According to an article posted in the October 14, 2016 edition of Post Bulletin, “Elisa Skjordal was a 27-year-old mother of two young girls when she died as a patient at the Rochester (Minnesota) )State Hospital.”
The white wooden cross was over her grave simply says 4344, the Post-Bulletin reported. “It was her hospital case number. But her name was not included. Mental illness was viewed as such a shameful stigma at the time that patients were buried anonymously, their secret carried even into death.
“For more than a century, Skjordal’s remains have rested, as time and encroaching vegetation all but obliterated the state hospital cemetery at Quarry Hill Park, as well as the memories of Skjordal and the more than 2,000 people who came to be buried there.”
That’s all changing…
