VT State Archives Series - Lost Graves: Burials on the Grounds of the VT State Hospital 8/10/2026

it. Um, welcome and thank you so much for being here today. I am Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanes. Um, it is really an honor to be here today in the second of our uh, Vasara speaker series. Um, this is a series that was really the brainchild of our folks uh who work at Vasara to help highlight some of the research that has been done and some of the really important work that has been um compiled and uncovered u through research done at our Vermont State Archives and Records Administration. Um, a big thank you to the state house staff and to Orca Media for allowing us to use room 11 here today. Uh, lovely air conditioning for a steamy August day. And so I'm sure that we're all glad to be in here. Um, the mission and purpose of the Secretary of State's office is to build trust in a transparent and accountable government that serves and protects Vermonters and supports participatory democracy. Um, and our archives are an integral part of that. Um, the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration preserves records from pre-statehood through today. uh giving verters uh an important access to understand government decisions and our shared history as Vermonters. Uh these records connect our past to our present and they help to keep government open, reliable and accountable. The speaker series is a great way to bring these uh archives alive. And uh we thank the many people over the over time who have used the archives to um to put together really important information that I think Vermoners really value. Um and that's part of the part of the reason why we maintain archives as a state of Vermont because we recognize the importance of this. I'm really excited for this second in our speaker series. Um I have known um Anne Donahghue as a fellow representative for many years. Uh she and I serve together in the state house. I have a great uh deal of respect for her and for uh the work that she's done as a legislator. And now you're going to get a chance to see some of um her hobbies, [laughter] her outside work. Um, this is this is a really important and and somewhat painful topic um that an has done a great deal of work uh researching and I think we will all benefit from hearing what she has learned about the lost graves um at the Vermont State Hospital grounds. Um so I thank you in advance for the work and thank you so much for sharing it with us today. And uh to introduce an is uh Cara Conoig from our Vermont State Archives. So thank you Cara. >> Thank you Sarah. Um it's an honor and pleasure to introduce Ann Donnie Hugh. After getting her BA from Boston College and her JD from Georgetown and spent the last 24 years as a state representative representing Northfield. While serving in legislature, her special focus has been on mental health policy rooted in her own severe mental illness in the 1990s. Anne also is the retired editor of the statewide mental health newsletter Counterpoint. After tropical storm Irene in 2011, when she learned that patients in the old cemetery area were unidentified and the patient records had been destroyed in the flood, she embarked on a project to find out how many and who were buried there. Please join me in welcoming Anne Donahue. [applause] >> Thank you very much. And it's it's a great honor to have been asked to be a part of the uh Versa Speaker series. Um not only because what it represents, but I really was um really excited when I saw what the subtitle for the series was, the quest for liberty, equality, justice, and acceptance in Vermont. And that's in reference to marginalized groups in our society of which of course people with disabilities and particularly with mental illness um are one of those marginalized groups. So that was that was an exciting um opportunity for me to be thinking about u the graves that I was researching in that context focusing on uh 1891 to 1913 which is the specific time frame when these burials um happened. My personal quest for liberty, equality, justice and acceptance really began almost 30 years ago. But that was only because of my own illness, not because um I suddenly had an awakening as to that problem in our society. Um when I became severely ill at that time, I knew I had to keep it a secret. I knew the stigma involved. I still remember one of the first thoughts I had the first day I was in the hospital and that was how could my life have fallen to this point that I would be an inatient in a psychiatric unit. I also discovered the inequities in our insurance system. The lack of equality in insurance covered. I was someone who always maintained my COBRA coverage for insurance if I was between jobs and all of a sudden I had an illness that wasn't being covered. That quest for equality and acceptance is still not fulfilled. Uh and I'll end this morning with a little bit of a brief um examples of how it's still not fulfilled today. The focus of this talk, however, is an older history. And although I spent years of advocacy in my early years on treatment at the state hospital in Waterbury because it had become descertified by the federal government. I didn't have any knowledge of its early history. The flood of 2011 from tropical storm Irene is what made me first wonder about the cemetery. I had heard there was an old cemetery there. Didn't know where it was. Wondered if it was damaged in the flood. New stories from the newspapers of, you know, cemetery, I think it was in Bethl where coffins were floating in the river because um the flooding had knocked them loose from their graves. So, so I thought about that and people reassured me. Oh no, it's way up on a hillside. It wouldn't have been hurt by the flood. Um, these pictures here are the day after Irene hit, what it was like uh outside and inside u the state hospital. Um, the news was all about other places in the state. It didn't trickle out till later about the damage to the state hospital. Um, but because I worked for Counterpoint as a as an journalist, um, I went to take pictures and these the set of pictures I took that day are the only ones that exist of the last day of the state hospital. Nobody at the time knew that that was going to be the last day that it was ever in use. Get used to it. Um, so when I first started wondering uh about the cemetery and what had happened to it and tried to find out more about it, I came across the book Empty Beds. The first part of it was written by Herbert Hunt who was a farm superintendent there in early years and it was taken from a series that he did for the hospital newsletter covering 1891 to 1965. It became I'm sorry. No, that's that's a typo there. He didn't go Oh, I'm sorry. No, that's right. 