Great-great Uncle Hector Desjardins, a Resident of The Craig Colony for Epileptics

Sometime in the late 1980s, I interviewed my maternal grandfather about his ancestry. He was kind of tight-lipped about his family history. Thus, I didn't really dig into his line of my family tree until after he passed away in 2004 but then some of the details from that conversation return to me whenever I uncover a new family document. One detail that floats back to me from time to time is my grandfather mentioning that he had an uncle who was epileptic. Now back in the day, epilepsy had a real social stigma; people thought those seizures were caused by possession by the Devil. 

Grandpa didn't recall his uncle's name when we spoke but years later, I came across a 1910 U.S. Federal Census record for a Hector Desjardins, a resident at The Craig Colony for Epileptics in Sonyea, Livingston County, New York. I was pretty convinced that this was my grandfather's uncle but it was not, until recently, that I ordered Hector's death record from Groveland, NY. With the record in hand, I know this for sure this was grandpa's uncle even though it lacks a mother or father's name on the certificate. I know it's the uncle because the death certificate states that both parents were born in Canada but that Hector was born in New York City. True! True! And true! But the big give away is that this Hector Des Gardner, another variant spelling of the surname Desjardins which was eventually anglicized to Gardner, was buried in Patchogue, NY. That is where his parents are buried. The family plot has a small foot-stone that reads simply H.D. That's gotta be Hector.

Hector was 30 years old at the time of his death from ileus colitis and bronchopneumonia. The contributory cause of death is listed as epilepsy. According to the death certificate, Hector had been a resident of the Craig Colony for Epileptics for 11 years, 6 months, and 16 days. That places his arrival at the Colony as February 12, 1906. Hector would have been about 19 years old. I don't have an exact day of birth for him; I know it was November in either 1885 or 1886. The death record say 1886.

The doctor who signed his death certificate on August 31, 1917 was Dr. G. Kirby Collier of Sonyea, NY. The "G." stood for George. Dr. Collier was an influential physician in the history of Alcoholics Anonymous. In his obituary, special to the New York Times, which appeared on June 19, 1954 and reads as follows:

Rochester, N. Y., June 19 - Dr. G. Kirby Collier, researcher in alcoholism and one of the early specialists in neuropsychiatry, died here yesterday in his home here at the age of 75.

Born in Wilmington, N.C., Dr. Collier was graduated from the University of Maryland in 1900. In 1902 he joined the staff of Craig Colony for Epileptics at Sonyea, N. Y. He came to Rochester in 1919 and specialized in epilepsy, alcoholism and child psychiatry.

Dr. Collier was a past president of the Monroe County Medical Society, the American Psyhiatric Association, the League of Internationale Contre L'Epilepsie and a diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.

He leaves his wife, Mrs. Clara Collier, and two daughters, Mrs. Stephen T. Crary of Northampton, Mass., and Miss Elizabeth Collier.

Alcoholism was a real issue for Hector's brother, Albert, who also died in residency at a hospital but not for epilepsy; different condition all together. In any case, I wonder how frequently Hector saw his family, if at all. Patchogue is in Suffolk County on Long Island, about 6 hours from where the Craig Colony was located. 

A new semester has just begun at the college I work for. I look at the incoming freshmen and their parents all anxious about sending their 18 year-olds away for 4 years. And here Hector was being sent away at 19 for what would be the rest his short life. So sad.

I also wonder about the conditions he lived in and why a hospital resident dies so young. Was he really treated well there?

Here is a photo I found online of the hospital at Craig Colony which may very well have been the building in which Hector died.

Unidentified creator. “Defectives, Epileptics: United States. New York. Sonyea. Craig Colony: Craig Colony, Sonyea, N.Y. ; Social Museum Collection; Hospital and Laboratory.” Digital image. CURIOSity Collections, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Transfer from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Social Museum Collection, circa 1900. Accessed May 19, 2023. https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/ids:43314459$1i

Another Relative at Creedmoor

I am not shy about admitting to my struggles with depression and anxiety. There was a time when I would have said my depression was far more severe than my anxiety, although, I think I have lived with anxiety far longer. The two conditions often go hand-in-hand. My anxiety, for most of my life, was a daily battle. Nervousness and panic would overcome me in debilitating physical symptoms; nausea and vomiting were the most prevalent of them. This was true on a daily basis for most of my youth and through my mid-20s. Now it only hits me a couple times a year.

