Faded history buried in Potter's Field at Westmoreland County Prison

The markers are uneven, jutting from the grass like crooked teeth.

Each represents a person, who was once loved, but now is identified only by a letter and number.

The identification corresponds with a small handwritten notation in a decades-old book stored in the annals of the Westmoreland Manor. It’s on those pages that the stories of those buried in a Hempfield pauper’s cemetery come to life.

“They have those record books up there, and we just trust that they’re right,” Coroner Ken Bacha said.

About 600 people are buried in what was once known as the Westmoreland County Home Cemetery, which is on a strip of land in Hempfield near Westmoreland County Prison. Many of those identified by the marble markers were interred there at public expense because their families could not afford the costs, relatives could not be located or the person was unidentified.

The last time someone was buried there was in the 1970s, Bacha said. Now, male inmates at the county jail maintain the cemetery, weaving a lawnmower between the markers and clearing the grounds in the spring.

The Tribune-Review pored over five large volumes containing yellowed pages of death records kept at the Westmoreland Manor. Hundreds of names of past patients at the home are listed along with myriad causes of death and where their bodies were taken for burial, usually a funeral home.

A woman comes every May to visit a loved one buried at what is now known as Potter’s Field, jail Warden John Walton said.

“We do have some people who come and actually view the (graves) there,” he said.

A premature baby boy found in a garbage dump June 25, 1930, along with numerous other stillborns or premature babies, are buried there. Causes of death range from gunshot wounds to cancer. Some could not be identified, and notices were put in the newspaper in an effort to find relatives.

A 60-year-old man who wasn’t identified had been hit by a train Sept. 27, 1930. He is known in the cemetery as 118B. A man, about 45, was the victim of an apparent hit and run Aug. 31, 1940. He is A485.

In many cases, remarks that the person’s family or friends couldn’t afford to pay burial costs are listed.

Relatives of an 80-year-old woman who died in 1934 of intestinal cancer were “unable to raise funds for burial,” the entry reads. Her gravesite is marked 255.

A woman had her 42-year-old husband’s body brought to Latrobe after his 1948 death from pulmonary tuberculosis.

“She could not raise funds for his burial,” the entry for A564 reads. “After discovery of no funds, body was brought to Westmoreland County Home Cemetery for burial.”

Walton keeps a handwritten list of names dating back to the 1800s and corresponding markers in the event someone calls looking for a gravesite.

In 2015, Bacha used the books to locate a young girl and baby bones for exhumation. New technology helped investigators identify the girl, who had been buried in grave A608 in September 1967. She did not have a marble marker, he said.

Renatta Signorini is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Renatta at 724-837-5374, rsignorini@tribweb.com or via Twitter @byrenatta.