Potter's Field
The entrance is on Belle Plaine Avenue, one block north of the Jewel Food store on Narragansett and Irving Park. Please don't jump any fences, the neighbors will most likely report you. Just drive to the official entrance and park on the street right outside the gate. By the way, see all those houses and condos surrounding this little cemetery? Guess what they are built on top of. Uh huh, you guessed it.
Cook County Cemetery at Dunning - 1854
An Institutional Cemetery was established on this site in 1854 on land that was a part of the 320 acre Cook County Poor Farm. It soon became the Potter's Field for the forgotten and poor of Chicago and Cook County.
Buried here are as many as 38,000 people including children, inmates of the poor house and insane asylum, 117 victims of the Chicago Fire of 1871, and Civil War Veterans.
Often referred to as the County Ground, Cook County Farm Cemetery, Cemetery at Jefferson, or Poor House Cemetery, it was renamed Chicago State Hospital Cemetery in 1912.
Official records list burials through 1922, although they probably occurred for a much longer period, possibly into the 1930s.
This marks the site of the main section of the historic burial ground. Another section of the cemetery is located west of the intersection of Irving Park Road and Oak Park Avenue.
As you walk through this three acre memorial park, you will come across markers dedicated to those who died at various periods in Cook County's history. Peace be upon them all.
