Comments on: At a glance: Iowa’s four historic mental health institutions

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 02:43:00 +0000

In the State Hospital Cemetery in Independence, there is a headstone for Edward Young who died in Sept. 1874. This may be my 2nd great grandfather that came to America from England in 1859 and some family members say died in 1873/4 in Independence. Is there any way to get hospital records, death certificate, mortuary records, etc. that might help me fully identify this man?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 20:07:00 +0000

I have been looking for my great grandmother death notice…she had her 11 child in 1889 and seems to have just disappeared (Monticello, Iowa) My grandmother never spoke of her except to say she was very sick and my grandmother went to live with a “new” family, the baby sister wa adopted by two step siblings who married. Since little was known about postpartum depression, it would make sense to me that she might have ended up in a state hospital. Is there any way to follow up on this??

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 15:26:00 +0000

HI: I am a treatment worker at the Mt. Plesant Mental Health Institute. I have a copy of of the 1930 federal census record but no one by the name of Dora Lammers Schut was listed. I am just getting started on the task of trying to gain access to names of long forgotten patients. I am amazed at the huge number of families who are searching for their relatives who were patients in one of Iowa’s state hospitals. The Mt. Pleasant MHI cemetery has had no new graves for many years. There are only around a dozen grave stones that are still standing. The rest of it is simply a peaceful, grassy field. It is in the southeast corner of the St. Alphonsus Cemetery accessible via South Walnut Street in Mt. Pleasant. The MHI campus can be seen in the distance looking northeast from the cemetery. If I come across the name of Dora Lammers Schut I will contact you. Please feel free to e-mail me directly at JerryShafar@hotmail.com.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 04:29:00 +0000

HI:
I am a Resident Treatment Worker at the Mental Health Institute (state hospital) in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. I have a copy of the 1930 federal census record for the hospital, but there are no Catherine’s with any of the last names that you mentioned. I have recently began researching the hospital’s cemetery. It covers a fairly large area but only about a dozen gravestones are still present. It is located in the southeast corner of the St. Alphonsus Cemetery in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. However, you mentioned that she has ties to Camanche, Iowa which is actually in the catchment area for the Mental Health Institute in Independence, Iowa located in Buchannan County which is one of our sister institutions. It would be very possible that she was a patient there, and that she would have probably been laid to rest somewhere in that area. But I will let you know if I run across her name here in Mt. Pleasant. Feel free to contact me at jerryshafar@hotmail.com if I can help you further. Here is the link to the Independece MHI: http://www.dhs.state.ia.us/Consumers/Facilities/Independence.html
I wish you the very best in locating her.

By: LyndaWaddington

LyndaWaddington — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:08:00 +0000

Although this currently won’t do much good for those looking for headstones/graves in Iowa, there is a website that allows individuals to search for headstones. (It won’t do much good for those looking for headstones in Iowa, because none show up in the search — at least for now.)

Visit http://findaheadstone.com to visit the site. Photos are uploaded by volunteers — and perhaps it is something that will become of interest to more Iowans in the future.

I learned about the site during a visit this fall to Hannibal, MO. A local couple — Ken and Lisa Marks — have been instrumental in clearing and re-establishing a long forgotten cemetery. (Really interesting place, which has a rare headstone for an obviously much beloved slave woman and is at least rumored to be the place where Tom Sawyer buried the cat’s body.) In any event, I hope it is of some help.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 17:27:00 +0000

I don’t know how much this will help you. I used to live near the Clarinda Facility and it actually has it’s own cemetery near what would have been the hospital farm. The down side is some of the headstones only have numbers on them. I would assume that the other 3 facilitys have simaler Gaveyards and that redords would have to exist somewhere, but due to medical privacy laws it could be difficult to access them. I hope this is of some help to you. 40.755417,-95.041952 these are the coordanates of the Clarinda Graveyard so you can see it’s location to the actual hospital

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 22:08:00 +0000

Yes, I had to pay a small copy fee, but they were quite helpful. Seems like they told me they were archiving records and some were going to be inaccessible in the near future. Good luck
g

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 03:56:00 +0000

Did you have any luck finding your father’s records? I too wold like to locate my mother’s records. She was hospitalized at Mt Pleasant around 1955 – 1957.

By: sisterkatie

sisterkatie — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 03:10:27 +0000

I have tried to find the burial site of my grandmother, Catherine Farr, who was sent to a mental hospital in eastern Iowa in the late 20s and was left there to die when they refused to bring her home. I was told she died of a kidney infection and she would have been around 38 years old at the time. She was the wife of Donald Farr from Camanche, who was my mother's stepfather.

She was born in 1893 in DesMoines Iowa, the daughter of Charles Zugenbuehler and Flora G. Davis. She married Mahlon Elliott July 11, 1913 and remarried Donald Farr and they lived in Camanche Iowa in 1920 – and died in a mental hospital in or around 1931. I want to find her gravesite and don't know how to begin to find the hospital she was in when she died. There are no burial records in area cemeteries. Thnk you, I want to bring my grandmother home.

By: lizm7

lizm7 — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 19:52:24 +0000

I too am looking for records from Independence Hospital. I have a relative who was a patient there on and off for a number of years. Any info. on how to obtain information would be greatly appreciated.