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Long before Washington Square Park was a hangout spot for New Yorkers, it once served as a burial ground. Now, a headstone uncovered 14 years ago was unveiled to the public on Friday to bring attention to a piece of the park’s history.
The New York City Parks Department revealed the 224-year-old tombstone belonging to 28-year-old James Jackson to the public on Friday, displaying it in a window of Washington Square Park’s Park House along with a sign explaining it.
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“This exhibit gives New Yorkers an opportunity to learn and share the rich history of our greenspaces,” Anthony Perez, Manhattan borough commissioner for the parks department said in a press release. “Washington Square Park has served untold numbers of New Yorkers over the generations, and we are grateful that we are able to amplify the importance of remembering and respecting the history of the space.”
Up until 1825, Washington Square Park had a “potter’s field,” or a mass grave for the unknown, the very poor or those who died from an epidemic. About 22,000 people who died of yellow fever were buried here, according to The New York Times.
Amid park renovations in 2009, the tombstone of James Jackson, a 28-year-old Irish immigrant and watchman who died in 1799 from yellow fever, was uncovered.
Jackson was apparently born in County Kildare but lived at 19 East George (now Market) Street during his time in NYC.
How his headstone wound up at this park location is a mystery, according to the Parks Department. While more than 2,000 people died the same year as Jackson, only two unidentified bodies were discovered near his headstone. Plus, it was rare for a headstone to be placed in a potter’s field since it was a mass grave. Historians say it was likely moved there from another area.
“History often obscures the quiet actions that derive from friendship, kinship, and empathy. Whoever arranged and paid for James Jackson’s headstone was cognizant of the ways in which the phrase ’native of the county of Kildare Ireland’ would distinguish him from New Yorkers generally, and among his fellow Irishmen in particular,” said Marion R. Casey, a clinical professor of Irish studies at New York University. “He was a young man from a part of Ireland convulsed by rebellion in 1798 who died in a city ravaged by a deadly epidemic in 1799. Now, this 18th-century stone is a 21st-century palimpsest and Jackson can represent all the people for whom our remarkable city is home.”
You can see it now at the window of Washington Square Park’s park house near the Sullivan Street entrance.
