4:09am October 21, 2013

“Taped to her computer is a photo of Mary Grabarkewitz Kovar, who died at the Rochester State Hospital in 1896 — not long after her ex-husband had her declared insane and committed so he could take 180 acres of farmland she had inherited. The first time O’Falvey saw the photo, and heard the story, she cried. In her files is a letter from Kovar’s great-granddaughter, who calls her “the angel who found Mary’s grave.” Great-grandma Kovar is now buried under her own name.”

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In graveyards of state hospitals, names replace numbers

More on Remembering with Dignity, a coalition of disability rights groups that’s adding names to unmarked institutional graves in Minnesota, in addition to gathering life stories of people who lived in institutions and much more.

(via disabilityhistory)

This makes me cry every time I hear of it.

I wonder if my relative who ended up in a place like that is in such a burial, or if they got her out in the end. (Nobody’s told me the full story. Only that she slept with a hatchet under her pillow because she was sure the sheriff would come and get her. And then the sheriff came and got her and part of the reason was her “delusional behavior” with the hatchet, except… he did come and get her after all, so how is that a delusion? And I think he took her off to some state institution or another – I think? an institution anyway – but I’ve never heard which or where, only that she died there. Relatives put the whole thing down to “senility”.)

Notes: