People that no one had use for, had nothing to give to, no place to offer: The Milwaukee County Institution Grounds Poor Farm Cemetery

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Anthony.

This research looks at the institutional desecration of graves at the Milwaukee County Institution Grounds as overseen by Superintendent Ferdinand Bark, the reaction of the surrounding community to that disturbance, and the ensuing investigation. The paper also explores the relationship of this historical event to the evidence from the 1990s and 2013 archaeological excavations conducted at the location of the cemetery. The event will be viewed within the historical context in which it happened...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon K. Freire. Alexis M. Jordan.

Following the 1991-1992 excavation of the Milwaukee County Institutional Grounds Cemetery (1878-1925), up to 190 individuals were preliminarily identified using historical documentation, material culture, and geospatial analysis. Subsequent bioarchaeological analyses have provided an additional line of evidence for the identification of these individuals. The cemetery population of Western European immigrants and local/nonlocal native born Americans is composed of paupers, the institutionalized,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Skinner.

The analysis of the features that mark tendon and muscle insertion sites on bone has been used in an attempt to reconstruct past life activity patterns of individuals and populations represented by skeletal remains. Many of these analyses have focused on comparing evidence from these individuals with known musculoskeletal and biomechanical data. Recent experimental tests have illustrated that defining these correlations is more complex than expected (Mariotti et al., 2007). Modern clinical data...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Strange.

2013 excavations at the Milwaukee County Institutional Grounds (MCIG) cemetery resulted in the recovery of approximately 685 burials containing over 700 individuals, adding to the existing collection of 1649 individuals excavated in 1991 and 1992. The individuals from the 2013 excavations were inventoried and examined macroscopically for evidence of pathology and trauma. Sean P. Dougherty (2011) observed that the pattern of traumatic fractures among the 1991 and 1992 collection reflect not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brianne Charles. Emily Epstein.

Outstanding preservation of the juvenile dentition of individualsrecovered during the 2013 Milwaukee County Institution Grounds (MCIG) Poor Farm Cemetery project allowed for the application of four separate dental age assessments. We present the results of a pilot study that attempts to broaden the utility of the Moorrees et al. (1963a, b) tooth formation stages through their application to maxillary dentition and mandibular incisors from a sample of sub-adults from the MCIG cemetery. Tooth...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Richards.

The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery Project was initiated in 2008 and is a collaborative effort of the UW-Milwaukee Archaeological Research Laboratory, UW-Milwaukee Anthropology Department graduate students, UW-Milwaukee Undergraduate Research Opportunity Students, and the staff of Historic Resource Management Services (now UWM-CRM). In 2008 UWM Archaeological Research Laboratory applied for and was granted by the Wisconsin Historical Society final disposition of all human remains, personal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrienne Frie. Patricia Richards.

The Milwaukee County Institutional Grounds Poor Farm Cemetery (MCIG) served as the burial ground for county institutions, including the coroner’s office and the Milwaukee County Hospital. This paper describes craniotomy practices in particular, and autopsy practices more generally, evidenced by the population from the MCIG Cemetery. In addition, this research attempts to distinguish between craniotomies and autopsies carried out by the coroner’s office versus the Milwaukee County Hospital to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Richards.

The Milwaukee County Institutional Grounds Cemetery in Wauwatosa, WI, operated under the administration of the Milwaukee County Institutions, which prepared official reports for submission to the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors. These primary documents survive in varying degrees of completeness at repositories across Milwaukee and include evidence of the mortuary activities of County institutions that may have buried individuals under institutional care at the MCIG cemetery. Submitted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Jones.

From the mid-1800s to its abandonment in 1974, the MCIG Poor Farm Cemetery in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin served as a burial place for institutional residents, unidentified or unclaimed individuals from the Coroner's Office, and the community poor and indigent. Previous excavations at the cemetery in 1991 and 1992 recovered 1649 individuals in predominantly single interments with an occasional extraneous body part representing incidental amputation or autopsy. The 2013 excavations at the site yielded...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Werner.

Whether or not the identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in skeletal remains is possible has been a debated topic for many years. In order to shed more light on the issue, a study has been carried out on the remains from the 1991 and 1992 excavations of the Milwaukee County Institution Grounds Cemetery, a collection of skeletons ranging from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, of various ages and sexes. To show the utility of the previously discussed methods of osteological identification of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Epstein. Brianne Charles. Brooke Drew.

A sample of perinatal individuals recovered from MCIG Cemetery (ca. 1890-1920) included broken teeth. We evaluate these teeth for the presence of the neonatal line to differentiate stillborn individuals from those that died as postnatal individuals. Our research is nondestructive. We compare the results of the dental analysis to the distribution of stillborns and live births documented in the MCIG burial record and City of Milwaukee vital records. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexis Jordan. Catherine Jones. Shannon Freire.

Excavations in 2013 at the Milwaukee County Institution Grounds cemetery recovered 650 burials from one of four locations used by Milwaukee County officials for burial of more than 7000 individuals from the mid-1800s through 1925. Of those recovered during the 2013 excavations, at least 25% have been identified as multiple interments. The diverse depositional contexts of several of these burials are indicative of a variety of mortuary behaviors atypical for a historic cemetery during this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Richards. Catherine Jones.

Excavation and analysis of human remains from the Milwaukee County Institution Grounds Poor Farm Cemetery (MCIG) provided an opportunity to test the effectiveness of portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) as both a field and laboratory tool. During the fieldwork portion of the project, excavations exposed soils that visual inspection suggested might harbor a concentration of toxic materials. PXRF was used on site to determine the nature of the potential toxins and determine the risk factor...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Burant.

The Milwaukee County Institution Grounds (MCIG) Cemetery is located in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. This historic cemetery was in use from 1878 to 1974 and interred Milwaukee County’s indigent. The individuals represented consist mostly of poor European immigrants, subsequent generations, institutionalized residents, and the unclaimed deceased. The material culture associated with the 2013 MCIG cemetery excavations recovered from 685 individual graves, was stabilized, inventoried and accessioned....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brooke Drew.

Since its discovery during the original 1990s excavations, the Register of Burials at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery has been the foundation for most historical and archaeological research involving the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery. Until recently the register was considered a complete listing of most, if not all, burials on the Milwaukee County Grounds between 1882 and the final burial in 1974. However, new excavations during the summer of 2013 as well as comprehensive...