Archival Center in Boston

On the website I maintain to support my book, Vanished in Hiawatha, someone wrote to me and asked me to help them find information about an ancestor who had been a patient in a New England insane asylum. Of course I don’t do research of that sort, but I do like to answer anyone who has taken the trouble to write. Other people may have similar questions, and I know it can sometimes be like trying to grope through a maze to get at a speck of information you need.

The first thing I have to say is that unfortunately, information sometimes just isn’t there. Documents of all kinds are destroyed over time for legitimate reasons–sometimes just because there’s not enough room to keep storing them. This may not be a problem in the electronic age, but it has certainly been one prior to it.

If your particular record still exists, one of the starting points for you to look for it would be within the institution that originally housed it. By that, I mean that if you’re looking for records on a patient who was in an insane asylum, try to research the original institution to see if it has changed its name (or moved) over the years. If the place still exists and is now a hospital of some sort, for instance, its administrators may have stored these original records somewhere. In the worst case scenario, the administrators will probably still be able to tell you what happened to them.

If records are not readily available at the institution, the next most likely place to look would be in a local, and then state, archive. Again, either of these places may be able to tell you where the records are if they don’t have them. If they were destroyed, you’re probably out of luck so far as detail is concerned, but you can still go to a library (at the original location) to see what they have. A library probably wouldn’t have actual patient records, but many libraries have town/county/family histories which may mention your relative’s name.

Each place you look may lead to another, so don’t automatically give up just because a record isn’t readily accessible.