1965. It was included as the first part of a book that was put together by a nurse from the state hospital, Marcia Kinchelo. She wrote for the time period from 1965 to 1988, and it was published then. Herbert Hunt's typed manuscript included directions to the cemetery up on Perry Hill. It wasn't incorporated into the book itself, but it was part of his original manuscript. It's in the area on P Perry Hill where Waterbury's bike trail network uh has now been built. I went in search of it. It took me several tries following the old directions, but I did eventually find the old asylum cemetery. I found the marker. This is the marker that's on a granite stone there, and it made reference. It's beautifully written talking about this beautiful null overlooking the grounds is matched in splendor only by the 20 or so residents of the hospital who were buried here. But several things I found the marker but it was in a small area that was completely overgrown with weeds untended little saplings growing. I later learned that actually this site was not the correct site of this cemetery although it's nearby. Learned later that some of those people were actually buried in a second burying ground that was abandoned and forgotten after the flood of 1927. That's all the later parts of the story. But also that this site was not precisely accurate. What shocked me at the time though was the reference to 20 or so residents. No marked graves individually, not even signs of any grave there, just unmarked graves, at least an effort to remember them, but no names. I introduced a resolution as a member of the of the resolution of the uh uh general assembly at the time that tried to identify and and was adopted referencing the lack of an identity. The fact that they were in unmarked graves likely to never be identified would be a grievous indication of past indifference to the lives of these individuals. I think that's where it really brings forth my interest and the theme of this series. How we dealt with marginalized people in the past. The dignity of one's name and identity was abandoned and I took it up as my mission to try to find those names. One of the first things I learned was that all the patient records were destroyed in the flood. This is a picture of one of the hallways. You can see the toppled lockers here on their side. And in fact, on the lower floor, the water came up high enough that all of the old records that were apparently, according to one account, had been in egg cartons against a wall. But the water destroyed them such that the pages were glued together. they couldn't be opened up in any way saving the print. So there were no records of the people who had been there in all the early years. I started off trying to identify them by using death certificates, going to the town records um and trying to look through death certificates and see if that gave a clue. Well, it didn't. It was pretty useless. Um, before 1903, death certificates didn't even have a place to record a place of burial. And I thought, well, maybe if I see they didn't have any family, that would be somebody who might have been buried there. Um, that was not real guidance in terms of trying to identify um these individuals. So, that was when I turned to our state archives. I found a lot of valuable sources. First of all, the annual reports, the administration, the perspectives of the superintendent, the superintendents were required to do an annual report to the legislature on the status of the hospital, how many people were there, uh their profiles, what illnesses they had. Uh and they actually uh formed the core of Herbert Hunt's writing using those annual reports. He wasn't doing his own research project. In other words, he gathered sources from elsewhere. Um, there were some patient records in the archives on microfilm, mostly limited to just the very first few years, 1891 to 1895 or 96. There were some logs of admissions and discharges. Uh, most didn't have a reference to uh burials or deaths. Um, so it was pretty limited, but there were some some early partial records. One of the things I found invaluable though were legislative reports about the hospital, newspapers, which I didn't know and discovered that the archives had access to newspapers to the very beginning of Vermont history. All of them you could put a name in and it'll tell you you'll give you the articles that that name is referenced. Um, so that was really valuable. Um, there's also another valuable one was the find a grave site um that some people who do genealogy are familiar with and town reports. I didn't mention uh town reports because most of these people were under the care of the overseer of the poor of their towns. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes those records detailed expenditures and that could include burial expenses. The superintendent records were actually not really super valuable because they were the superintendent's perspective talking about the good things the hospital was doing. None of them referenced the cemetery. They did provide a real insight into our history of eugenics beyond some of what we've heard and much earlier because I think a lot of us associate it with the um the fam Vermont family survey in the 1930s identifying families um that were of concern in reproducing. But the lobbying started as early as 1902. This is a quote from Superintendent Dan Grout in the 1902 uh report to the legislature. The first generation of these breed like rats, but usually the third or fourth generation puts them out of business, meaning natural selection. Later on, more of the press for leg legislation of sterilization. Um, this is more what we're familiar with from some of the works in eugenics where it says it would appear that some means should be provided to prevent the procreation of children with inherited tendency to crime, feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, idiocy, imbecility, or insanity. Because a considerable number of this class of children would eventually find their way to the school for feeble-minded or hospital for the insane or become delinquents or poppers. From this class comes an endless chain of breeding the unfit from the unfit. One of the things that's important to realize is that one of the big pressures here was the continuous growth and overcrowding of the state hospital. Um, constantly having to go to the legislature and seeking more money for expansions, constantly being overcrowded again, leading to some of the abuses and problems. Um, and that pressure was part of the thinking that, you know, if you could use eugenics, if you could uh sterilize some of these folks, they could be released. They wouldn't be a risk of breeding more. Um, and that could reduce that pressure. I'm not good at this stuff. Let me find I can't find the cursor now to Let's see. How do we get this to go forward? Is this gonna There we go. Okay. Some of what was left out of the annual reports showed up in legislative reports. There was a major investigation of the hospital just five years after it opened. Critiques of the superintendent at the time, the start of long cycles of reforms and failures and final descertification several years before it closed. Um, I know that you won't be able to read the news uh items as I post them. They're just to show you that they were really there. Um, but I will I will give you some of the the quotations or what what's in them. These are three different instances of uh things that were investigated. This is the report of the legislative committee. An 11year-old girl found in a closet two feet by 4 feet inside, nude and unconscious. A man assaulted by an attendant who died and a false cause of death was listed. A woman secluded in an 8 by12 room in the basement for 4 months with nothing but a blanket. And then one other one. Let's see here. There we go. Uh, one other one on on the uh, left hand side when the superintendent Giddings had had an object thrown at him and in response he threw a woman to the floor, restrained and choked her into submission. Well, Dr. Giddings actually was indicted uh, for criminal acts for felony assault on women patients. He eventually uh was acquitted of the criminal charges but he was indicted and then resigned. Um those are the two of the headlines. There were many newspaper articles about this at the time but the history of that whole investigation and the charges against the superintendent weren't reported interestingly enough in the annual reports like the superintendent's report for that year and therefore it's not recorded in the book. That's the history of the hospital. Empty beds where it just says in 1897 Dr. Giddings returned to his practice in