A new granite marker is inscribed with the name of one of the indigent wards of the state whose remains were uprooted by heavy rains in 2006. Tuesday’s ceremony was held at a state cemetery on the banks of the Pawtuxet River.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

CRANSTON How strange it would have all seemed: The dignitaries, the kind words, the flowers.

On Tuesday, state and local officials and clergy joined human-rights activists in trying to right a historical wrong by holding a proper burial ceremony for more than 70 indigent wards of the state who died in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

“Today … is extremely important and dare I say, long overdue,” Cranston Mayor Allan Fung said to the crowd of about 100 gathered at a historic state cemetery on the banks of the Pawtuxet River where Pontiac Avenue and Knight Street converge.

“This event has served as a painful reminder that those less fortunate have not always been treated [with dignity] in life and in death.”

Speakers at the afternoon ceremony organized by the state Department of Transportation underscored what little attention was paid to the residents of the old State Farm when their lives ended in its grim work house, insane asylum, prison or infirmary.

Referring to historical texts, Tuesday’s speakers said that most likely the deceased were unceremoniously placed in plain pine coffins and were lucky if a clergyman was on hand to murmur a Bible passage or two before gravediggers wielded their shovels to fill in the grave.

No names. No stone markers. Just a numbered wooden cross, if that.

Whatever crosses had been there rotted over time so there were no visible traces of the roughly 3,000 people who lay in the forgotten Potter’s Field off Pontiac Avenue in Cranston when Route 37 was built over the land in the 1960s.

The site was only discovered in 2006, when heavy rains sent skeletal remains tumbling down from the highway embankment.

The discovery and a subsequent archaeological dig to recover any other bodies in danger of being dislodged by erosion struck a chord with officials on both the state and local level.

A commitment was made to treat the forgotten souls with the dignity that eluded them in life. The DOT invested time and research in identifying the remains, searching for descendants and properly storing them until a more appropriate burial site could be found.

The remains were reinterred in the Knight Street cemetery on the Cranston-Warwick line last year and this past April granite markers inscribed with their names and some family information were put in place over the graves.

DOT Director Michael Lewis and Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian said that the forgotten were more than names and more than numbers. They were fathers, mothers, daughters, babies.

Time and time again, Tuesday’s speakers credited DOT archaeologist Michael Hebert for his dedication to the project. And before the ceremony, Pegee Malcolm, chairwoman of the Warwick Historical Cemetery Commission, laced a single white carnation looped with red ribbon on each grave.

Craig Stenning, director of the state Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals, said that the ceremony was about more than remembering several dozen people –– it was about society needing to learn to treat the less fortunate with respect. “Today, finally, we can speak on behalf of the thousands and thousands who died at the [State Farm],” Stenning said. “We are the echoes they left behind and the least we can do is provide the dignity and respect that we did not provide in their lives.”

Advocates for the state’s homeless were on hand as was state Mental Health Advocate H. Reed Cosper, who reminded the crowd that the reason they were assembled is because a highway was built over thousands of graves –– most of which remain lost beneath the road.

The ceremony ended with Joseph Benton, a case manager at Amos House in Providence, strumming his guitar as he sang the old blues tune, “See That My Grave is Kept Clean.” Cosper pointed to buckets of buttercups and other wild flowers gathered by his staff and invited guests to leave them on the graves or scatter them on the slow-moving waters of the Pawtuxet.

bpoliche@projo.com