I am also not shy about admitting to my family members struggles with mental illnesses either. Now of course that is not fair of me but it is not that I point and call them each out publicly. Your health, your business; but trust me, it's in there and it is certainly among my dead.

I don't really get the persistent stigma about mental health issues. I mean, people have other fucked up organs. "Oh poor asthma people with your f-ed up lungs. Here, take this drug and you'll get better." The brain is just another organ in the body. But in any case...

I just found another relative who died while a patient at Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital in Queens, New York. 

Psychiatric institutions, in my opinion, really did begin as benevolent institutions. Some might argue that they were created to hide away the shamefully mentally ill people in our society, but I really think the medical community did want to understand these peoples' conditions and I think they have made great stride in addressing mental health maladies although we are indeed far from what is needed. It was only much later, after these institutions were establishment, when we started to see their state of disrepair and the medical community's indifference toward patients, if not outright cruelty and neglect.

I am currently reading Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York by Stacy Horn about Blackwell's Island, now known as Roosevelt Island. It was once the City's location for an asylum, a prison, hospital, workhouse, and almshouse. So far it's a great read that sheds a light on the deplorable conditions our mentally ill existed in. Anyway...

Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital was founded in 1912 as a farm colony for the Brooklyn State Hospital. It was thought that patients would benefit from fresh air and clean living in what was the farmland of Queens County, as opposed to disease ridden, urban hospitals of neighboring Brooklyn. To a modern day resident of New York it's kind of hard to imagine Queens as farmland; it is the second highest populated county in New York State, just after Brooklyn. Back at its inception though, patients at Creedmoor tended gardens and raised livestock on the hospital’s grounds. They also had access to the hospital gymnasium, swimming pool, theater, and were put to work in the hospital's laundries and kitchens. By mid-century, though, it housed about 7,000 patients. I found one statistic that by 1948 approximately 95,000 patients lived in 27 mental institutions across New York State; that is close to when my great grandfather was a resident of Creedmoor. He died there of a heart attack in 1946. 

By the 1960s-1980s the state pushed for deinstitutionalization, turning to more out-patient services and focusing on re-integrating the mentally ill into society. Laws governing the commitment of the mentally ill to such institutions became much more strict and therefor it was harder to involuntarily hospitalize people with mental illness. Now Creedmoor has only a few hundred patients. I don't know if we need more or less institutionalization of the mentally ill but we're not getting mentally healthier as a society, that is for sure.

In any case, my great-great grandmother's sister, Gertrude M. Joyce-Sheridan, appears to have been committed to Creedmoor. Her death certificate calls it the Creedmoor Division of Brooklyn State Hospital. Her primary cause of death is listed as chronic myocarditis; inflammation of the heart. It also includes general arteriosclerosis and psychosis. Without access to her medical records, which is rarely if ever possible as they are only ever released to the patient themselves, I speculate that she was a resident there because of dementia. It says psychosis but that is merely a disconnection from reality. It can be associated with a whole array of mental illnesses. Psychosis can develop from anything as benign as a lack of sleep or hypoglycemia (low blood sugar); to a serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression; or from a brain tumor, lupus, multiple sclerosis, syphilis, malaria, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, the list goes on and on. In short many conditions can lead to a break with reality.

The certificate states she was admitted to Creedmoor on May 3, 1932 and died there on April 21, 1934. Thus she was 2 weeks shy of having been a resident there for 2 years. It documents her age as 70 but according to my research she was born on February 7, 1863 making her a little over 71 at the time of her death and 69 at the time of her admittance to the facility. 

Gertrude's remains are interred at Calvary Cemetery in the Woodside/Long Island City area of Queens; in Cemetery #3, Section #17, Range #22, Plot EE, Grave #12.