Historic Potter’s Field in northern Omaha became ‘dumping ground’ for city’s poor, homeless and ill

Their names are etched in Omaha history: Millard. Storz. Hanscom. Krug. Lauritzen. Offutt. They’re buried in one of two of the city’s most prestigious cemeteries – Prospect Hill or Forest Lawn.

To even spread someone’s ashes at Forest Lawn will cost you a pretty penny. If you’re so inclined, you can bury your favorite dead pet there for a fee.

Less than a mile from Forest Lawn, on the north side of Omaha, are almost 4,000 graves, most without markers, in Potter’s Field. Who all is buried there and exactly where they’re buried isn’t known. The most famous person known to be interred in the cemetery is Will Brown, a Black man who was abused and lynched in 1919 after a white woman lied about him raping her.

Potter’s Field was Omaha’s dumping ground for the poor, homeless and ill. Their names were known only to the people who arranged for their burial. No headstones or grave markers.

No one to come visit and lay flowers. It would be decades before their names were known to the public, listed on the Potter’s Field burial log. By then, their loved ones, if there were any, had moved on.

For seven decades, from 1887-1957, families that couldn’t afford to pay for burial services turned the bodies of their late loved ones over to Douglas County officials to be buried at Potter’s Field, which is near Mormon Bridge Road and Young Street.

Of those buried there, about 1,600 were children and infants. Only children older than 2 years were identified by name on the county’s burial log.

Causes of death weren’t noted until a few years after the cemetery opened. Detailed records, which addressed bodies being exhumed and reburied in other cemeteries, were added several years later.

For Adam Fletcher Sasse, the story behind Potter’s Field has long been of interest. Sasse writes the North Omaha History blog, which documents stories of the neighborhood’s past.

“I was a teenager, I was a young punk,” Sasse said. “I grew up at 27th and Ellison. I had a car, and I loved to drive, and my friends and I, more than once, staggered into this overgrown field that was covered with weeds. There was no fancy entrance way. It was completely overgrown. You would walk through the grass and kind of kick a headstone.”

At the time, Sasse had no idea about the place he and friends hung out in.

But he soon would understand its historical significance.

Attending Pearl United Methodist Church in North Omaha, Sasse found himself open to tales of the past.

“The old Methodists would tell stories about the neighborhood to me, because I’d listen, and they told me about Potter’s Field, and so they just made it a target for wanting to look into it more,” he said.

The term Potter’s Field originates from the Bible, referring to Akeldama (“field of blood”), a potter’s field purchased with coins given to Judas Iscariot for his outing of Jesus to the Romans. The coins were considered blood money, so priests decided to use the land for the burial of strangers, criminals and the poor. It became known as Potter’s Field over the years.

After Forest Lawn Memorial Park opened in 1886, the cemetery allocated five acres in its northwest corner to bury the indigent, downhill and “safely” away from the final resting place of the city’s socialites.

Why would a cemetery created to bury Omaha’s elite of the elite set aside a parcel of land for the city’s poorest citizens?

Perhaps Forest Lawn’s founders believed they could perform one last civic-minded act for those about to be buried at the top of the hill.

“I think that they may have said, ‘You know, we’ve got so much land. Let’s just carve it out now,’” said Douglas County historian Thomas Neal. “My perspective, and again, it was (more than) 100 years ago when this was being talked about, but when you go today, it’s pretty well tree-lined. It’s kind of like, ‘OK, we’re going to put it there, but we’re going to make sure that the element doesn’t creep south.’ I don’t know if that was purely intentional. I know the trees do look very, very old, but it almost felt as though there was a hint of that: close, but at arm’s length.”

The original name of the cemetery was Douglas County Pauper’s Burial. The gravesite information was handwritten in the burial log until Potter’s Field closed in 1957.

Among early deaths of note was that of a man who was found hanged from a tree in 1889. Another corpse was found at Shull’s Cemetery near 25th Street and Poppleton Avenue.

Graves were initially dug based on height, with people who were 6 feet tall in one row and shorter people in another. And so on. Children and infants were buried in a separate section. Only 10 graves have headstones, and they’re mostly for children.

John Strand was the first person known to have been buried at Potter’s Field, laid to rest on May 1, 1887. A century later, records were corrected after county officials learned his last name was actually Stroud.

Less than two months after Stroud’s burial, an unidentified 52-year-old woman was buried, the first female interred at Potter’s Field. She was later identified as Mrs. Edward Kristaball.

Early records didn’t include the person’s cause of death, and few noted how or where they died.

The best-known name buried at Potter’s Field is probably the victim of one of Omaha’s saddest stories. Will Brown was a Black man who was tortured, shot and hanged in front of the Douglas County Courthouse in 1919. Brown had been falsely accused of raping a white woman.

About 400 men were involved in a race riot, partially instigated by the editors of the old Omaha Bee newspaper. The Bee would later be purchased by the Omaha World-Herald and shuttered.

Brown was buried alongside others, with his notation in the burial log as simply “lynched.”

Almost a century later, he would receive a headstone with his name and the words “Lest we forget,” a gift from a California man who was emotionally moved after watching a biography of actor Henry Fonda, a longtime Omahan. Fonda had mentioned the impact Brown’s lynching and the riot had on his views of society.

While most people were buried at Potter’s Field without any formal graveside service, some socialites thought it right to take care of people, especially children.

In January 1914, Mrs. G.W. Ahlquist was moved to raise money – less than $10 – to move the body of a 5-year-old girl from her nondescript plot at Potter’s Field to a grave at Forest Lawn.

The mother told a reporter for The Florence Tribune:

“I’m happier now than I ever believed I could be again after the little dear went to heaven. I can go to her grave now, so we’ll be as grateful as we can.”

Ahlquist’s generosity was an exception to the rule. It was more common for Potter’s Field to be a dumping ground for medical mistakes or coverups, as well as a site for grave robbers looking to earn a quick buck, finding cadavers for researchers.

After maintaining Potter’s Field for its first 50 years, Forest Lawn sold the property to Douglas County in 1935. The county operated the center until 1957, when Douglas County commissioners agreed to pay local funeral directors to handle burials at area cemeteries.

Over the years, Potter’s Field fell into disrepair. Vegetation became overgrown, its few headstones either collapsed due to erosion or vandalism. It was soon forgotten in Omaha’s annals.

Former Douglas County Sheriff Richard “Dick” Collins, after learning the story of Potter’s Field, took the lead during the mid-1980s to clean it up and honor its residents’ memories.

Other civic organizations, including NOISE Omaha and Boy Scout troops, helped maintain the property.

Today, a meditation garden, with plaques listing names of some of the people buried there, is located near the entrance to Potter’s Field, which is now maintained by the City of Omaha’s Parks Department. A state historical marker is positioned outside the fenced-in cemetery.

While the names of its residents are documented at the Douglas County Historical Society, their memories are known to almost no one. Visit Potter’s Field and you’ll find flowers scattered among the grave markers and meditation garden.

Sasse maintains there is more to the story of Potter’s Field than what is known, and he would like to see more research done.

“These are people whose lives have been pruned from family trees,” Sasse said.