Bakersfield. >> That's the end of the section on his tenure as superintendent. [clears throat] The first and only reference to the cemetery itself came in the legislative report, not of in any of the superintendent reports. And it was criticized there. This is in 1896. And what it said is that they found the cemetery unfenced, uncared for, 18 unmarked, untended graves. And the legislators said, this is the quote, "We cannot but feel that the decencies of civilization require a more suitable place of burial and recommend that a proper enclosure be set aside for that purpose." That was 1896. We first looked into a proper enclosure around that cemetery four years ago. Um, it's a long time, [snorts] a long gap between a recommendation and not everyone agreed. A newspaper article in 1892, the other uh news article that's copied there, um, that account was a year, well, it was the first burial that happened in that cemetery. And the news report said that a cemetery is a necessary adjunct of a state insane asylum. And this one was a beautiful plateau admirably adapted for the purpose and shaded by evergreen trees. As I mentioned, long history of a cycle of overcrowding, abuses and then reforms. And an early reform was shortly the first superintendent who was hired after Giddings um man by the name of Frank Page in 1898. He's the one who argued for dropping the title asylum and calling it a hospital which did occur at that time only uh 7 years after it opened. uh and his explanation is here in full. Notwithstanding the general belief in the incurability of insanity, facts incontestably prove the majority of insane do recover if proper treatment is early instituted. In a properly constituted hospital, care is not only the end sought but also cure. a very progressive outlook for his time, but not necessarily one that was followed in the years to come or even anywhere else in the country for that matter. See, uh this is a picture in the empty beds book of one of the wards um at the hospital. And uh to say that it seems to be overcrowded might be an understatement. So, my search for the names uh started with the discovery of an unsanctioned spreadsheet that listed people who had died at the hospital when they were admitted between the years of 1891 and 1917. Now, that's a very kind of an odd construct of why that list was created that way. First of all, to go back to Herbert Hunt, he had told me I was able to interview him in a nursing home just a year before his death. Um, and he said that he had done a list of those who were believed to be in the cemetery, but he didn't know what happened to it, and no one knew what happened to it. But I found this spreadsheet which I initially thought was was where his names came from. But in fact it was done by an individual who during her nighttime shift hours got curious about illnesses back in the early 1900s and uh what caught deaths and if it was if it was shown up in the records. And so she was kind of using records for not an authorized use. But she created this spreadsheet listing each person who had had been admitted between 1891 through 1917 and the record of what they died from and when she knew when it was in the record uh what they died of. There was no burial identification in death certificates. I mentioned this before pre903. But what I did is work through a process of elimination because if she had not identified a burial site, if I could find where they were buried, that would eliminate them as somebody who might be buried on the grounds of the hospital. That's when I started using the archives, the newspapers, the town reports for anything I could learn. And ultimately the final outcome was I found all but tw 15 burials out of 177 who had no burial information listed in that listing of all of the deaths. And I I looked only up through uh 1913, not to 1917 because the last burial on the grounds was in 1913. Um but of those 177 had no burial location. um all but 15. 15 I found a lot about those folks but nothing definitive um about that. 29 were identified as definitive from the records that were found and then the 15 who remain uh uncertain. I want to give you a sample of a couple of those searches and how the records led to being able to identify them. So we start with a man by the name of Milo Baker and his death was recorded in the state hospital file was recorded that he had died but he was not on the spreadsheet even. So there were a number that I found in the logs in the archives that I added to that spreadsheet. And in addition, his his um the actual part of the of his hospital record there that's recorded that's in the script um said that he had died, but it didn't say what happened to him or where he was buried. But a news item specifically said the remains were buried there. He died at the asylum. The remains were buried there. So that was a confirmation with that death and that burial. Another one, Christopher Kder is an example of somebody whose name was on the spreadsheet and was indicated as having died and been buried at the asylum. So that became a corroboration that he was in fact one of those in the asylum cemetery. Uh this third one which is a a permit for burial was Josephine Pette. She was listed on the spreadsheet as having been buried in Waterbury and as possibly being in the asylum cemetery but in fact in Dubbury where they started keeping burial permits earlier than some towns did. She was listed with a burial permit for her burial in Dubury. So, she was removed from the list of possible burials at the cemetery. A couple of other samples. Uh the upper left one is pointing out that there is a hospital file that says he was buried in the asylum cemetery. And sure enough, we have a confirmation because a town report specifies paying $11.50 for a coffin at the asylum. Said that in the overseer's report. Another one, Patrick Waldron, says that he was buried in the asylum cemetery, but a town report specified and and a town report also specified paying 1150 for a coffin at the asylum. But then we have James Whan, another person who died uh at the I'm I'm mixing up two people. The first one was Patrick Walden. This is only two here, but James Whan um the news report specifically reported his burial um in his hometown in a town cemetery. And in that case, the overseer's report was able to confirm it because there it listed a cost of $30.25 25 cents for transporting the body from Waterbury and funeral costs. So we had a confirmation of where he was buried. Fred Sharp, however, and these are all from Fred Sharp, his death certificate and two articles about him, was a fascinating history because of all the people whose names were early identified and who were on specifically the list as you know, possibly on the grounds or probably on the grounds, Fred Sharp was the one person we knew for sure because when I interviewed Herbert Hunt, he still remembered his name as the last person who was buried on the grounds who had been hit by a falling tree while working on a woodcutting detail on the grounds of the hospital. Uh, and the first news article there says Fred Sharp killed and it gives the detail. It talks some about his background as a teacher before uh being found insane. Um, but it gives the details of the falling tree corroborating what Herbert Hunt told me and his burial near the scene of his death. His death certificate confirms that it was after 1903 and it was filled in. I highlighted it in red there. It was filled in saying burial was on the state farm Waterbury. Except that that one we were most sure about was most definitively wrong because I discovered a later newspaper clipping which said that his mother who hadn't been informed until a little bit later about her son's death. She was from