Since the founding of St. Louis more than 200 years ago, many areas have been known as potter’s fields—burial grounds for unknown or unclaimed bodies. One was located at what is now Benton Park, says local historian Esley Hamilton. In the mid- to late 19th century, unclaimed bodies were taken to Koch Hospital Cemetery, a.k.a. Quarantine Cemetery. Koch Hospital was the designated place to treat those inflicted with yellow fever and smallpox, along with the wounded and sick from the Civil War.
Perhaps the city’s last known potter’s field was located where the Hampton Gardens apartment complex and surrounding homes stand today, in the area bound by Hampton, Fyler, Scanlon and Sublette. It would have been the city’s newest potter’s field in the late 19th century, and the remains buried there are believed to have been moved to Mt. Lebanon Cemetery at Lindbergh and St. Charles Rock Road before Hampton Gardens was built in 1952.
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