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
Also posted in 1900-1929, Photos |
By Ellen | September 1, 2009
Our research at the National Archives II resulted in new information on patient burials, though we still can’t pinpoint where individual patients are buried. Here’s what we found:
- Morningside Hospital contracted with funeral homes, which prepared the bodies for burial and arranged for burial in a number of Portland cemeteries. Holman and Lutz Funeral Home is the one mentioned most often in the records for the 1940s and 1950s.
- So far, we’ve found at least four cemeteries mentioned in the records: Greenwood Hills Cemetery, Multnomah Park Pioneer Cemetery, River View Cemetery, and Rose City Cemetery.
- In the 1950s, the federal government paid $75 for Morningside Hospital patient burials. There was a good deal of correspondence between Morningside and the Department of the Interior about how inadequate this fee was, comparing it to burial fees provided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and similar institutions. The federal government refused to cover the cost of grave markers which is one of the reasons it is so difficult to locate individual graves.
Greenwood Hills Cemetery, Portland, OR
We’ve gotten a number of emails from people who have found a relative on one of our patient lists. All of them wanted to know where their relative was buried. Unfortunately, we don’t have much information on patient burials, though we’re working on it.
For now, here’s what we know:
Cemeteries: Over the years, Morningside Hospital patients were buried in multiple cemeteries. During the 1940’s and 1950’s, Multnomah Park Pioneer Cemetery and Greenwood Hills Cemetery were the sites of patient burials. We located a few patient graves at Greenwood Hills, but most are unmarked or grown-over. Multnomah Park Pioneer Cemetery is still in operation but Read More »
Also posted in Patient List |
