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Ulster will fund graveyard study
NEW PALTZ: A crusading historian has been awarded a grant to document and memorialize the history of the people buried in a potter's field behind the former county poorhouse.
By Jeremiah Horrigan
The Times Herald-Record
jhorrigan@th-record.com
She is their discoverer, and their voice. And now Susan Stessin-Cohn's efforts on behalf of the forgotten dead who lie in a potter's field will be rewarded and amplified, thanks to a $26,500 grant from the Ulster County Legislature.
Stessin-Cohn, an education teacher and historian, discovered the graveyard late last year on county property that borders the Ulster County Fairgrounds. The graveyard was behind the County Home, or poorhouse, which was demolished in 1985. Stessin-Cohn estimates the cemetery has more than 1,000 graves, some containing more than one body.
Using county and town birth and death records, as well as documents from the poorhouse, Stessin-Cohn has so far identified 860 people. With only these sources, she's been able to reconstruct whole movements of people into the county – destitute survivors of the Irish potato famine, slaves, victims young and old of then-common diseases such as diphtheria and scurvy.
"These are the first families of Ulster County – this is everybody's history," Stessin-Cohn said yesterday.
Until now, her efforts have been a labor of love, done on her own time with the help of two high-school students. The grant, which is expected to be approved by the Legislature Thursday, will not only pay for her continued research (the data from that research will be given to the county) but also a memorial to be designed by local high-school students, teachers and, she hopes, a professional sculptor.
"Doing this has been so satisfying to me – it's become a celebration of life in ways I never expected it to be," she said.
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