Connecticut when she found out she had him disinterred and moved to Connecticut to the family cemetery. [snorts] Another whole area that I discovered in the research about what happened to those people who may have died at the hospital and whose families did not uh take care of their bodies or did couldn't afford a grave. And that was physician access to unclaimed bodies. In 1884, in other words, before the state hospital opened, even a law was passed that was to address grave robbery at the time. Grave robberies that were done for the purpose of science and education because doctors in school didn't have a way to access bodies. They increased the fines considerably for grave robbery, but they gave doctors access by allowing them to request any body from a state facility if family did not claim the body within 48 hours. That was the outcome for at least several hundred patients between 1893 and the latest I found a record of 1961. An example from one of the files was kind of interesting because it was actually a discussion back and forth with the family. December 30th, Mrs. Gove died this morning at 2:00. Telegram sent to her son saying, "Your mother is dead. What disposition of the remains?" In the evening, a mail letter came. Don't you wish our post office was like that today? We won't go there. uh requesting that the body be buried here at our expense and he would remove remains at some future time. December 31, reply made that no provision was made for such disposal and advised to secure money to give his mother a burial. No reply received. So January 4, telegram sent to her son saying, "What do you propose to do with your mother's remains? If not disposed of in accordance with letter, we'll have to go according to law." And according to law was the catchphrase, which basically meant the law that says it can go to a doctor who makes that request. And the final entry January 8 remains taken to Burlington on 10:45 a.m. train meaning to UVM. Vermont's law was repealed after this discovery. So with the happen stance the happy fortune of my also being a legislator, um we repealed that law. um it wasn't being used and UVM was totally in support of it being uh repealed. But in fact, other states still permit the use of unclaimed bodies. And there was actually a big expose about that on ABC News a year ago. Um quoting and citing the same researcher that I had written to the year before saying, "Guess what we did in Vermont?" And she wrote back and said, "Good for you. They're still doing it in lots of states." This past spring, the Lard College of Medicine at UVM included a statement of appreciation for those unconented gifts in its bianual convocation of thanks for donors. So, it was a very moving uh time that they would um make the decision after I had discussed with them and found out more about what happened. Um that's a bianual thing that the student the medical students do uh and they hold this convocation of thanks um and they added a specific appreciation for these bodies that they received. So when we think about the way people sometimes think about mental illness and the stigma and obituaries today that only recently have begun to sometimes reference a death by overdose or a death uh by suicide. Uh only occasionally as people try to educate other people, but most people would not want to talk about it. Certainly not in an obituary. Certainly would not talk about being in the state hospital. So, you might expect that back at that time it would be the same. But one of the things I discovered about how communities treated their neighbors who became ill was very different in finding these obituaries. This one here, he gradually failed until death closed the scene and his active life went sadly out in mental darkness. very sad but very moving, very touching uh in terms of his death. And these are just some other samples and and I'll read you the quotes because I know it's probably not visible, but some of the things that were part of their obituaries at the time. He served three years in the Civil War. A sunstroke during a prolonged march is thought to have caused his mental troubles for which he suffered the last 19 years of his life. Another one, she for many years was a faithful employee at the Waterbury Inn where she won the esteem of all. Another one, a well-known citizen of Barry, was honored by his townsmen by holding most of the important offices of his town. He represented his native town in the general assembly of 1878, and he served as a deputy sheriff, displaying particular ability as a public service. Over a year ago, his health became impaired and he was compelled to retire. and he went on to say and died at the Vermont state at the state hospital. Another one some interesting perspectives on causes of a mental illness but he was a promising he has was with a promising future as a young man but he went insane through overstudy. See when your kids say stop making he was 29 years old at the time of his death. And last one, she will be greatly missed by a large number of friends as she was greatly liked by all who knew her. These are not messages of stigma and lack of acceptance. So where were they buried? The other big piece of my search, aside from finding out who they were, we learned only a few years ago that the asylum cemetery with its rededication and the installation of the marker in 1991 was not the site. It had been a best guess at the time based on Hunt's directions and even the state archaeologist had looked at the evidence and said, "Yeah, this is most probably it." So they had the marker placed there. Based on that uh in 2022 when I went back I discovered that very not deliberately. It was not a disrespect but the bike trails that had gone up in there were bikes that went off trail the way skiers go off trail and were cutting across the graveyard and putting ruts in it. The marker was at the opposite end. They wouldn't have even seen it. It wasn't deliberate. But there was no enclosure. remember that 1896 there should be an enclosure. There wasn't one. Uh so that was happening and I talked to folks who some of the folks with the with the administration so forth who agreed there should be one. We even ordered the the concrete pylons and then there was going to be the they actually make it with artificial chain so it doesn't hurt people. We didn't want bikers to come and hit a chain. Um but at that point the state archaeologist who was who was new was not the one from before said well we ought to verify that that's the site since we know the area it won't be complicated we'll bring in a team of archaeologists and UVM students and we'll do what's called a ground scraping and in that way just a few inches below the the surface if you know what you're doing you can detect whether that ground has ever been disturbed for instance by digging a grave and guess What the determination was there had never been any burials or any ground disturbance from the beginning of history [snorts] at that site. It was undisturbed ground. So it was not the right site where that monument is now. But based on the instructions from Herbert Hunt, it was somewhere near there. And in fact, it's still on the agenda for our state archaeologists to want to try to find it precisely. not because there's a fear of development at some point because it is state forest um but just out of being able to to market and respect it. What about the second site that I've referenced based in particularly around uh news items that were part of the 1868 investigation that referenced the cemetery. I was actually able to establish that only 19 of the uh perhaps as many as 10 or as many as 25 or at least 10 burials after 1897 because it was clearly established by the records