Another Sideline Story

This is another story of how I made a discovery about a family member by researching on Findagrave as I was connecting the children of Seguine and Christina Cooper to their parents.  Let me first explain by giving some family tree information.  My grandfather was Nathaniel Cooper.  His father was James Michael Cooper. James' father was Seguine Cooper.  Seguine Cooper was originally from Texas.  He married Christina Goheen and they had 10 children.  All of the children are buried in the Panguitch Cemetery except for daughter, Dorinda Christina Cooper.  Dorinda was two years younger than my great grandfather, James Michael Cooper.   

I researched Ancestry.com and Family Search for information on when she died and where she was buried.  The only information I found was that she died in Pasadena, California with no death date.  Other information for her was that she married Benjamin Willis in Ft. Herriman in 1884. 

I researched the census records for her.  In the year 1870 she resided in Panaca, NV, in 1880 she was living in Panguitch.  Since she got married in about 1884. I next looked for her married name, Dorinda Willis and found that  in 1900 she was in San Bernadino County, California.  The census records usually have various information on the person such as age, where born, where both parents were born, whether married or single, etc.  The members of the same household are also usually listed.  Each census, done every 10 years asks many of the same questions, but include other information than in previous years. 

On the 1900 Census the information for Dorinda's Willis in said she was 37, she was married, she was born in Nevada, and her parents were both born in Texas.  These responses were all correct for the Dorinda I was looking for.  I looked at the column with members in the same household and the whole page was included.  I thought, "Does she live in a boarding house, or what?"  So I looked for more clues to where she could have been living.  Near her name where it usually lists the occupation of the person, it said "patient." The top of the Census sheet for location was Southern California State Hospital.  She was a patient in this hospital.  My next step was do a search on the internet for Southern California State Hospital.  I discovered that it was an asylum and that its name was later changed to Patton State Hospital.  When it opened in 1893, it was named the "Southern California State Hospital for the Insane and Inebriates."  I also discovered that this hospital was the largest sterilizer of the mentally ill in California.

My response to this information was one of shock and sadness.  I thought it was really sad that her whole family was living in Panguitch, Utah and that she was alone in an asylum in California.  Why was she there?  Did her family know that she was there?  Where was her husband?  Did she die there?

I did some more research on the hospital and discovered that there are approximately 2,022 people buried in a weed field with a dirt road that runs through it. The cemetery was full by 1930. After that when people died and were unclaimed, their bodies were donated for research to what is now Loma Linda University.  I tried to find cemetery records of who was buried there, but was unable to. 

I went back to the Census report and discovered another fact that made me sad for Dorinda Willis.  She was a mother of one, but that child was not living.  I wondered if that had something to do the reason she was in the hospital.

I started looking for her husband, Benjamin Willis.  I was not able to find anything on him.   

Dorinda may have died in Southern California State Hospital since there is no trace of her after the 1900 Census.  I wrote a letter to the hospital asking for a death date, telling them I wasn't asking for any medical records, I just wanted to know when she died.  I included a copy of the Census showing she was a patient.  They wrote back saying they couldn't release any information without a death certificate.  Well if I had that, I wouldn't be writing to them.  Dead end.

So there was no happy ending for this story.  I think about what it must have been like to be a patient in a mental institution in the early 1900's.  The living conditions would have been bad, and the treatment of the patients terrible; just a sad situation.  I would like to find out what happened to her, and when and where she died.  I hope she wasn't an unclaimed person and sent to Loma Linda for research.  Hopefully sometime I will find out.

Here is a picture of Southern California State Hospital in the 1900's.