The Almshouse Cemetery is also known as County Home Cemetery, Potters Field.
Those buried here are evenly lined rows of small gravestones marked only by numbers. The Suffolk Country's Almshouse and the counties Children's Home-Orphanage, the homeless, abandoned children, young teen mothers, stricken by poverty, criminals, psychiatric and physically ill, elderly and disabled. Graves were dug by hand and you were laid to rest in a plain pine coffin. William Jones Weeks, the superintendent of the Almshouse, created the numbering system for the head stones to record the deaths occurring at both buildings.
The “inmates” as the residents were described were required to work at the associated farm. For eight hours, Monday through Saturday, those that were deemed physically able, would be assigned various duties on the farm to earn their stay. When these individuals succumbed to death, they were buried here beginning in 1872 to the final burial in 1953.
Before 1870, each town in Suffolk County managed a poor house for the residents of the town. In 1870, Suffolk County established a county-wide poor house in one institution located in Yaphank in central Brookhaven Town. The Poor House was the solution to a wide range of social ills.
The State of New York passed a Welfare Law, mandating that institutions formally referred to as “Almshouse” or "Poor House" were changed in 1929, hence the renaming of it to the Suffolk County Home.
The Almshouse records are located at the Historic Documents Library in the Office of the Suffolk County Clerk at the Suffolk County Center in Riverhead, NY. The collection includes admissions records (1871-1952), death and cemetery records (1871-1953), records of pauper Indians (1904-1921), and financial records (1888-1936) created by Suffolk County employees during the course of work at the Almshouse in Yaphank, NY. Many of the Almshouse records were created in response to an 1875 New York State requirement that specified the content of records that must be maintained by every poor house or almshouse in New York State. The collection includes a wealth of genealogical and sociological information about governmental and societal interactions with the disadvantaged members of the community in the late 19th century.
In 1937 a new, large brick "home" was built, and in 1939, residents were no longer required to work on the farm. That brick building is now occupied by the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department. The Children’s Home no longer stands across the street, however the farm still exists today, now known as The Suffolk County Farm, run by the Cornell Cooperative Extension.
Several local paranormal investigating groups have cited claims of activity here, such as apparitions, sounds of children, mysterious shadows, and detections of electronic voice phenomena. Many noted mysterious orbs of light between the stones and in the surrounding wooded pines as well as other sounds beyond the grave and overpowering feelings of “get out.”
Grave Marker 501.. (
visit link)