When Cody Groat was a kid, he’d ride his bike around a seemingly empty swath of ground in the local cemetery. Townsfolk, too, out for a stroll, would promenade past the clearing, thinking it was to accommodate future burials. But below the grass-covered field — about the size of a youth soccer pitch — there were bodies, hundreds upon hundreds, laid to rest without marker or memorial.
It would take Groat, now all grown up and an assistant professor at Western University , to uncover the richness of history buried there, of people whose stories would reveal how generations have treated their impoverished, their shunned, their forgotten. Together with student researchers, Groat has worked to bring dignity back for 400 souls whose final resting place in the back of Ingersoll Rural Cemetery was noted in a burial registry as simply being, in “Potter’s Field.” “The physical placement of it spoke to perceptions of the people who were buried here,” says Groat, “Out of sight; out of mind.
” But there are growing efforts across Canada and the United States to bring awareness of these common graves and of the people who lie within. There are few communities whose history does not include the presence of an indigent cemetery or pauper’s burial ground. Commonly known as potter’s fields — a biblical reference — these are the spots where cities and towns buried their unknown and unclaimed, as well as those who could not afford a plot.
The burial registry of the Ing.