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Death In Anonymity: Population Dynamics And The Individual Within The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, 1882–1925, Brooke L. Drew

Theses and Dissertations

Prior to hospital construction in late 1991 and early 1992, and again in 2013, archaeologists were called upon to excavate 1,649 and 831 burials, respectively, from the unmarked Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery. The individuals disinterred during these field seasons represent what remains of a much larger indigent population buried by Milwaukee County between 1882 and 1925 in what has been designated as Cemetery II. Long before the expanding facilities at Wauwatosa’s Milwaukee Regional Medical Center threatened these graves, however, the very nature of pauper burial grounds caused the identities of these disenfranchised individuals to be systematically obliterated.

The research …