The Friends of Multnomah Park Cemetery have set up a Virtual Cemetery listing the patients of Morningside Hospital (8 so far). The links from the name or the burial marker take you to additional information about the person. The director of Morningside sent a letter to the Secretary of the Interior each time a patient [...]
Former Juneau resident Marylou Elton deserves the volunteer of the year award. For the past six months, she’s spent her Wednesdays locating and scanning patient information at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. She’s focusing on the quarterly reports/invoices that Morningside sent the Department of the Interior. These documents include the names of patients [...]
Charles Kurtz recently contacted the blog and offered to share his experiences at Morningside Hospital during the 1950s and 1960s. He gave me permission to post his email messages and I hope to interview him later this year. We’d love to hear more about day-to-day life at Morningside from other former employees of the hospital. [...]
This is old news, but the Morningside Hospital Blog was rated among the 50 best hospital blogs by healthcare blog, “Nurseblogger.” This happened last September but I wasn’t aware of it until I stumbled on it while doing Morningside research. I think we’re probably the only blog about a hospital that no longer exists among [...]
By Ellen | March 31, 2010
Gold was discovered in Nome in 1898. The city was incorporated in 1901 and grew to an estimated 20,000 over the next 10 years, making it the most populous city in the Alaska Territory. Only a few of the thousands of miners who came to Nome to seek their fortunes succeeded. Today Nome has fewer [...]
By Ellen | February 19, 2010
Many of the recently discovered burial sites and death certificates were from the early years at Morningside Hospital. In May, I wrote an article about the Department of the Interior’s 1915 investigation into the care provided at the hospital. In March of 1915, the judicial committee of the Alaska Territorial Legislature issued a report criticizing [...]
By Ellen | February 16, 2010
by Sally Mead Over the past two weeks in Portland we’ve unearthed quite a bit more backdrop on the search for the burial locations of Morningisde patients. Working closely with Robin Renfroe and her sister Peggy, from Salem, we visited the State of Oregon Archives to search for death certificates for over 150 people. Robin [...]
By Ellen | February 13, 2010
A lot of good things happened over the past few weeks. I’ll post an article with more information later this weekend but wanted to get just a bit of the exciting news online now. Good friends and volunteers Robin Renfroe (Fairbanks) and Sally Mead (Anchorage) were in Portland this week looking for Morningside patient death [...]
By Ellen | January 5, 2010
We’ve dragged two new volunteers into our pursuit of the history of Morningside Hospital. Niesje Steinkruger and Meg Green, retired Superior Court Judges from the Alaska Fourth Judicial District, are taking the lead in researching the Federal and State court commitment records. Meg recently returned from a trip to Nome, where she spent a few [...]
By Ellen | December 15, 2009
Among the few pictures of Morningside are a two taken at Christmas celebrations in the 1920s. The US Department of the Interior records included correspondence from Wayne Coe about the 1922 Morningside Hospital Christmas party and an accounting of the party and patient gift expenses. These two photos, which are from the Oregon Historical Society, [...]