. Research based on Lucy’s lung tissue has already led to improved flu vaccines that have prevented larger epidemics, and, ideally, someday scientists will build on Hultin and Taubenberger’s work to uncover a genetic Achilles heel in one strain that makes it possible to wipe out all of them. As for Hultin, he left something behind for the residents of Brevig Mission in 1997. Two white wooden crosses that once marked the cemetery’s perimeter had rotted away to almost nothing. Before rushing back to San Francisco, the 72-year-old scientist constructed two new crosses, which he mounted where the originals had stood. They were his tribute to the dead and his thank-you to the community that had shown him such hospitality—and given so much to medical science.4Andrew Carroll
Bernard is buried at the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Missouri. Irwin’s parents and brother, Murray, are buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Queens, New York. Irwin died on July 21, 1980. Rest in peace, Irwin -Kathleen Hill
