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Jane's Illness: Home Care, Her Doctor & Her Caretakers

Vasily Polenov, The Patient, public domain   Over the past few weeks, we've discovered that Jane Darragh, my great-great grandmother who died of acute mania, may have had multiple episodes of the disease. Her children's births were separated by several years in some cases—unusual for the time—suggesting that she experienced infertility, miscarriages, or stillbirths during her childbearing years. And we learned that Jane likely supported her husband Charles' blacksmith career by caring for their home and four children. This week, we'll look at whether Jane was institutionalized for her mania, what her treatment might have been, and who her physician was.   It does not appear that Jane was ever institutionalized for her illness, at least for the episode prior to her death .  Medical practice of the day suggested there were two options for treating acute mania; the first was to treat the person in the home if they were amenable, for example, willing to eat food offered or...
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Out of Place

I am participating in 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, a writing challenge encouraging genealogy researchers to write about their ancestors. The challenge is hosted by genealogist, blogger and podcaster Amy Johnson Crow.

 Here's my post for Amy's Week Sixteen prompt: Out of Place

By Nancy Gilbride Casey

People can turn up in the most unlikely of places when you're working through your family tree. The best example I have in my own research was trying to find the whereabouts of my great, great grandmother Catharine Ryan Gilbride in 1880.

When searching the United States Census in 1880, I would have expected her to be with her husband Michael Gilbride, who she married in 1875 in Providence, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania and their son, my great grandfather John Joseph Gilbride, who was born in 1876. But she wasn't.

Instead, what I found was this:



Michael was listed as living with his parents James and Bridget Gilbride, with assorted siblings and son John, then 4, and a niece Bridget Mulherin. Not only was Catherine not living with them, but Michael was listed as "single." What happened? Where was Catherine? This was a mystery which took several months to investigate.

While reading a genealogy manual, I learned about a document I had not heard of before: the Defective, Dependent and Delinquent Schedule of the 1880 Unites States Census. This special "schedule" of the census enumerated all those people not living in the general population at the time, such as in prisons, hospitals, etc.

Given that this was the same time that I lose track of Catherine, I thought I would look this census up on Ancestry.com and see what it was all about. And on a whim, I entered Catherine's name and look what I found:



There was "Gilbride, Catherine." She was definitely out of place - in a place so unexpected that I did a double take when reading it. Danville Insane Asylum? I could not have imagined that when she was not with her family that she was in an institution; I would more likely have thought she died.

The truth, I came to discover, was so much more complex and tragic than I could have imagined. You can read more about what happened in my post "What Would You Tell Me Catherine?" Or, to read more about the 1880 Defective, Dependent and Delinquent schedule, click here to read Amy Johnson Crow's blog post.

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 Until next time...


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