that those 19 burials were all before 1897. So there had to have been a second location. Well, only hints were made from a few bits and pieces of rumors. Gonna move the slide here. Let's see. Few bits and based on some vague memories. It seemed likely that it was near the Wooki River below Perry Hill down at the base, not up on the hill uh behind where the ice center is now. If anybody knows the uh Waterbury Ice Center, um it was described by one person that Herbert Ho Hunt quoted as being between the dump road and the Wisky River. One version said they recalled old rumors that it had been washed away by the flood of 1927. A person who was helping me in the search interviewed a 100-year-old resident who died a month later who had worked all her life at the state hospital and who recalled the rumors of where there was a second cemetery and she identified some of the hints as to where it was. And so this map is showing you the ice center is the large uh building in the in the center there. If you look at the way that curve goes of the Winsky River, keep that in mind. If we have time at the end, I have some more maps that can show how I came to the determination of the most likely site. But the way you can always identify this area on the aerial maps is because of that, it's a bumpout from the Winnoski River. On the on the other edge is the interstate and then the railroad. And it's believed to be my best hunch from the from the different pieces of information is that is this going to come with me? Yes. Is that it is in the vicinity here based on where the lot lines were the river where the old dump road was which went straight across here because this was the old dump. Um so a number of different indicators that that was the most likely location. uh it is now covered with trees. Uh you can't do ground penetrating radar as a result. Um and given the topology and later floods, it doesn't seem to me that it was washed away because for one thing, some bodies would have turned up somewhere. But on the contrary, the way the river acts there, it's buried much deeper in silt. And the archaeologist is going to do some test holes, but he he actually really thinks it won't wouldn't be possible to find because of those conditions. I do have some more uh maps of those areas if we have I think I mentioned that we have time at the end which I think we will um but I wanted to do the overview uh slides first. I mentioned at the beginning that the quest for equality, acceptance, those things is still an ongoing quest. So I do have just a few slides uh to talk about three three different um modern day today examples. What language tells us about acceptance. What justice tells us about some of our expressions. Somebody went violent. It must be because he went off his meds. And the issue of equality and health care integration. Great slide here. No justice, no peace. And a quote from a person who put this slide together. It's so crazy that you called me a psycho. Why are we still using mental illness slurs? When there's mislabeling, it becomes stigma and trivialization. He's crazy. That's a nutty idea. That approach is insane. A schizophrenic decision by the board. And just yesterday in a in a uh you know one of those blogs online uh one that said it was bipolar. All of those diminish a group of people because they exaggerate human characteristics to negative descriptors. Sometimes it seems and maybe it's just because it's my group. Sometimes it seems that mental health is the only remaining socially acceptable slur. Some other slurs are still used. When they're used, people know it's socially unacceptable. And other groups ask, "Please don't use that term and it stops being used. It's replaced. Maybe not instantly, but eventually." So, what are the effects of stigma? Oh, how did I miss? I got the slides out of order here. So I want to give you an example of that which might be a little surprising in terms of a term you've heard. This is a slide about the difference between behavioral health and mental health. What's the difference and why it matters? And it gives a basic definitions. Behavioral health actually refers to the choices, actions, and habits that can influence both physical and emotional well-being. In other words, behavioral health is a part of our physical health as well as mental health. If you refuse to follow the diet that your doctor gives you for your diabetes, that's a behavioral health problem. And yet it gets used as a surrogate for mental health and substance use disorder which is saying that's a behavior. Why don't you pull yourself up by your bootstraps? Why won't you get out of bed? That's a behavior. In contrast, mental health refers to how the brain manages internal experiences, thoughts, and moods. In other words, it focuses on clinical conditions that affect how we feel and think. It's health care like any other. But in both Vermont and throughout the country, the plea to not use that term to stigmatize and discriminate is not heard. And it falls directly into the trap of seeing mental health as choices or behaviors. There's progress in Vermont. Couple of instances of progress and then not always. So, the Howard Center in 2023 had a news item about a 4-year grant that will allow the Howard Center to meet the federal criteria to become a certified community behavioral health clinic. But in 2026, there was another headline. The Howard Center announced that it has been designated a certified community-based integrated health center. That was because the Department of Mental Health heard the please and the testimony of people with lived experience about how harmful the term was and changed the name. Said, "Well, the feds can call it that and we'll fill their forms out saying that. We don't have to call it that and we're calling it something different." This spring, the legislature finally recognized that distinction and affirmed a correct definition in statute and said it does not and does not replace or substitute for the term mental health or substance use disorder, which is, it said in statute, a stigmatizing term and harmful to those seeking help. That was just this spring. And unfortunately, I happened to just see some draft regulations from the same agency of human services that referred to behavioral health. So, we're not there yet. Um, second example, med compliance. And this is interesting because this is a real news media thing that identifies uh criminal activity, violence of having occurred because a person who had a mental illness stopped taking their medication. It doesn't talk about the fact that medication doesn't always work for everyone. Might not have been because they stopped taking it. Might have been that medication isn't always effective. uh doesn't talk about the side effects that lead to some people dis discontinuing or other illnesses, but it blames a violent event strictly on stopping medication, which creates, and this is a quote from an article here, a generalized false narrative that all unmedicated individuals are dangerous. And when we use the term a generalized false narrative, does that ring a bell as a definition for something else like bias discrimination? Because in fact, if you look at the medical science on medication non-adherence rates, it turns out that 50% or so of people don't follow their medication and discontinue their meds for chronic conditions like asthma, diabetes, heart, depression, and yet one group is signaled out and being blamed for violence. You can also look at people who are hospitalized in Vermont involuntarily for treatment refusal. The vast majority of them, they're not being hospitalized in any relationship to any kind of criminal behavior. It's just not a link that's valid. Health