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 | September 10, 2009
By Karen Perdue
The family lore about my uncle said he was taken from a small village on the Yukon River in his childhood because he was acting funny. Actually, my aunt Minnie told me he was hit over the head with a frying pan and was never the same again. Where did he go, I always wondered?
As I have gotten older, I have begun to appreciate the value of history. After spending many enjoyable years involved with projects that celebrated the history of Statehood in Alaska, I volunteered to lead a project on gathering the oral histories and documents that pertained to Alaska’s developing mental health services.
The journey of discovery has been fascinating, but I wasn’t prepared for the deep and powerful impact the project would have on me. I didn’t anticipate we would learn about the people.
Our first discovery was a hand-written list of names of patients at Morningside from the 1920 U.S. Census and, shortly after that, a list of patients prepared for Delegate James Wickersham who, as far as I can see, was a tireless mental health advocate throughout his career.
Then the 1955 list. I began to recognize family names. One day at a meeting, while on break, I called a friend over to my laptop and pulled up the list, pointed my finger at a name and said “this guy has your last name—ever hear of him?” What was I thinking! The reaction of my colleague was immediate and profound. “That is my brother—and we have been looking for him for decades, said my friend tears streaming down his face. Later, recovered and thoughtful, my friend asked two questions- when did he die and where is he buried? He and his wife plan to make a trip to Portland to the cemetery where he might find his little brother’s grave. Read More »
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.
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
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
By Ellen | August 18, 2009
Karen and I spent Wednes
day through Friday of last week at the National Archives II in College Park, MD. After worrying that we wouldn’t find any patients records, we found more than I imagined possible. Too much, in fact. They have nearly all of the Morningside Hospital patient lists from 1904 through the early 1950s, plus contracts, investigation reports, personnel records, medical officer reports, and administrative correspondence between Morningside and the Department of the Interior. We worked each day for 10 to 11 hours, scanning and copying. In the end, we had nearly a gig of scanned documents and photos and a 4 inch stack of copies. I don’t think we made a dent in what’s there.
This presents us with an entirely new set of questions, the most important of which is how to handle this much information and make it readily available to families and other researchers. Over the next month, we’re going to seek advice on the organization of historical collections and database design. In the meantime, we’ll post more patient lists and articles on some of the more interesting information and photos we found in the files.
Stay tuned.
- Karen Perdue (l) and Ellen Ganley
By Ellen | August 3, 2009
Karen and I are headed to College Park, MD, next week to spend three days at the National Archives. Prior to statehood, the US Department of the Interior, Office of the Territories, contracted with Morningside Hospital for the care of Alaskans with mental illnesses. The federal records for these years are at the National Archives.
We are very excited about two record groups in particular:
Letters Received and Related Records concerning the Alaskan Insane, compiled 1900-1911: 
This series consists of letters received, copies of contracts, telegrams, vouchers, lists of patients, and other records. Some of the correspondence refers to policy, but most of it concerns the custody and care of mental patients, discharge of cured individuals, and related topics.
Record Group 126, Records of the Office of the Territories: This record group includes 26 boxes pertaining to the care of the insane in Alaska.
The records will undoubtedly provide more information about the operation of Morningside Hospital and its relationship with the federal government. Of course, our greatest hope is that the boxes at the National Archives contain patient lists. If the patient lists are not there, we’re out of ideas and pretty much at a deadend.
Please contact us if there are particular records that interest you. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed.
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 »
