Potter’s Field

Potter’s Field. This memorial was erected to recognize and preserve the final resting place of some 500 persons interred in a paulpers’ cemetery. Once part of the Warwick County poorhouse operation, since reduced to 4.5 acres. It was occupied between 1893 - 1935 by pesthouse barracks, and dining hall serving the community’s destitute and infirm. Until 1961, the unclaimed bodies of former inmates, pauper infants, victims of disease, criminals, and nameless indigents were buried here. Most were interred in simple pine coffins without the benefit of tombstones. Over the years, the site acquired the Biblical designation “Potter’s Field”, a reference to the lot purchased by the Pharises “To bury strangers in”. This monument was placed to insure that the graves of these departed souls remain forever consecrated. , Commissioned and Dedicated 29 April 1990 , by the Newport News City Council , Jessie M. Rattley , Mayor, Joe S. Frank, Vice Mayor . Flora D. Crittenden . Barry DuVal . William E. Fitzgerald . Margaret W. Keator . Donald N. Patten . Edgar E. Maroney, City Manager . Verbena M. Askew, City Attorney . Bernice I. Berry, City Clerk, Erected by the Newport News Historical Commission 1990.