More than 230 Black boys who died at a 19th-century reform school are buried in a wooded area in Cheltenham, Maryland, one of at least 40 burial sites for children connected to juvenile institutions that researchers have identified across the country. The Georgetown University Center for Youth Justice says its Forgotten Children Initiative has found the graves of more than 1,000 children in 29 states. The project is also trying to identify the children and locate surviving relatives. The largest burial site identified so far is beside the former House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children, which operated from 1870 to 1937 and is now the site of the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center. Maryland lawmakers created a commission this year to research and identify children buried there. The panel, housed in the state attorney general’s office, includes relatives of the children and will advise on the site’s future and how Maryland should make amends. For Veronica Spears, the research brought a family loss into view. She learned that her great-uncle, Arthur Hamilton, had been sent to the institution and died at age 12. The family was told he died of tuberculosis in 1917. Researchers have not established why he was incarcerated, and they have not found his remains. Spears visited the burial ground with relatives in September. Some graves have small headstones; others are marked only by rows of cinder blocks. Researchers believe Hamilton may be buried among the unmarked graves, though his family has no confirmation. The House of Reformation was established to remove Black children from adult prisons, according to Georgetown researchers. Children as young as 5 were confined there for criminal offenses and for circumstances such as poverty, homelessness or being orphaned. A Maryland Department of Juvenile Services report describes boys being made to work without food and disciplined by white guards with a brass-studded belt. In the 1920s, boys were leased to nearby farms, with the institution taking most or all of their wages. A broom factory at the school was called a “firetrap” by labor union investigators in 1926, according to the state report. Researchers are led by Marc Schindler, a Georgetown research professor who was a senior Maryland juvenile justice official when the state rediscovered the Cheltenham burial ground in 2024. The team has identified graves associated with institutions from Salem, Oregon, to Augusta, Maine; some sites are near facilities still operating as juvenile detention centers. Schindler said he hopes people in other states will help bring about an appropriate response to what he called a national tragedy. Some states have begun considering reparative measures. Florida lawmakers created a $20 million fund for survivors of a reform school that closed in 2011, while Arkansas officials established a memorial for 21 Black boys who died in a 1959 correctional facility fire. Maryland state Sen. Will Smith, who sponsored the bill creating the Cheltenham commission, said confronting the past also means examining present-day policies. He has pointed to state laws that send hundreds of children to adult court each year. A change that took effect this month removed some offenses, including firearm possession, from the list of charges that automatically send young people to be tried as adults. Smith said a visit to the Cheltenham graves by the legislature’s Black caucus helped build support for the change. At the burial ground, Spears said she felt a weight as she stood among the unmarked graves. Her cousin, pastor Chuck Copeland, said he wants the children buried there to know they have not been forgotten.