Battle Over Remains Heats Up

Sidewalks with Tom Deignan

Battle Over Remains Heats Up

August 9, 2007

Sidewalks By Tom Deignan

THE drive to honor and properly bury the remains of Famine-era Irish immigrants discovered on Staten Island has gained another powerful ally — Congressman Vito Fossella. This announcement comes as officials from the Irish Embassy in New York are expected to visit the site on Thursday morning. Members of the Irish government have also called for a proper burial of the remains.

This week, Fossella urged New York State officials to give a proper burial to the skeletal remains of as many as 50 people which were taken from a municipal parking lot last year. The remains were located during the construction of a new courthouse at the site, located in the North Shore neighborhood of St. George, not far from the Staten Island Ferry Terminal.

“I believe we must take great care in giving a proper burial to the remains that have been exhumed,” Fossella said this week. “Thousands of men, women and children lost their lives to disease and other illnesses while in isolation awaiting entry to the United States.

“Some of these unfortunate individuals were buried at what eventually became the St. George municipal parking lot. Giving them eternal peace ... and installing a monument in their honor would serve as a fitting tribute to our ancestors who risked their lives in search of hope and opportunity in America.”

Back in March, the Irish Voice noted that a coalition of Irish Americans has expressed outrage that the remains have been locked away in cardboard boxes. They fear the remains will simply be returned unceremoniously to the ground and left under the courthouse complex when it is eventually built.

For years, local historians have suspected there were remains of Irish as well as German immigrants at the site.

The new courthouse is being built on top of what is currently a parking lot. However, 150 years ago, a quarantine station stood at the site. At the height of the Irish Famine, countless immigrants and their children stayed at the station, became sick and were buried in unmarked graves.

Local anti-Irish nativists eventually burned the station to the ground. Infant as well as adult remains were removed from the site late last year, according to Lynn Rogers, executive director of Friends of Abandoned Cemeteries of Staten Island, which wants to bury the remains with the full religious rights they were likely denied in the 1850s. Rogers believes two of her own ancestors named Egan died at the quarantine station.

For the past two years, Friends of Abandoned Cemeteries as well as the Ancient Order of Hibernians, St. Columcille Irish Cultural Center, elected officials and others have been urging the State Dormitory Authority (SDA) to allow the remains to be interred in Historic Staten Island Cemetery with full religious rites.

Fossella has now thrown his weight behind that proposal. He also wants to install a monument at the future courthouse complex in honor of the men, women and children who died at the quarantine site.

Fossella made his opinions known in an August 3 letter to David Brown, the executive director of the SDA. A call to SDA seeking a timetable about a final decision was not returned before the Irish Voice went to press on Tuesday.

Rogers, of Friends of Abandoned Cemeteries, is glad to have Fossella’s support but told the Irish Voice this week that she remains skeptical that SDA will support the proposals of the Irish community. Last week she met with SDA reps and was unable to get a sense of when a final decision about the remains will be made.

Despite his obviously Italian name, Fossella is not an entirely unlikely champion of this Irish cause.

He hails from a storied political dynasty which began with an Irish Democratic family. Fossella’s great grandfather was longtime Congressman James O’Leary.

He represented Staten Island in Washington during the 1930s and 1940s and was one of many Irish Americans who strongly supported Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s groundbreaking New Deal programs.

(Contact Tom at tomdeignan@verizon.net.)

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