In 2013, the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery was disturbed for the third time, leaving 2,480 human remains to rest in the halls of UW Milwaukee until they could be identified.
The cemetery was active from the 1880s until it closed in the 1920s, when the land was immediately used to build a nurses residence.
In 2019, relatives of those buried at the cemetery began asking for their family’s remains to be reburied.
But that requires traversing Wisconsin’s burial laws, and appealing to the state’s Burial Sites Preservation Board to have those remains returned to their family, instead of remaining at UW Milwaukee.
Photo courtesy: Waldemar Brandt / UNSPLASH
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