Welcome to The Hart Island Project

A nonprofit charitable organization assisting families across the globe to relocate a diverse, international community of people who disappeared in the greater New York area. Please register to search the database and access the burial records.

The City Cemetery occupies 101 acres in the Long Island Sound on the eastern edge of New York City. It is the largest tax funded cemetery in the world. Prison labor is used to perform the daily mass burials that number over 850,000. Citizens must contact the prison system to visit Hart Island. There is no map of the burials and no one is permitted to visit a specific grave. The Department of Correction restricts visitation to those who can document the burial of a family member buried on Hart Island. Records at this location consist of intact mass graves since 1980. Many older records were destroyed in a fire on Hart Island in 1977. Some surviving records are available on microfilm at the Municipal Archives.

The mission of the Hart Island Project is to make the largest cemetery in the United States visible and accessible so that no one is omitted from history. On October 28, 2011, The Hart Island Project testified before the New York City Council Committee on Oversight: Examining the Operation of Potter's Field by the N.Y.C. Department of Correction on Hart Island.