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 had done research on the Wickersham Paper, US Census reports and Morningside Admittance lists to unearth as many Alaska Native people (or known family names) as possible.
OR Archives, Salem
We have now searched all 121 names on the Wickersham list (pre 1916) as well as around 50 more Alaska Native people reported from 1920 to 1957. It is not complete but an important start. Not all of them had a death certificate, but most did. The certificates are telling, from full names, to cause of death, burial location and family members if known. Those lines were almost always empty…. It was very sad to see how many were listed with epilepsy as cause of death.
Robin
Peggy and Sally
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 certificates and burial sites. Prior to their visit, we’d found a few death certificates and had not located any graves. Robin and Sally found both! Here are a few of the headstones they found at Multnomah Park Cemetery.
Charles Brown (Juneau) Died 1914
Edward Dowdall (Sitka) Died 1914
Sam Steinko (Ft. Gibbon) Died 1914
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 hours at the Nome Courthouse:
“I was in Nome doing some work the first three days of this week and had a couple of hours at the end. I found the federal Probate Docket book from the Cape Nome Precinct at the Nome courthouse. I had earlier been told that Nome did not have them. There are 5 volumes running from 1918 to statehood. There may be an earlier volume, but I could not find it (what I saw starts with volume “2.”)
Central Washington University, James E. Brooks Library, Digital Archives
Read More »
Also posted in 1930-1949 |
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, were not dated but appear to be from the 1920s.
The caption on the photo above is an account of the Christmas Festivities at Morningside from a Portland newspaper. “Morningside Hospital provided three Christmas trees for the inmates. Natives helped to provide the entertainment which was held in the Assembly room of the new Parole House. Gifts were provided for all the patients in the institution by Dr. Coe, the Chief Officer. After the exercises in the main hall the women retired to their own buildings where trees awaited them, while the men had their remembrances in the assembly room.”
The founder of Morningside Hospital, Dr. Henry Waldo Coe, is standing to the right of the Christmas tree.
The photo above appears to be from the early to mid-1920s. Children were first admitted to Morningside at the end of 1922 or early 1923. Read More »
By Ellen | October 5, 2009
Record Group 126, Records of the Office of the Territories, National Archives II, College Park, MD
Occasionally there are glimpses of who was at Morningside. Included in the Department of the Interior files from the National Archives was a tabulation of admissions between 1912 and 1942. There was a total of 1,601 admissions over the 30 years, an average of 53 admissions per year. The percentage of admissions who were female increased from 10.1% during the first 5 years (1912-1917) to 26.4% for the years 1938 to 1942. The report noted:
“Out of the 81 females now in the hospital, there are 13 who have been in the hospital more than 15 years. There are 20 of them who are epileptics or mentally deficient and there are 20 who are over the age of sixty at the time. The epileptics, mentally deficient and older women, that is 40 out of the 81 require more or less special attention and many are infirmary cases.”
By Ellen | September 4, 2009
Here are more pictures of children at Morningside Hospital in 1923. Children were sent to Morningside because they had mental and physical disabilities, many of which we would call developmental disabilities today. This is the diagnosis for a child from Anchorage:
“Adrnitted November 7,1925. Anchorage. A native child of four years. Speaks no English. Physical examination affords no information aside from partial deafness. Physical condition good,”
The caption on the first photo below is, ” Orphans of the Far North – Alaska defectives happily housed in the mild climate at Morningside.”
Record Group 126, Records of the Office of the Territories, National Archives II, College Park, MD
Record Group 126, Records of the Office of the Territories, National Archives II, College Park, MD
Record Group 126, Records of the Office of the Territories, National Archives II, College Park, MD
By Ellen | September 2, 2009
It was never clear to me when Morningside Hospital started admitting children. The patient lists during the early years seemed to be populated by miners, gamblers and other who came North to seek their fortunes. By the time Alaska assumed responsibility for providing mental health services to its citizens in 1956, a significant percentage of patients at Morningside were children with developmental disabilities. Some admitted soon after birth.
Record Group 126, Records of the Office of the Territories, National Archives II, College Park, MD
The National Archives II provided the following information from the Department of the Interior files:
On November 9, 1922, Scott C. Bone, the Governor of Alaska, sent a telegram to the Secretary of the Interior asking, “Can mentally defective children of Alaska be committed to Morningside under existing contract stop Institution is now equipped to handle such cases.”
The next day, Assistant Secretary of the Interior F. M. Goodwin responded, “Replying your telegram November ninth. Unless mentally defective children of Alaska are legally adjudged to be insane they cannot be cared for at Morningside Hospital under the contract with Sanitarium Company.”
The decision to commit children to Morningside in the same way adults were handled apparently came swiftly. Children were taken before a jury of six men and adjudicated “insane”. The photo above is from 1923.
Also posted in Patient Photos |
From “The East Portland Historical Overview and Historic Preservation Study” published by the City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (March 2009)
“For nearly sixty years, Morningside Hospital sat on a 47-acre parcel in Hazlewood, at the junction of SE Stark Street and 96th Avenue. Formerly agricultural land, the site was developed as a psychiatric hospital complex and working farm in 1910. After WWII, many of the farmers in the surrounding area retired and their land was developed into suburban communities. The rising population increased consumer demand and the under-construction interstate freeway promised easy access; in 1970 the site was redeveloped as Mall 205.
The hospital, founded in 1899 by Dr. Henry Waldo Coe, was originally run out of his family’s home. In 1905, Coe purchased the Massachusetts Building from the Lewis and Clark Exposition and moved it from the exposition site in NW Portland to Mt. Tabor, where it was converted into a psychiatric hospital. Five years later, Dr. Coe moved Read More »
The 1920 US Census data has been posted and added to the Wall of Names. The Census data is interesting in that it contains information that our other lists do not, including birthplace, marital status, literacy, race, and mother tongue, all of which will be helpful to researchers tracking down family history. This was a hand-written document that had to be transcribed into a spreadsheet, we’ve done our best to ensure the data was copied accurately, but there may be typos.
You can view these lists here: 1920 US Census
When we posted the 1955 Department of the Interior Report, we pointed out some names that appeared on both that list and the Wickersham Papers. With the addition of the 1920 US Census list there are even more names that appear on multiple lists, helping to fill out the profile of some Morningside patients. Read More »
Over the years, there were numerous occasions when concerns were raised about the quality of care provided by Morningside Hospital. The earliest we’ve found was in 1915. The Sunday, March 28, 1915 issue of the Atlanta Constitution included the following story:
Syndicate Enriched from Insane Asylum
Juneau, Alaska. March 27 – A report criticising the Morningside sanitarium at Portland Ore., where Alaska insane are cared for under contract with the government, was returned yesterday by the judicial committee of the territorial legislature. The report demanded “that conditions there, by which the syndicate is enriched $30,000 annually, be improved.” Read More »
