Ohio Genealogy News Winter 2011

"Have You Researched Your Ancestor's Mental Health?" is the cover headline on the new OGS News, the class of the state-level newsletters. Among the contents:

Lisa Long (Ohio Historical Society reference archivist), "Mental Health Records: An Introduction for Researchers" and "Selected List of Patient Records in the Ohio History Center." Don't get your hopes up -- asylum and mental health records are "restricted" no matter how old, according to state law (insert your joke here about the lunatics running the asylum), but there are a variety of workarounds.

Deb Cyprych, "Return of Deaf and Dumb, Blind, Insane and Idiotic Persons in Ohio, 1856" -- a township-level partial census, many of the entries including parents' names.

Susan Zacharias, "Searching the Dead in Stark County: Coroner's Records Online."

Beverly R. Austin and Ronald L. Burdick, "Cleveland Public Library's Genealogy Resources."

Wally Huskonen, "Getting Ready to Research in the 1940 Census," including several tips for identifying enumeration districts as we await its indexing.

Insanity

The new issue of Connections: The Hoosier Genealogist from the Indiana Historical Society -- arguably the best genealogical journal between the coasts -- has a fascinating pair of cover stories. The first, by Elizabeth Flynn, details the history of mental health care in the state; the second, by Alan January of the State Archives, describes the histories of the various state facilities, their many records, and how the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act has made them very difficult to access.

Key point: Indiana law opened most records to the public after 75 years; under HIPAA all individually identifiable health records are closed forever (although there may be ways around this on a case-by-case basis, depending on your state). The magazine carefully blacked out the name of an individual from a document about her release from the Indiana Hospital for the Insane in 1863, in order to protect her privacy.

Methodology Monday with institutionalized ancestors

For some background in the down-and-up-and-down-again history of mental health, check out The Discovery of the Asylum by David J. Rothman, or the book and article blogged here a while back. For some first steps in researching your institutionalized ancestors, check out Gena Philibert Ortega's note in the October 8 issue of the GenealogyWise newsletter (the link is to the archives but that issue isn't up yet).

The gist: don't limit yourself to what the institution or its successor has to offer: "In the case of my great-great grandmother," Ortega writes "who was institutionalized in her latter years, her admission record from the Oregon State Hospital was available from the state archives. This gave me some info about when she entered the facility and why." Court records may also be public where the institutional records themselves may be lost, destroyed, or restricted.