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Potter’s Field: No Longer Forgotten

“They all had their stories. Just so very sad… and so they became forgotten” says Caroline Grabowski, Sault Ste. Marie’s “Cemetery Lady.”

For generations their remains lay in a now overgrown Potter’s Field. Now Grabowski is sharing their stories.

They died between 1890 and 1933. Men, women, babies: 283 people.

For decades, they were simply forgotten in Riverside Cemetery just outside of Sault Ste. Marie.

Until now, hardly anyone knew they were there.

Chief photojournalist Corey Adkins, Michelle Dunaway and executive producer Jamie Valentine take us there in this special report.

A cemetery is considered a place of remembrance, where family, friends and loved ones can pay their respects to the dead.

Hundreds of plots marked with a headstone, weathering the years, seasons, generations. But not always.

“The Potter’s Field, it’s right before that line of trees, and into the trees. Because the first burials, where we’re talking 125 years ago.”

Caroline Grabowski is the self-proclaimed "Cemetery Lady". She has a passion for history and shares it by giving tours in Sault Ste. Marie – the oldest city in Michigan, and one of the oldest in the country.

“And when I was doing research on my cemetery tours. I kept finding this notation, you know, Potters field, buried Potter’s Field. And I thought ‘where is this Potters Field, I don’t see anything when I visit the cemetery.”

A Biblical term, Potter’s Field is where you buried those who didn’t seem to belong to anyone.

“There was no ceremony. They were just put in the earth.”

They were men, women, and children. Many of them, immigrants. Taken by typhoid, tuberculosis, accidents, suicide, murder, or not making it home from a long night of drinking.

“There are no headstones of course. People couldn’t afford to bury their loved one, they certainly couldn’t afford to put a headstone up.”

But they were people — with lives, pasts, stories, too easily forgotten. Caroline decided they needed to be recognized and remembered.

“There was no way of knowing exactly where your loved one was buried. So after a while, the immediate family, if there was an immediate family, they would stop coming. And people just forgot about it. The better off people of the Soo didn’t even know it existed.”

She spent countless hours researching and connecting with these names, who became very real people to her.

“It’s like baby Percy Graham… almost a year and a half. And then he died from dysentery in 1914. Children died in droves… if these children had Pedialytes, like they do now. They wouldn’t have died.

Caroline started raising money and was able to put up this simple plaque to remember those buried here.

“I hope that maybe people will stop and visit and maybe say a prayer for these people, because they are a part of our history too. They were the working poor. They helped to build the Locks, the canals, the buildings here in town.”

At one time they were a part of this community. Today they are.

“Even today, nobody feels any tie with these people. And that is a shame. Who we are now, is because of them.”

In the Riverside Potter’s Field, there are still 25 people listed simply as "unknown" and they aren’t alone.

Directly across a small stream from Riverside, there is St. Mary cemetery, which also had undiscovered graves… 189 of them, up along a trail.

They are putting up a memorial and holding a ceremony there in the months to come.

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