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Researching Former Nevada State Hospital
#3
Patients and Employees
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1. It can be difficult to research a family member who
was a patient at the Nevada State Hospital #3, but here is the information
that can help you do so. The Hospital, which was
sometimes referred to as the Lunatic Asylum, in Nevada, Vernon County,
Missouri, treated a wide
variety of illnesses and conditions over the years it was in operation: mental disease,
tuberculosis, syphilis, senility, epilepsy, etc., etc., etc.
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2. Constructed in the 1880s,
the Nevada State Hospital was enumerated in the
U.S. Federal Census as part of Washington Township, Vernon County, Missouri. It
was usually
listed as a separate unit, and the patients were referred to as
inmates. Many hospital employees lived in staff housing in the massive
hospital complex and were enumerated
before the patients.
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3. Nevada State
Hospital #3 was closed in 1991; and the large, picturesque main building was
torn down in 1999. Several of the other buildings remain.
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4. While
researching Nevada State Hospital patients and working on the new Vernon
County Cemetery
Directory, it was noted that when a patient at the State Hospital died,
one of
the following usually happened:
-
the family
requested the remains be shipped to them for burial;
-
the family
paid for burial in a local cemetery in Vernon County;
-
the
family did not claim the remains and burial was in the State Hospital Cemetery at
Nevada, MO; or
-
the remains were
not claimed by the family and/or requested donation to medical science.
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5. To confirm if
an ancestor was a patient and date of death at the Nevada State Hospital, you can
write to:
Southwest Mental Health
1301 Industrial Parkway
El
Dorado Springs, MO 64744
In your letter, explain 1) who you are researching; 2)
how you are related to that individual; 3) that you want to confirm that
he/she was a patient at the Nevada State Hospital #3 and when he/she died;
and 4) that the information is for family history research. Due to
privacy laws, confirming patient status and/or death is all that the
Southwest Mental Health Office can do. Once a date of death is
confirmed, a death certificate can be ordered if the death was 1910 or after
(see below). |
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6. The Missouri State Archives has placed a searchable
index on-line of Missouri deaths after 1910 that are now at least 50 years
old. The link is
http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/deathcertificates/
Death certificates were required in Missouri beginning in 1910, and a
certificate should list both the cause of death and disposition of remains.
Also see suggestions for Researching Vernon County
Deaths.
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7. Contact the
State
of Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services for information on
requesting a certified copy of a death certificate from 1910 to
present or of a death certificate that is less than 50 years old. As of January 2007, the fee for a death certificate
from DHSS was $13.
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8. The process for obtaining Nevada State Hospital #3 medical records of
an ancestor who was a patient is to submit a written letter request to:
The Vernon County Circuit Court
100 West Cherry Street
Nevada, MO 64772
A hearing on your request will be scheduled in Nevada, Missouri with the
appropriate County and State officials and you. The Vernon County
Associate Circuit Judge advises that it is not necessary to hire a lawyer
for this hearing.
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9. If you have an
ancestor who died at the State Hospital and would like to add that
information to the Genealogy Society's database of Vernon County deaths, please
email as much of the
following information which you have:
Full name including maiden name of women
Full date of birth
Full date of death
Name of parents including maiden name of mother
Name of spouse(s)
Location of burial, even if not in Vernon County
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10. The Nevada
State Hospital Cemetery will be included in the new cemetery directory
(scheduled for publication in 2008) as
well as information on many patients who died and were buried other than in
Vernon County. The information was taken from abstracted copies of the
hospital cemetery plat map, various funeral home records, death
certificates, and newspaper
notices. Unfortunately, when the hospital closed and records and files
were packed and moved, the State Hospital cemetery records were misplaced.
Click here for photos of the
cemetery entrance. |
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11. There are
numerous flat markers (no upright stones) in the State Hospital Cemetery. It is kept
mowed, and the gate is locked to keep out people who do not need to be
there. To visit the cemetery: between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4:30
p.m., Monday-Friday, go to the Nevada Habilitation Office located at 2323
North Ash Street, Nevada, MO, where you can view a plat map of the cemetery
and check out a gate key. There is no patient information at the
Habilitation Office beyond the plat map. As with most flat markers
over the years, many have sunk down a few inches and some probing may be
required to find them.
Click here for a Nevada map showing the cemetery. |
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12. Persons
working at the Nevada State Hospital #3 were State employees. As such,
their names, job titles, and salaries are listed in the Missouri Blue
Book for the year(s) they were employees. Copies of the current
and previous years' Missouri Blue Book are available at the Nevada
Public Library as well as numerous other libraries. |
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13. A great local
history and genealogy website with information about the
Nevada State
Hospital #3 is hosted by Lyndon Irwin.
Many photos of the former facility are shown.
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Another site
with information on the Nevada State Hospital is
Historic
Asylums.
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14.
The First One
Hundred Years of Mental Health Services 1885-1985
was published in July
1985 by the Nevada State Hospital administration and gives the history of
the Nevada hospital and treatment of mental health over the years. A
copy is in the Nevada Library Genealogy Room. Click on the title of
the book to see a copy of its Table of Contents and ordering information.
15. Please also see the listing of research resources in the Nevada Library Genealogy
Department
for items specific to the Nevada State Hospital #3. |
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16. Generally, if an obituary was published following the
death of a patient, it would have been in the patient's home-town newspaper,
wherever that was. The local Nevada, Missouri, newspaper sometimes had small
articles about the arrival of patients during the hospital's first several
years of operation. Below is one such article which was published in
the Nevada Daily Mail, Nevada, Missouri, on August 10, 1894. |
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NEW PATIENTS AT THE ASYLUM
Four Hundred and Twenty-Eight Patients
and the Population Growing Fast.
Miss Annie Abbey of Kansas City was
received at the Asylum yesterday as a private patient. She was taken there
in charge of Humane Officer Sherlock, who said he had performed his mission
at the request of the young woman’s mother. Miss Abbey is young, pretty,
stylish, and does not appear to an ordinary observer as being unbalanced in
mind.
Ex-Representative John Teel of
Lawrence county, who was received at the Asylum Wednesday, takes matters
very calmly. He likes his quarters and says he was a friend to locating the
institution here, being a member of the state legislature at that time. He
says he may be a little out of line mentally, but that his wife is more
crazy than he is, and that she ought to have been in the asylum long ago.
He is 53 years of age, and has been prominent in politics for a number of
years. He is a native of Illinois, and settled in Lawrence county in the
latter part of the sixties.
The Asylum received six patients
Wednesday and three Thursday. The institution now has 428 patients, and a
capacity for about 600. |
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17. Please check the newspaper indexes to see if there might have been articles about your
ancestors.
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