NYCHS at CNYSH: 1872-75 Burial Book Virtual Tour

Hart Island ledger measures 16 x 11 inches, contains 240 pages with 8,921 entries covering 33 months in 1872-1875.

Wearing gloves to protect them, webmaster turns some burial book pages.

In Poughkeepsie, at Marist College, on the afternoon of Friday, June 13th, 2014, a research paper entitled A Virtual Tour of the Oldest Known NYC Hart Island Potter's Field Burial Register, -- augmented by a PowerPoint series of two dozen image slides -- was presented during the 35th Conference on New York State History (CNYSH).

The presenter, who is webmaster of this CorrectionHistory.Org site and admin of its 1,200-member New York Correction History group on Facebook, has prepared different digital format versions of his CNYSH paper, his talk based on it and its supplementary slides. Visitors to this site can view them on their monitors or download them for later viewing and/or printing.

  • PPT -- "'Virtual Tour' of 1872-75 NYC Potter's Field Burial Ledger," the 24-slide PowerPoint show, including animations and slide notes. The slide notes are the research paper's text. 3.35 Mb read-only file.

  • PDF -- "'Virtual Tour' of 1872-75 NYC Potter's Field Burial Ledger," an Adobe PDF version of the 24-slide PowerPoint show. This version shows the slides full screen in sequence as you would seen them during the PowerPoint presentation. No animations. No slide note text. 1 Mb.

  • DOC -- "'Virtual Tour' of Oldest Known NYC Potter’s Field Burial Register, Microsoft Word document showing reduced size images of the PPT slides with their respective text notes. The slide notes are the research paper's text. 1997-2003 Word format version. 11.7 Mb.

  • DOCX -- "'Virtual Tour' of Oldest Known NYC Potter’s Field Burial Register, Microsoft Word document showing reduced size images of the PPT slides with their respective text notes. The slide notes are the research paper's text. 11.5 Mb.




Bunched-up soft towel props up open left cover of burial book as webmaster notes that data entries for each individual burial begin on the left page and continue onto the right page, resembling today's spreadsheets in width. Or rather, today's spreadsheets resemble the old style ledgers.


Webmaster points to one of the monthly body counts concluding each month's entries:


Prior to showing features of the burial book entries, a clear plastic sheet covered the open book as the webmaster spoke.


Left to right: Tom McCarthy of the NY Correction History Society, Marcia Kirk of the NYC Municipal Archives and Judith Berdy of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society.


The entry in the 2014 Conference on NYS History program for the Friday, June 13th panel session at which the "virtual tour" of the 1872-75 Hart Island Potter's Field burial ledger was give. Emphasis added. Click to access a PDF version of the PowerPoint slide show.

THANK YOU, DAVID PALMQUIST

The photos of Hart Island Potter's Field burial book presentation at Marist College were taken by David Palmquist, SUNY-Albany lecturer, retired Regents chartering director and former city historian for Bridgerport, Conn.


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