equity. This is a great headline. Leopold wants mental cases treated at general hospitals. This is 1965. A mental health commissioner urging that mental health be integrated with general hospital medical care. Couple of quotes from the article from him. Mental patients have been treated as social rejects. The longer they are kept apart, he warned, the longer it will take for them to improve. And he noted that there were common areas of medic medicine that worked best if that everyone was treated in the same facility, laboratory, x-rays, therapy. Yet the reality is that we continue to segregate. Integration is about a system of care. It's not just about individual treatment. The largest mental health hospital in Vermont is segregated for medical care. Insurers like Brutecost Bruce Shield continue to seg segregate their mental health coverage despite parity laws which only have to do with par in co-ayments. And when the budget got tight, Central Vermont Medical Center closed its impatient site beds, reducing community access, saying it was losing money due to reimbursements from insurers not meeting the costs of care. I just read today on on an update a piece about um payment reform and referencing the fact that the number of people who bored in an emergency room for lack of an inpatient bed. It's not just a mental health issue. It's not just a psychiatry issue. I had an aunt who had a respiratory illness. She's passed away since then, but she boarded for two days in the emergency room because they didn't have an inpatient bed upstairs central Vermont. But it's five times the rate for any anyone in a psychiatric crisis or needing inpatient admission to a psychiatric unit. Then we've got something called hey turn. There we go. Something called diagnostic overshadowing. This was a New York Times article that went into great depth. It was a whole news analysis that went on for pages talking about history and current uh issues and deaths and actual occasions about diagnostic overshadowing. And that's defined as when a mental health label on a medical record crowds out independent judgment resulting in a misdiagnosis. Symptoms symptoms symptoms being misattributed for example. It's not a deliberate bias by a physician. It's what we call implicit bias, which means we're not doing it on purpose, but it is an absolute re reality in our healthcare system. So, how are we doing today like this spring on sort of some of those issues? This is some information from a from a an actual medical record. uh April of 2026. It's a Vermont case. Person being treated uh for a cereble hemorrhage from a ruptured aneurysm. And that patient had an old history of major depressive disorder that had been in remission for 20 years. So what did their chart say? Now you can see everybody can see their charts on uh my chart online and under the section that said history of present illness and complications it said as it's kind of here's the summary of this person 70year-old female with pertinent past medical history significant for major depressive disorder and strong family history of cerebral aneurysms. Why was a major depressive disorder in remission for the past 20 years, pertinent past medical history for an aneurysm? And in fact, as listed in the chart in other places, always highlighted always in even the briefest summary, chronic medical problems, depression. And we wonder why some people might be afraid of disclosure or of integrated health care records. So, you know, uh spoiler alert or whatever or spoiler uh how did I get my hands on a uh privacy protected record like that since I've told you it is the exact words of the record. That's mine. That's my medical record. Um, and I had a cerebral hemorrhage in April of this year and looking at my records later found all of these references to uh my in remission major depressive disorder. So, I am really grateful to the Vermont State Archives for the focus of this speaker series. Um, both because of those who came before us, the progress that's been made, and that continuing quest for liberty, equality, justice, and acceptance among marginalized groups. But I have to tell you, this project has really been um my pride and joy. Um, one of the things that meant a whole lot, I wanted their names remembered, not just buried in some record. And now today in the this picture is in the uh entry vestibule of the new agency of human services administration building where they have a whole history display about the Vermont State Hospital. um and it includes um the list of people in memory of the people who are buried on the grounds and references the the two uh not clearly located but the two different burial sites. So that was um it was probably one of the best days of my life when I saw that that poster. Um, that was pretty exciting. And you know, because future people who are looking for genealogy, um, and in order to not just have it lost in my computer forever, how I got to where I got, um, I put it into a book form and had it, um, had it published on a, you know, one of these self-publishing sites, um, so that I could record what I found out and how I found it. So that's his book. I made copies for places like the archives and uh the historical society and that's available just at printing cost uh on the site lulu.com. That's all you have to remember lu.com. Um, but I when I say because of future people looking, one of the most gratifying things has been several occasions already where somebody looking for someone did find the information they wanted. Um, the earliest one actually goes back to my first beginning of work after the flood. Uh, when a news um, the AP wire service had done an article about my search and talked about a couple of the people I named that I knew of at that time. One of them was a young mother who died in childbirth and she and the infant are both buried in the asylum cemetery. And that story was recounted. This woman emailed me, wrote to me from Connecticut saying she had been doing family de genealogy for years. She knew she had this great great aunt who had died in some inst. She had been institutionalized by reason of the fact that she was lingo of the time deaf and dumb. Um but she had been institutionalized. Um and they never she couldn't find where or how she died or when or where she was. And she found out thanks to that news article. She was so incredibly grateful. Uh, since then I've heard from other people looking for somebody saying, "I think they must be buried on the grounds because I can't find them." Well, I had the list I had completed and I said, "Well, actually, no. I have the information. They're buried in your town cemetery. Here's the name of the cemetery." Um or one day somebody who was actually hiking up the trail to go see that marker because they had likewise had a relative they had been told were buried was were buried or died at the state hospital. So they thought well maybe they're at that cemetery and they were about halfway up the climb. And I said well you know it's worth seeing the memorial if you want to see it but there's nobody buried there. So, um, one of the most interesting stories, um, I guess we look like we're okay on time, unless there were a ton of people who had questions that can't wait because, um, I would love to show you, uh, two other things. The first is a little bit more about that second burial site and the other is about what happened with this other woman who was looking for her great great aunt and how it has started the search for the lost cemetery in Brattleboro. Uh so turn quickly to those. Whoops. That's that's the book lulu.com for it's 1764 plus shipping. Um, oh, end of slideshow. Oh, no. Cuz that's the one that doesn't have Uh-oh. Uh, they're there. They're