A poignant article in The New York Times recently focused on "Finding Names for Hart Island's Forgotten."

Hart's Island, in Long Island Sound, has some 800,000 graves dating from 1869. There are no markers with names, but registers do exist. And thanks to one woman, families may once again be able to learn about relatives buried there over the years.

New York sculptor Melinda Hunt has devoted more than 10 years to assisting people to track down Hart Island's dead. Although the handwritten ledgers listing the names were generally inaccessible, Hunt obtained 50,000 records for every person buried there since 1985 through the Freedom of Information Act. She is hoping to use the thousands of pages to create an online database searchable by name or date of death.

Their bodies were put into tiny pine coffins and buried together in a large grave on a lonely, grassy place called Hart Island, part of the Bronx in Long Island Sound. According to the burial ledger, the babies Walburton, Mieses and Suazo, and dozens more infants, are in babies' trench "No. 51."

Hart Island is home to New York City's potter's field, the place where hundreds of thousands of the city's anonymous, indigent and forgotten have been laid to rest, tightly packed in pine coffins in common graves. Hart Island is managed and maintained by the city's Department of Correction, and inmates dig and fill the graves - three bodies deep for adults, five deep for babies - and mark each trench with a numbered concrete block. The island is off limits to the public, though family members who can prove their relatives are buried there are able to arrange visits.

Since she began exploring the island in 1991, hundreds of people have contacted her looking for information on missing relatives or children who died at birth.

Hart Island has been home, over the years, to a lunatic asylum, a tuberculosis hospital, a boys' reformatory and a prison. According to the newspaper story, some 1,500 are buried there annually; half are babies or young children.

Hart and photographer Joel Sternfeld organized a year-long exhibit in 1997, published a book of photographs in 1998 and produced a documentary. Hunt became known as the resource for information.

It is hard to obtain access to the island, and Hunt believes the public should be allowed annual visits. However, the Department of Correction believes there is a security issue as inmates work there. The burial records need to be preserved, she says, as thousands of ledger records were lost in a fire in the 1970s. She's looking for money to post the records online and to collect the stories.

Hunt believes that people have the right to know where their family members are buried in the city. She's trying to show an important hidden part of American culture that has been overlooked. "These are public records. They belong to the people of New York."

To read more of the story, click here.

To learn more about the Hart Island project, click here.

Human beings do make mistakes. Remember the old proverb: "To err is human, to forgive divine"? Genealogy's version should be: "To err is human, to correct genealogical."

Every family historian and genealogist knows that family trees may include errors.

Sometimes they are due to simple human mistakes (in writing down facts received orally, transcription or copying from other records or details wrongly recorded due to tragic events, such as deaths, which might skew relatives' memories) or bad handwriting. Sometimes errors may result from other relatives simply not knowing the truth (such as mistakes on gravestones) or realizing that the correction will be too expensive (again, gravestone errors). Occasionally, the reason can be chalked up to "let's make the story sound better," which may lead to additional embellishment as years go by.

Here are some Ancestry.com examples showing what might have happened - a 1904 Border Crossing record; 1910, 1920 and 1930 US Federal Censuses - for my TALALAY family, which became TOLLIN after immigration.

When my great-grandfather Aaron Peretz Talalay entered the US from Canada in November 1904, he was listed as Aaron Tallarlay. His wife, Riva, and children Leib (Louis), 2, and Chayeh Feige (Bertha), 9 months old, arrived in New York City in December 1905. He was born in 1873 and his age is correct, 31. Riva was born in 1875. As you will see, their ages seem to be wrong in all the census records below.I have not yet found Aaron's passenger manifest from the UK to Canada. It should be interesting.

In the 1910 Census, the family was listed (and indexed) as LOILON, although whether the initial letter was a T or an L is debatable. The record was found only by looking at record after record to find a likely couple. I believe my great-grandparents would have said TOLLIN, the enumerator heard TOYLIN and spelled it TOILON. My great-grandmother Riva (or Rebecca) is listed as Eva. It shows Aaron arrived in 1905 (it was 1904) and the family arrived in 1906 (it was 1905).Their ages are listed as 35 and 37, but the correct ages are 37 (Aaron) and 35 (Riva).

In 1915, when the family became naturalized citizens, the record was in the name of TOLINI. It took years to find the papers!

In the 1920 Census, the family is now listed (and indexed) as TOLINO - making them seem Italian - and my great-grandmother is now Rebecca. In addition to Louis and Bertha, there are another three sons. Bertha is listed as 14 (she was 16). The parents ages are listed as 45 and 40 but they actually were 47 and 45.

In the 1930 Census, this family is finally TOLLIN, as were all the other relatives in Newark, New Jersey and Springfield, Massachusetts. Bertha is not listed as she was married and living in New York, while Louis had finished medical school and was in Baltimore, Maryland. The parents were listed as 55 and 53, but they were really 57 and 55.

Read on for some hints to avoid repeating and compounding errors in your research.