This is the potter’s field.
It is the burial place of the forgotten, marginalized and stigmatized members of Ingersoll’s community who didn’t have the means to pay for a burial - former slaves, people impacted by the Chinese head tax, children and babies, those experiencing homelessness, and some from low-income households whose homes washed away in a flood.
This summer a team of historians, archaeologists and students at Western is working to uncover the history and tell the stories of the more than 350 community members who are buried there.
"I grew up in a geared-to-income housing complex myself and used to ride my bike through this cemetery as a kid," said history and Indigenous studies professor Cody Groat, who is leading the potter’s field project. "Over the years, I slowly pieced together that this was a large, unmarked section of the cemetery."
Part of the impetus for the project was the digitization of the cemetery’s massive burial log, undertaken by local librarian, Vicki Brenner. Dating back to the 1860s, the log lists every person buried in the cemetery, their date and cause of death and where they are buried, including those in the potter’s field. For some, the burial log is perhaps the only record of their existence.
Groat, in collaboration with the Ingersoll Rural Cemetery Board, the Town of Ingersoll and the Township of Zorra, is now working to memorialize and remember these community members, planning to erect a headstone on the site with the names of everyone for whom this is their final resting place.
"It’s an important project that really centres on bringing the stories of these community members to light," said Groat.
Part of that work includes archival research and detective work to find documentation and background information connected to these names.
Rebecca Small, BA’24, recently completed her undergrad in history at Western and has been working for the past two summers with Groat as a research assistant as part of the Undergraduate Summer Research Internship program. She has been combing through old newspaper articles, birth records and other archival material to unearth information.
"There are some historical figures in Ingersoll - such as Thomas Ingersoll and his daughter Laura Secord, for example - and then there are all’of those buried in the potter’s field who have equally interesting and important stories that just haven’t been told," said Small.
"Everyone wants to be remembered. No one wants their community members forgotten, and our work is to highlight the individuality of these people in this unmarked grave." - Rebecca Small
The origins of potter’s fields
The potter’s field is not unique to Ingersoll. The term stems from a biblical reference to the burial place for Judas after he betrayed Jesus. The field he was buried in was the source of potters’ clay. After the clay was removed, these sites were unusable for agriculture because they were full of trenches and holes and became instead a graveyard for those who weren’t buried in a Christian cemetery.Part of Small’s research involved looking into past studies of potter’s fields in Canada and around the world. She found that little of this type of research has been done elsewhere, and part of her masters’ thesis, which she’ll begin this fall at Western, will focus on understanding the use of potter’s fields in North America. The team is also working to determine when they stopped being used.
In Ingersoll, the last burial was in 1976. After that, a policy shift allowed community members who didn’t have the means to buy a plot to be buried in the next available grave in the cemetery, with the provincial government covering the cost of the burial and the headstone.
Small and Groat also hope to show how potter’s fields can serve as the focal point for new research questions about historical poverty, stigmatization and discrimination and shed new light on societal views of poverty.
Groat reflects on the story of one community member buried in the potter’s field, James Jarrett, nicknamed ’Sailor Jack’ by the community. He died of frostbite in the late 1800s. Small’s research uncovered a commentary in the newspaper at the time saying that the community should have rallied around Jarrett, who was unhoused, and could have treated him better.
"That was more than 140 years ago, and easily could have been today," said Groat.
Identifying unmarked graves
Anthropology master’s student Isaac Bender (Western Communications)A parallel research undertaking as part of this project involves using non-invasive archeological techniques to try to identify the physical locations of burials within the potter’s field.
For the past several months, archaeology graduate student Isaac Bender, under the supervision of anthropology professor Lisa Hodgetts, has been conducting field research in the potter’s field alongside a team of researchers. They are using a number of different geophysical tools, including ground penetrating radar, drone-based LiDAR, multispectral and thermal imaging, and electromagnetic conductivity, to determine what works best under different conditions.
"These tools have been used in archaeology for decades, but it is much clearer to identify the foundation of a Roman villa, for example, than it is to identify a burial, which is a much more discreet feature," said Bender.
The goal of this part of the research project is two-fold. First, identify where in the potter’s field might be the best place to erect the monument in a way that will not disturb the burials. Second, to test and develop best practices for the identification of unmarked burials to help inform others doing similar work, including Indigenous communities in their residential school investigations.
The research is part of a broader national effort by the Canadian Archeological Association working group on unmarked graves, with groups doing similar work in different environments across Canada.
"The purpose is to share that information back with communities to help inform their searches, so that they might know what particular techniques are likely to be more telling than others under local environment and conditions," said Hodgetts.
Ed Eastaugh, archeology lab supervisor, explains that some techniques work well under certain conditions and with particular geophysical landscapes, but don’t work well in other areas with different types of soil or weather.
"We are working to establish which techniques work well and how to adjust our methodologies, depending on the local conditions, to improve the resolution," said Eastaugh. "The higher the resolution we get, and the more data points we collect, the easier it is to interpret."
For Bender, the opportunity to learn more about these techniques as a master’s student and contribute to this important project has been meaningful.
"I’ve always known archaeology has a large societal impact on how people view their place on the landscape, but this project has really brought that home for me," said Bender.
