The fenced plot at Algona

Iowa · United States · Execution site

Inside the burial ground there is a smaller one, fenced off at the back. Travelling families buried their dead there when they could not carry them.

Just north of Algona, Iowa there is a small cemetery, and inside it, fenced off towards the back, an even smaller one.

The account is that when Romani wagon trains passed through this country in the 1800s and somebody with them was dying, the family would bury them here rather than carry the body on with no consecrated ground of their own to reach.

The name the site goes by locally uses a word many Romani people regard as a slur, and it is not used here.

What the fenced plot records is real and it is not gentle. Romani travellers moving through the American midwest were refused burial in town cemeteries, refused service, and moved on by sheriffs, and a separate enclosure at the back of a graveyard is what that refusal looks like a century later.

The cemetery is a public burial ground and the plot is part of it.

FAQ

Where is The fenced plot at Algona located?

The fenced plot at Algona is in Iowa, United States.