on my laptop, which I forgot the cord, but there'll be plenty of cord left for just doing a few at the end here. So, I'm just going to switch these. Can we switch these around? And my apologies to the uh the orca uh watchers. These slides I added on later. I thought this is something they might want to see too. Um, and so it's not uh uh not on that slide show. Oh, thank you. That was quick. Oh, that's not up there yet, though. But that's cuz I have to just sit. Hi. Slideshow uh from beginning. Okay. Uh so we will flip really quickly. That also means there's one that I inserted in there that uh was left out that's worth seeing and that is uh this is in terms of what is the effect of stigma. This was a study that was done only a few years ago. Nearly half of all patients would not tell their doctors if they were suicidal or depressed. Both out of the fear of judgment and fear of the long-term implications of sharing that information. Uh but then these ones are all ones we've been through. Now we get to uh so remember when I told you that bump in the river is the place to watch for in each of these slides as they change. Uh this one is from 1829. An elevation map with some of the very old homes and so forth. The Central Vermont Railroad was there. The interstate was not. But if you look right above the T in central or the N and the T, you'll see what's Whoops. Oh, what happened? Whoops. Wait, it was there and now it's got to go back there. Okay, I bumped it with that. Okay, sorry about that. Um, >> so on. Yeah, we're >> Yeah. >> Oh, it's not going on up there, though. Okay, so maybe I have to go back to shoot. >> Okay, I think >> Oh, >> nope. Oh, >> I don't know what that is. >> Yeah, it was working when we tested it before. The reason we didn't use mine is cuz I forgot my charger as opposed to it not working. It's working on my screen here, but it's not showing up. It It's on my laptop and it's plugged in here. >> Up here. Oh, >> I wonder if it hit this >> or did we have to switch it because we went from that one to this one? >> We should try unplugging and plugging back in. >> Try plugging it back in. H >> uh maybe if I unplug it and go back to um uh you know do do slideshow. >> Oh yeah, if you hit escape >> uh escape. Okay, slideshow uh [groaning] from beginning. And now plug it in. >> No, it's showing on my screen, but you're not getting it. I I'll just give you I'll have to give you a verbal description, which I sort of gave you before, but in terms of that um location, um yeah, it's not not coming up. Um I have slides showing from uh 1962 um when the interstate had just been been built and you can see where um the old town dump was being moved. It had been on the other side of the interstate. When the interstate went through the state bought that land, they moved the dump. Um and on that you can see from above, it's an aerial picture. You can see the old Johnson cemetery, the Johnson family. A lot of people mistake that and think, "Oh, that must be that state hospital cemetery because you can see it from the interstate." And that's actually uh the Johnson family uh family cemetery and it's got stones and it's got names on it and so forth. Um, but knowing where the old dump road is important because the some of those early references said it was located between the dump road and the Wooki River. So that, you know, that narrows it to one specific. So you've got a a middle divide of that bumpout piece by where the dump road was. And then you have a top and bottom divide because the state farm only was the upper half of it. The lower half of it or the lower third was owned by the Johnson family and had their farm there and they wouldn't have been burying people on somebody else's farm. So that brought it down to a quadrant rather than that whole area. The Johnson Farm part was sold to the town of Waterbury in 1948. It became landlocked by the interstate, most of that property, and Waterbury couldn't make any use of it. On the other hand, the state still owned the upper half of that bumpout spot, and the state said, "We're not really using that for anything. What if we do a trade?" And if you look at the map, what's interesting is that the part that Waterbury owned is like about five times bigger than what the state owned. But what the state owned was valuable land that could be developed and what the the forest the other part was landlocked. So they did a trade which greatly increased the sizes of Putman Putman state forest which is where those bike trails are now. And it meant that um Waterbury owns that fur first bumpout spot. But it also gives us where that dividing line was. So we come up with those four quadrants. And that's why I identified that one quadrant as being where that most likely was. And that you wouldn't have put a burying ground out in the middle of your farm field. This was rich farmland. They farmed it. You wouldn't stick it in the middle. You'd put it along the edge. And it was based on that that my best guess is that it's on the edge of that the lower edge of the quadrant. Why the lower edge as opposed to the opposite edge? Because that 100-year-old woman who was sharing what the rumors had been at the time that she worked at the state hospital, it was just north of where the ICE center is now and it was north of the Johnson Cemetery. Well, the ice center is very near that dividing line. The ice center is not You wouldn't say it was just north there uh if it was at the upper end of that quadrant. So, it narrows it down to a pretty reasonable um guesstimate of that site. Um, but the other interesting story was another person who on that find a grave website, if you're familiar with it at all, anyone can add a grave, saying, you know, I know this person's grave is here. Um, there are people who volunteer and do whole graveyards of and even take pictures of all the graves. So, you can look up relatives and see their see their grapes. After I first did an article back in 2012 about this work in Counterpoint, somebody took it on themselves to take my work and put it up on the Find a Grave website as these people are buried at this site. Well, of course, later I found out that not all of that was necessarily accurate. Um, it's been really hard to get them to correct it because I'm not the person who put it up there. And I said, "Well, I am the person who put it up there. It was my article that led somebody to put it up." But any rate, one of that led me to looking at that site and I discovered a bunch of other names that had been added to the names that had been in my article. And so I tried to contact those people and say, "Why did you think your relative was buried here?" Because I knew some of them couldn't be because they died later. And this person said,"Well, our family was always told that my great great aunt was buried on the grounds of the state asylum." And so it it had to be then. And I sort of probed with her. I said, "What did it say on her death certificate?" I said, "Well, we never found her death certificate." Said, "Well, maybe I can help." And I looked it up. She had a slightly unusual spelling of her name, but it turned out she died in Brattleboro at the Brattleboro retreat. This woman was from Massachusetts. Oh, the Vermont Asylum, you know. So, they assumed one thing and she was actually in Brattleboro. And it said she was buried in the Fairfield Cemetery. Fairview, sorry. There is no Fair View Cemetery in Brattleboro. So, that got really kind of curious. Um, I gave that information to her. I didn't really pursue it at the time, but I did come across uh a book kind of similar to mine in the sense that it was somebody who put together, it was softbound, but work she had done about the old Brattleboroough Retreat