By Ellen | October 25, 2012
Earlier this month, Eric Cordingley sent an update on his continuing work locating Morningside patient burial sites.
by Eric Cordingley
The weather here has finally turned to “regular” fall weather and we have lots of rain. This means, of course, that the ground has finally softened up to uncover markers which I hope to do next weekend, weather allowing.
The virtual cemetery is nearing 400. Check it out!
Riverview Abbey Mausoleum and Crematorium
A recent trip to Riverview Abbey revealed more sad news about former patients whose remains were sent there for cremation (paid for by the family) and then left. At least 8 boxes of ashes were treated that way and later scattered in the woods behind the crematorium. Some patients’ cremains were sent to relatives in other states, but for the most part, the ashes were left on the shelf of the crematorium until they were scattered by the staff.
The situation regarding the unclaimed cremains of Charles Marjanen at the Oregon State Hospital is still pressing. It will be at least another two weeks before I can get to Salem to scan the death certificate. I will send it out to the team when that happens. Read More »
By Ellen | August 28, 2012
The Alaska Humanities Forum recently funded a historical research project similar to ours. It’s called Bringing Aleutian History Home: the Lost Ledgers of the Alaska Commercial Company. The project goal is to preserve newly discovered historical documents about the Aleutian Islands fur trade in the late 1800s. The following article is from the Alaska Humanities Forum blog.
AKHF Supports “Lost Ledgers” Project
The Alaska Humanities Forum is proud to support Bringing Aleutian History Home: the Lost Ledgers of the Alaska Commercial Company.
This new multimedia project by Anchorage-based journalist and historian J Pennelope Goforth preserves vital and fragile historical documents covering the Aleutian Islands fur trade in the late 1800s.
Goforth discovered them purely by chance in a Nordstrom shopping bag in a relative’s basement in Washington state.
Here’s the background:
Not long after the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, the Alaska Commercial Company, then a newly formed trading firm, launched extensive sea otter hunting operations in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands.
As the only government-sanctioned business in Alaska, the ACC became the de facto civil authority in the frontier territory. It carried the mail, maintained customs records and dispensed food and aid in hard times. ACC managers and agents also kept meticulous ledgers of business and correspondence. Historians prize these rare written chronicles of the early years of U.S.-controlled Alaska. (Click on images to enlarge.)
Unfortunately, most ACC records for the Aleutian Islands either burned in the company’s San Francisco headquarters after the great earthquake of 1906, or were lost during the World War II occupation of the islands.
In particular no records from ACC trading posts in now-abandoned villages like Tchernofski and Makushin were thought to have survived.
That was, until Goforth peered into the long-forgotten shopping bag while organizing materials in her family member’s basement. “I saw the tops of several black bound ledgers, onion skin [paper], and then smaller red marbled page markings,” she said. Read More »
By Ellen | January 25, 2012
During territorial days, US Federal Marshals in Alaska made regular trips South, first delivering prisoners to McNeil Island Prison in Washington, then taking patients to Morningside Hospital. Warren Gohl is part of a group attempting to locate the graves of Alaska Natives who died while serving sentences at McNeil Island. Please leave a comment if you have any information or ideas for Warren
From Warren Gohl
I act in collaboration with the 13th Heritage Foundation which represents the 12 Alaskan Native Corporations in the lower 48 States and Hawaii. The foundation has initiated a project: ”The Search”. This project has as its sole purpose the discovery of the grave sites of 22 Alaskan Natives sent to the Federal prison at McNeil Island, Pierce County, Washington between 1872 and 1951 (dates approximate), where they passed away while serving their Federal prison sentences. Their passing at McNeil Island prison has been confirmed through record reserarch at the National Archives, Sand Point, Seattle in 2011. However, their McNeil Island gravesite locations remain unknown in spite of considerable inquiry to agencies of the State of Washington who assumed control of the former Federal prison and co-located properties on McNeil Island following closure of the Federal prison in 1981. The 13th Heritage Foundation seeks the physical location of the Alaskan Native grave sites in question so as to begin closure to the Alaskan Native families who lost track of their loved ones upon their incarceration under Federal custody and subsequent demise. Any guidance, assistance, advice, etc. you may provide is of great importance, no matter how seemingly insignificant.
By Ellen | October 14, 2011
Most of the patient information on the blog is from the National Archives II, in College Station, MD. The Department of the Interior (DOI) contracted with Morningside Hospital for the care of Alaskans judged to be “insane”. Morningside submitted monthly reports to the DOI that were essentially invoices, which also included patient admission and discharge information, death and burial details, and diagnoses. Marylou Elton, our volunteer in Washington, DC, continues to dig into the records. We now have patient information for the years 1907 to 1915 and 1924 to 1951.
One name that appears over and over again is August Hofsted (Hofstad). He was born in 1884 in Vesteraalen, Norway to Peder Mortensen Hofstad and Hanna Pauline Albrigtsdtr. August emigrated from Bergen on November 1, 1901 when he was just 17 years old. It’s not clear how he got to Alaska, although it appears that he may have joined family members in Wrangell.
Less than 3 years after immigrating, August was at Morningside Hospital. He was committed from Juneau and admitted on August 10, 1907. He died there on March 3, 1949. I’m sure he was at Morningside longer than any other patient. The DOI records provide the following information:
His diagnosis in 1907 was “general epileptic, more or less demented: occasional outbreaks of frenzy. General health fair.” By 1924 he was described as, “Mentally enfeebled. Confused more or less. Stuporous condition. Vague.”
His condition continued to worsen. In 1933, his diagnosis was, “Dementia precox, catatonic form. Mute and inaccessible for many years. Tidy but idle. Attends to only elemental wants.” The records also indicate that there was no contact with family members.
Please contact me if you can provide more information about August’s life.
SALEM — The intent was to reunite families with the remains of their relatives, patients who died and were cremated at the Oregon State Hospital decades ago. But the list of names compiled by the state is so riddled with errors that it may be impossible for relatives to make a match.
