New York paupers' cemetery opens to mourners for first time
Source: Yahoo! News / Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) - It takes a mere 10 minutes by boat to navigate to New York City's Hart Island, one of the United States' largest paupers' cemetery.
But it took Rosalee Grable more than a year to reach the gravesite where her mother was buried on the uninhabited strip of land off the city's Bronx borough.
Grable, 64, was one of a few dozen mourners who for the first time walked across the barren island on Sunday. The trip marked the end of the long isolation of the site, where about 1 million people are buried.
"I'm so grateful to be able to go there and stand at her grave," she said, holding a bouquet of flowers she planned to leave on the island.
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/york-paupers-cemetery-opens-mourners-first-time-184745440.html
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You are right, of course that poverty is often an underlying factor, but not always. I helped relocate an abandoned paupers cemetery in Secaucus, NJ in 2003 as part of a transportation project for a new rail access to Manhattan, which Chris Christie later cancelled in order to divert funds to his cronies in Atlantic City.
Most of the 4,000 plus burials we recovered were from residents of a nearby sanitarium. People get declared unfit, or fall ill, and are placed in institutions by their families, and often abandoned over the decades, as Uncle Fred is forgotten by younger generations. In fact, of all the bodies we exhumed, only a very small handful (<10) were identified and claimed by relatives. 
This is a short, but pretty accurate news piece on it: http://www.nj.com/inside-jersey/index.ssf/2014/10/the_mystery_of_secaucus_snake_hill.html
