The following excerpt is from an extensive article in the May 30, 2012 edition of the Morning Sentinel: AUGUSTA [Maine] — A disturbing memory has haunted Karen Evans since she was a patient at the Augusta Mental Health Institute in the early 1960s. Evans was 17 when she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and hospitalized for [...]
I understand the need for privacy – especially as deals with medical information. But it seems to me that some common sense should have been written into our privacy laws in this country. But I suppose that’s asking too much… And I still can’t understand why dead folks should have a right to privacy. We [...]
The following excerpt is from an article by Ed Pearce in the October 28, 2009 edition of kolotv.com. Hidden away in a remote section of southwest Sparks there’s a small park. Generations of have used this surprising green space without realizing what lay beneath. I n fact the park and a weed-filled, trash scattered lot [...]
It was called “the san” and it’s part of a haunting and nearly forgotten chapter in Pennsylvania history. The Cresson Sanitorium for tuberculosis patients was located 140 miles from Harrisburg, between Johnstown and Altoona. Thousands of people were sent there between 1913 and 1964. Some stayed for years. Some died there. In a reflection of [...]
An excellent article about the cemetery located at the former Toledo State Hospital is found in the April 19, 2009 edition of the Toledo Blade. Following is a teaser: This land, owned by the University of Toledo and site of its Medical Center (the former Medical College of Ohio), was once home to thousands who [...]
Sharon Tate Moody writes a great column this week on how to find information on our relatives that ended up in mental institutions. This type of research is often a challenge, for the state hospitals will seldom divulge patient information, no matter that they may have been dead for a century or more. Privacy laws, [...]
There’s been a battle going on for some time now over making the names of those buried in the Hastings Regional Center Cemetery (Adams County, Nebraska) available to the public. Nine hundred fifty-seven people are buried in the hospital cemetery. These burials occurred between 1888 to 1959, but records date only to 1909. Graves are [...]
Why am I blogging the close of a state hospital in a genealogy-related blog? Because thousands of our relatives were born, lived and died at this facility. The Mayview State Hospital started in the 1893, known as Marshalsea, aptly named for for the famous London debtors prison. The 80 buildings on 335 acres in Bridgeville, [...]
