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| Restoration honors society’s forgotten |
| By buffalonews.com |
| Published: 10/26/2009 |
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In a tree-surrounded grassy hollow a half-mile from Collins Correctional Facility, volunteers have spent two years tapping the earth with plastic poles in search of square concrete slabs that sank out of sight long ago. When one is located, it is gently levered to the surface with a crowbar, cleaned with a bristle brush, soap and water, and reinstalled on a firmed-up bed edged with gravel. So goes the painstaking work of restoring the anonymous graves of 1,200 patients from Gowanda Psychiatric Center. They were buried in Wheater Road Cemetery between 1898, when the hospital opened, and 1994, when it closed. The site reopened as the Collins and Gowanda correctional facilities in 1995. The only markings on the flat gravestones are a number or a wreath, signifying that the deceased was Protestant, or a cross, denoting Catholic. Records containing the names of those buried in the cemetery were lost after the hospital shut down. Read More. |
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