Most cities have cemeteries with unmarked graves, where people who died and had no family or couldn’t afford a funeral. York is no exception.

A group of York College history students worked on a project called Penny Heaven to identify those buried in the unmarked graves and research their lives.

Katie O'Neal was one of 18 students who worked on the project and told us on The Spark Thursday,"I think it is very important to memorialize these people who didn't get a voice in death. So what we did was we got a list of people who we knew were buried there and we researched them, we researched stories, researched why they were buried in the field? And now just who are, they trying to give them their life story instead of just saying there's some random, nameless person in a field somewhere."

O'Neal said the student used newspaper and military records to learn more about the people buried in the graves.

She indicated there were many fascinating stories including the one about "The Figi Cannibal." O'Neal told us there was a made-up story about the man, who was part of P.T. Barnum's traveling carnival and died in York,"(Barnum claimed) It was a strange man they found in Fiji who would eat human flesh. That's the only thing he ate. And P.T. Barnum paid the media when he died to say that when they walked into to see his body, two of his, other performers, were eating his corpse. Obviously, that's not true at all. I believe he was from Connecticut or he's from the United States, is not from Fiji or anywhere. But they made this entire story up."

The students' work is now an exhibit at York College’s Center for Community Engagement.

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