By Ellen | September 15, 2010
The Oregonian Historical Archive is online! This is wonderful news. We found a limited number of articles on Morningside at the Oregon Historical Society, most of which had to do with the 1950s. The new online archive lists 345 articles on Morningside Hospital, many providing insights into the day-to-day activities there. You can get a one-day pass, which includes up to 50 downloaded articles, for $9.99. Monthly subscriptions are $19.50/month with which you can view up to 200 articles a month. Here’s where you can find the archive.
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 died. On March 1, 1937, Wayne Coe sent the following letter to Secretary of the Interior about Joe Falardeau, whose grave is included in the Virtual Cemetary:
Sir:
Permit us to inform you herewith that our patient, Joe Falardeau No. 1269 who was admitted into our hospital, June 14, 1929 from Cordova died February 26th, 1937. The cause of death was Cerebral Thrombosis. The body was turned over to Holman & Lutz of this city for burial in Multnomah Cemetery.
Respectfully yours,
Wayne W. Coe
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 who were at the hospital and information on patients who died during the quarter. Here are examples from March 1924 and March 1945. We now have a complete (or nearly complete) list of all those sent to Morningside Hospital from 1904 to 1945. Unfortunately, the quarterly reports from 1946 to the closure of the hospital in the 1960s are nowhere to be found.
The patient database is still our top priority. We expect the receive funding (through a partnership of the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority and Access Alaska) before the end of the summer
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 | 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 1900-1929 |
By Ellen | November 2, 2009
A while ago, Robin Renfroe sent us James Ebana’s story, which was posted in May on this blog. James had epilepsy and was sent to Morningside Hospital when he was 17 years old. He died there on March 21, 1942 when he was 27. She thought he was buried at the Multnomah Park Pioneer Cemetery, but had no way to confirm it or locate James’s grave.
Last weekend, she emailed with good news:
“I will be heading to Portland on Nov 20. I hope I have found James Ebana’s grave. I have talked to the cemetery staff and found their website that has a map and searchable database. So I have found the location of the grave. I have asked their staff to pull any records related to this and to call me. Will see what happens.
Here is the website for 14 Oregon Pioneer Cemeteries and where I found the location of James Ebana (Ebeno) at Multnomah Pioneer Cemetery. You may be able to search here for names. May also need to use alternative spellings.”
Good luck, Robin! And thanks for the valuable research tool.
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 | August 20, 2009
Over the years, the Department of the Interior conducted a number of investigations of Morningside Hospital. The photographs taken as part of these investigations are one of the few sources of images of patients that we’ve found. Here are a few from the 1935 investigation.
One of the Men's Wards
Women Patients Doing Needlepoint
One of the Women's Wards
The Morningside Hospital patient list found in the 1955 Department of the Interior (DotI) Report has been posted and incorporated into the Wall of Names.
You can view these lists here: 1955 Department of the Interior Report
The Wall of Names is sorted alphabetically by last name, and then by first name, rather than by source. The intended reason for this was to organize the names in a way that makes it easier for someone researching their family history or looking for a specific name to find the name they’re looking for. The other effect of sorting the names like this is that names that appears on more than one list group together. In adding the names from the Department of the Interior Report from March 1955, I stumbled upon a few patients who’s names appear in Judge Wickersham’s list from Morningside in 1916 and in the 1955 DotI Report. Read More »
Contributed by Robin Renfroe, Fairbanks, AK
“James Ebana was sent to Morningside Hospital when he was about 17 years of age. It appears he had epilepsy and that was the reason he was sent away, a decision probably by the missionaries at the Church Christ Mission. His death certificate indicates he passed away on March 21, 1942 at the age of 27 years. The death certificate shows his immediate cause of death is as “Tuberculosis of the Lungs” which he had for 5 months and “Psychosis due to Epileptic Deterioration” for 11 years. Holman and Lutz was the funeral home and he is buried at the Multnomah Cemetery which is now the Multnomah Park Pioneer Cemetery located at S. E. 82nd and Holgate Blvd in Portland, Oregon.
Kate was unsure where her brother was sent. She knew the name Morningside Hospital, but thought it was in Washington. Searches for Morningside Hospital were non-existent. In 2005 through Ancestry we located his death certificate.
The following is what little we know about James Ebana… Read More »
