Honoring the Forgotten Lives at Maple Grove Cemetery

We are 4 students from Epic High School South in Queens NY. We are part of the Summer Youth Employment Program and have been assigned to work with the Friends of Maple Grove at Maple Grove Cemetery.

One of the projects we are working on is with sculptor Samantha Newman, the Artist in Residence at Maple Grove Cemetery. We would like to honor over 1,500 people we have discovered buried in a mass grave at the cemetery, once known as the Ocean Plot. Most of them are children who died over 100 years ago due to contagious diseases that afflicted the poor in New York City. This mass grave has no memorial, monument or tombstone of any kind.

Samantha is carving the figure of a lamb in marble. The lamb was a favorite symbol that was used to represent the passing of children back in Victorian times. Upon completion, the lamb whom we have named Ocean, will be placed on this mass grave.

In order to identify all of these people and give them a name, we are researching the old internment books at Maple Grove and collecting all their names along with their ages. We would like to purchase a stainless steel time capsule and place all the names inside of it.

At the dedication and the unveiling of Ocean, the time capsule will be buried under the monument. By doing this, we plan to give these over 1,500 individuals a proper memorial so that they will NEVER be forgotten.

-Dana Gervais, Jackeline Mejia, Giselle Cartagena, MaKayla Tlaseca