Greenwood Cemetery Indigent Plot Narrative Project

This project was undertaken by Naomi Norquay (Senior Scholar, York University) in partnership with Grey Roots, and funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, to research the names of people buried in Owen Sound's Greenwood Cemetery’s Indigent Plot.

Active from the 1850s until the 1980s and known colloquially as the cemetery’s “Potter’s Field”, the plot is the final resting place of 1200+ Grey County residents. In support of Greenwood Cemetery's Potter's Field Monument the project combed through historical records - census reports, marriage, death and birth registries, land registries and newspaper death notices to reconstruct the lives behind the names of about 500 people who are buried in the plot.

The resulting narratives, arranged alphabetically, are available here as a downloadable PDF.

The direct url to return to this page is greyroots.com/potters

This research project was made possible by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, under their Partnership Engage Grant program.

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Greenwood Cemetery Indigent Plot, winter 2009
Watch April 20, 2021 talk to share the work of the Greenwood Cemetery Indigent Plot Narrative Project.
Presented by Associate Professor Naomi Norquay joined by Rachel Lobo, a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University.
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