On November 8, 2018, while I was Chester County (PA)’s Coroner, we held a memorial ceremony, perhaps the first ever, for fifty-two unclaimed persons whose cremains had resided in the coroner’s office for years. I’ve written before about the sad issue of bodies left unclaimed, but on that day in 2018 we celebrated the lives of the forgotten.
The back story of that ceremony involves veteran local reporter Michael P. Rellahan, who died unexpectedly on October 25, 2025. Mike covered Chester County crime, courts, and local politics for forty-three years. He wrote often about my office during the opioid epidemic, the COVID-19 pandemic, and multiple homicides and prison deaths.
Digging in the Archives
I first heard about Mike in early 2018 while doing research in the county archives on the fate of former unclaimed persons. Did we have a Potter’s Field, I wondered?
“There was a reporter here asking about that a while ago,” the archive’s director told me. I think he wrote about it.”
Sure enough, Mike had written a nostalgic but trenchant piece about Chester County’s Potter’s Field in a 2012 article for the Daily Local News. The headline he had crafted referred to the unclaimed as “forgotten souls,” a term that stuck with me.
‘Forgotten Souls’ laid to rest
Mike’s story catalyzed my own trek to Chester County’s Potter’s Field and inspired my efforts to honor the “forgotten souls” on that November day in 2018. Mike covered the ceremony, which he described in another article. Philadelphia Memorial Park donated the crypt that now holds the remains of seventy-eight of our former neighbors. The affixed plaque reads “Forgotten No More,” a nod to Mike’s words.
The Daily Local News kindly provided permission for me to reprint Mike’s article below.
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A visit to Chester County’s burial site for forgotten souls
By Michael P. Rellahan | mrellahan@dailylocal.com
PUBLISHED: March 3, 2012 at 6:40 PM EST | UPDATED: August 19, 2021 at 3:50 AM EDT
“Used to be, someone would deliver milk to the rear porch of the home in Cincinnati where I grew up, leaving the glass half-gallon bottles with their red plastic handles and peel-off caps in a gray metallic box, where we would later place the empties to let the delivery person know how much was needed in return. I don’t know why they stopped doing that, but I would guess it had something to do with money.
Used to be, when a poor person died with no one to claim his or her body the County of Chester would pony up the money needed to bury the unfortunate soul in a marked grave in a Potter’s Field at the bottom of a gentle slope of a hill not far from the banks of the Brandywine Creek. I don’t know why they stopped doing that, but I would guess it has something to do with money.
There is no good reason why I started thinking about the notion of a Potter’s Field and setting out to find one that survives here, but then some of our most worthwhile and unforgettable journeys start for no good reason and I’ve got a reporter’s nose for a story. On my way, I had help from the ever-resourceful Laurie Rofini, director of the county’s archives, who is pleasant enough not to do a spit-take when I call with one of my unforeseen, off-the-wall questions, who told me of the existence of the county’s burial ground. And I had good advice from Francis Supplee, head of the West Bradford Historical Commission, and Roger Nichols, manager of the Cheslen Preserve in Embreeville, on how to get where I was going.
The preserve is across Embreeville Road, and across the so-called ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’ from the site of the county’s former poorhouse, where indigents and orphans were cared for from the late 1700s and on up to the early 20th century. A postcard that is featured on a sign noting the history of the poorhouse makes the building appear as some great fancy hotel from the 1800s, but in case you get sentimental for the pleasures that life there might have afforded, you’ll also want to pay attention to its description as the county’s ‘Insane Hospital.’
The poorhouse used land on the site of what is now the former Embreeville State Hospital to bury the dead who had no place else to go. But workers there also carted the unclaimed bodies across the road and to a small square plot of ground that is beside the Wilmington Northern railroad tracks. It’s unclear whether the former burial ground still exists – Mr. Supplee said he hadn’t looked for it in ages, and he’s been around for more than a few years – but the latter is still kept clear and open on the preserve.
It’s not a far walk from the Cheslen parking lot across a broad meadow to the potter’s field, and was well worth it from my perspective. I saw that someone else had thoughts of concern about such a site, as there was a wooden park sign that identified the field, with the inscription, ‘Known but to God. Respected by us.’ A simply white wooden cross was planted in the ground beneath the sign, with some worn, but serviceable, artificial flowers.
The space is framed by four evergreens, and fenced with a rickety blue gate, but only about a third of the square plot is taken up by the graves. Rofini had warned me that numbers rather than names identify the stones, admitting that along the way the records of who was buried where and when had gone missing.
The stones are semi-polished granite, and have their numbers placed in the center of the 6-by-12-inch stone. The highest number is 204. There are six rows of stones, with numbered sequenced graves. Some rows have more than 40 stones, the last has only 20. The stones are identical, the only difference is the amount of cement they rest on protruding from the earth.
If you walk to the northeast corner of the field, you can hear a small creek ripple as it passes into a culvert underneath the rail bed. Crows flew around while I was there last week, and now and again a dog walker would appear and wave. You stop and think about who the people buried here were, and how they got there, and whether someone missed them. But all in all, there is not much to it, this Potter’s Field, and that’s what bothers me.
I like the idea that, in the past, someone thought it important enough to give those people who time and place forgot a place at the end of their days. I gather that today, in the very few instances when someone passes away in our county and no one claims their bodies, they are cremated and the ashes disposed of, well, to the wind, I suppose. Is it so much to ask, I wonder, that they be laid in a field where a sign bestows on them a sense of respect?
From what I can tell, there’s plenty of room still available at the bottom of that hill.
And after we are done with that, we can get to the milk delivery.”
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Other articles Mike wrote for the Daily Local can be found here.