Crazy in Love

From the newspaper archives of Staunton, Virginia:

A.H. McGehee, a patient at Western State Hospital in 1910, fell in love with Alice Lillie, a beautiful female attendant, and she reciprocated. In December, McGehee and Lillie met in Staunton and obtained a marriage license from the city clerk.

"As the clerk does not know a lunatic from anybody else," noted the Staunton Daily Leader, "he issued the license. They hunted up Dr. O.F. Gregory, the obliging pastor of the Baptist Church, who is just as innocent when he sees a lunatic."

The pair were married, but their happiness short-lived. Officials at the hospital quickly found McGehee and hurried him back into custody, ending the romance, while Lillie was summarily discharged from her job. [Link]

How Bad Could Their Spelling Bee?

All the patients buried at North Dakota's state mental hospital since 1885 can be identified, despite some creative spelling on their stones.

"Many of the early markers were made at the hospital," [George] Barron said. Most of the names on the grave markers are misspelled, or "were shortened to fit on the stones," made either from concrete or granite, he said. Some of the older markers are 6 feet tall, he said.

"They're all marked but almost all except in recent times have goofy spellings," Barron said. "They didn't know how to spell - but they're close enough to figure out who they are." [Link]

Grandmother Not as Dead as He'd Thought

Ian Scott was able to confirm a family story concerning his father and a woman he met while visiting a hospital for the mentally ill.

As the story goes, according to my father, he met a woman that was supposedly “insane” in Belfast who called him “Hugh Scott.” This took my father by surprise; his father was Hugh Scott. My father apparently told the woman that he was John Scott, son of Hugh Scott - and this woman - Annie Moore (today I’ve discovered her official registered name was Anna Moore) then told my father that she was his grandson.

My father replied, “Oh no, that can’t be. My grandmother is dead.”

Annie Moore, according to my father then replied, “Oh, is that what they’ve told you?” [Link]

They'd Be Crazy Not to Attend

The first settler of Dallas, Texas, ended his days as an inmate at the State Lunatic Asylum, and was buried in an unmarked grave. On Saturday, John Neely Bryan's descendants will gather to dedicate a headstone somewhere near where he might be buried.

Family historian M.C. Toyer of Pilot Point will present a brief biography of John on Saturday. He has doubts about ever finding his grave – not after 129 years. "It's just not feasible," he said. "I don't think there's much there."

For him, it's enough that the general area of John's interment has been found and that he will have a headstone.

It's a modest stone marker noting John's service as a private in the Confederate Army. At the bottom, it simply says: "Founder of Dallas Texas." [Link]

Grandfather Rescued from Tin Can

From the (Klamath Falls, Ore.) Herald and News:

Discarded soul at peace

Published Tuesday August 30, 2005

By ANGELA TORRETTA

A small group of family members gathered Monday afternoon around a simple granite headstone at Linkville Cemetery.

The gleaming new headstone shone in sharp contrast to the tattered can that contained ashes which had spent close to a century gathering dust on a shelf at the state psychiatric hospital in Salem.

The ashes belonged to Oscar Caldwell, a one-time Klamath Falls resident who spent the last five years of his life at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem.

When Caldwell died in 1919, his ashes joined what eventually became more than 3,400 other unclaimed tins at the hospital.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]