A quack? in Davenport and a leading orphanage in Terre Haute

Two recent articles open up records and publications with a lot to say about the practice of medicine and the treatment of orphans in the late1800s and early 1900s in the Midwest.

Writer and editor Greta Nettleton was bequeathed four trunks full of long-stored family memorabilia, which among other things revealed the career of "Mrs. Dr. Rebecca J. Keck" (1838-1904) of Davenport, Iowa. "She may have been one of the most prominent self-made female entrepreneurs in the Midwest," writes Nettleton in the current issue of American Ancestors: New England, New York, and Beyond from the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Keck was the object of legal and personal attack by orthodox medical practitioners in both Illinois and Iowa (but bear in mind that mainstream 19th-century medicine was itself little better than witchcraft). Evidently a book is in the works. I hope it will get into more detail about her business and medical views as well as the official doctors' views, and her therapies as viewed today.

Megan Birk, Purdue graduate and historian at the University of Texas-Pan American, has an article in the current issue of the Indiana Magazine of History. She gives a fascinating account of a forgotten champion of institutional care of orphans and neglected children, Lyman P. Alden of the Michigan State Public School in Coldwater and later the Rose Orphan Home in Terre Haute, Indiana. Alden's contention that good institutional care is better than placement in just any home, a view that has long gone out of fashion -- indeed, many of the histories of orphans and orphanages were written by advocates of home placement. Again, a book on "the rural placement in the Midwest" is in the works.

The article refers to work on other Indiana orphanages, but not the Indianapolis Orphan Asylum, for which records are readily available at the Indiana Historical Society, as well as a master's thesis from the 1940s and my article in The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections in 2011.

The asylum does not seem to fit the expected pattern, as the women in charge fostered and supervised placement in homes even though the institution's revenue largely came from per capita payments from public authorities. I haven't seen the Rose records at the state archives (names indexed on line by the Indiana Genealogical Society) but the IOA records contain information at the individual level that could be used to determine the institutions' actual policies about placement, as contrasted to they said they were doing.




Greta S. Nettleton, "Researching Mrs. Dr. Keck and Her Daughter Cora," American Ancestors vol. 14, no. 2 (Spring 2013):30-34, 41.

Megan Birk, "Lyman P. Alden: Setting an Institutional Example," Indiana Magazine of History vol. 109, no. 2 (June 2013):89-113.

Harold Henderson, "Early Midwestern Orphanage: The Indianapolis Orphans Asylum, 1851-1941, A Way Station on the Winding Road of Life," The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections vol. 51, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2011): 6-17.



Harold Henderson, "A quack? in Davenport and a leading orphanage in Terre Haute," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 July 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.] 

New Indiana databases

The Indiana Genealogical Society has added two bunches of online databases to its website: four open to anyone, and ten open only to members.

Free and open to all comers are four volumes of the Records of Rose Orphans Home in Terre Haute, Vigo County, plus indexes to 1840-1910 alumni of DePauw University in Greencastle, Putnam County. These are searchable, and browseable if you simply hit the search button without entering anything in the search box. I picked up the underlying source for DePauw at a used bookstore in La Porte, and have perhaps rashly offered to provide lookups for those who find a person of interest in the index, so that they can see -- and cite -- the real thing and not rest content with the online index.

Available to members only are:
Deceased Members of Methodist Church's Northwest Indiana Conference (1854-1898)
Allen County, Indiana Soldiers in the Spanish-American War (1898)
Indiana's Civil War Veterans with Artificial Limbs
Indiana Volunteer Regiments in the Mexican War (1846-1848)
Alumni of Indianapolis College of Pharmacy (1932-1939)
Alumni of Indiana State Normal School, Terre Haute (1872-1900)
Faculty of Earlham College, Richmond (1860-1921)
Faculty of South Bend High School (1870-1911)
Non-Graduates of Indiana University, Bloomington (1820-1890)
Members of Indiana's 60th General Assembly (1897)

More online goodness is in the works. IGS membership is a good deal in any case, but get your money in soon as it runs by calendar year -- payable either by snail mail or by PayPal. My experience would suggest using snail mail.