Cemetery, which is across the street from their main entrance, um which was used up until about 1898, uh until it got to capacity. She had done work going through old retreat files to identify the people who were there. And then she said on her list, a new list starts. She put it on a new page saying this new beginning in 1900 they started the retreat started a new cemetery called Fair View Cemetery. And it just listed three names and that was where the record ended. I said, "Oh, they had a new cemetery somewhere." So that led to, you know, all sorts of fun digging. Um, and actually I looked up death certificates and found that there were 30 to 40 people whose death certificates all said buried on the retreat grounds or buried at the Fair View Cemetery. And they were definitely not they were after 1900. They were not in the old cemetery that is marked uh across from the retreat. So it was really intriguing. here. We kind of knew the people but had no idea the place in this this woman who did the work. Her name was Marjorie uh How and she had done a lot of work and she had found an old map and what she said was fascinating because she went and found the site. She said um her book said she found this cemetery had not been found. She's writing in 1900. I'm sorry, in in 2000. Get my centuries wrong. She's writing in 2000, but has passed away since writing this. Um, this cemetery had not been found by me until I came upon a map of the early retreats land that included a small piece of land on their upper fields where the Brattleboro country club now has a golf course. This piece is labeled cemetery on the map. There's a map that says cemetery. On visiting this piece of land, I found a small section of land with young trees and ground very thickly covered with leaves, making it hard to look at what might have been. There were no stones or markers that could be seen, but it's in an odd place surrounded on three sides by the golf course and one side by the dirt road. Uh she mentions having heard rumors about people being placed in baskets and taken on wagons to the higher fields and buried uh in the old times. Um, so, uh, there was also, well, so that was I was going to show you this amazing map I made as a non-map maker, but I ended up finding several old maps, not historically accurate maps, but the first one was a map in uh, in 1914 that had been done showing what land was first leased to the country club for golf course. They had a ninehole golf course and it showed it drew on the retreat land. And what was interesting is it left out a big chunk that was somebody else's farm field and then it left out this other little chunk at the bottom. Okay, that's funny. All that land but not that chunk. Okay, that was in uh 1914. The second map was in 1930 and that was when the retreat doubled in size what they were renting. I mean the the country club doubled in size what they were renting from the retreat and there was a new map of the retreat golf course. So it's not an official map. It's a map of the golf course. It has all the new holes. They've got 18 holes now. And then it's got this one funny little piece where from a uh landscaping point of view, it was carved out by a row of shrubbery or trees. You can't really tell, but it had no golf course on that one little piece of land. Then we go to 1931 where I find the map that she referenced on file with the clerk's office. Somebody had turned it in. It was a formal surveyors and it showed that same big piece of retreat property still all owned by the retreat and it's got this one little piece of land that's marked cemetery. And I took they're all different directions and different sizes and all that. So I took my little ruler and I said, "Okay, if I take this stretch of road and match it to this stretch of road and this stretch of road and I turn them all so they're facing the same direction, look at that. Bingo. It's the same piece of land. So, the retreat didn't rent that piece of land in 1914. Gee, last burial 1913. All right. And in 1930 when they did rent it, it was landscaped. It was carved out without golf course on it. And then 1931, somebody according to the town clerk had to have been the retreat turns in a map shows that same exact plot labeled as cemetery. And then we get to 2002 when the retreat, the country club has run out of money, looks at their property and says, "Gee, do we have any pieces of land that we don't have golf course on and that's along a road so we could carve out and sell some lots to make money? Oh, look, look at this little one. Our golf course doesn't go across it. It's kind of, you know, secluded and right on a dirt road. Let's sell that one." and they did and it was bought and a beautiful, very beautiful grand house was built on that lot. Pretty strong hunch that there's a cemetery there. I spoke to the developer. I spoke to a ton of people. Uh was people in Florida and North Carolina retired, you know, who had been involved in some of the boards of the retreat at the time. But um the guy who built the house said, "Well, it couldn't have been a cemetery. We would have dug up bones and we would have stopped building." Well, just like the uh state hospital cemetery, would you start a new cemetery dead center of a piece of land? No. You'd start along the edge. Where did they put the house? Dead center. So, it doesn't mean there's not uh some burials uh on that lot of land. Um when it comes to the state uh unburied funds uh fund for unburied sites, usually it has to be st state line. If it's priv private property, the property owner has to agree. And I met with the owner of this property, went over all the research I had done. Um and he has agreed. Um, so this is still very much a a work in progress. The state archaeologist is working on getting funding approved to do a ground penetrating radar survey. The problem is going to be at one point uh the first owner actually grew trees over all of it. So it was tree secluded. They've all been cut down now by the owner prior to the current one, but probably they still have root systems that might interfere with ground penetrate uh radar to do anything. But um that's that's the best we can hope for. There is a glitch to this story. I've made it sound very convincing, but there's a big glitch. Uh a really kind of bizarre one. In 1900, the same year that we're talking about, Bridaloo is putting in a big new cemetery called Morningside Cemetery. It's still there. It was divided into subsections, kind of like little subdivisions in a property thing. One of the subdivisions was called Fair View. The person who was superintendent of the Brattleboro retreat at the time was like a big wig in lots of things. He was on the uh board of trustees for the bank in town. He was on all these things and he was on the board of directors for the brand new Morningside Cemetery. So, some people would say, well, gee, wouldn't it have been logical that he would have had a carveout section in the Fair View section for retreat unclaimed uh deaths? There's no names registered as being there. There's no record of that. Uh but there certainly would be a logic. And um current retreat leadership says, "Well, we think that's where they probably are. We don't think they would have been in a forgotten piece of land that we sold to the country club." Um, and I said, "Well, I don't know. You could read the evidence different ways, but somebody turned in a map saying cemetery on that spot." Um, so that's a uh a mystery uh yet in progress. But so that's my story. [applause] Yep. I I think the plan now is we've got lots of time for um for your questions. Um you know, I realized I I left out some probably key things. One that comes to mind is like why did it all end in 1913? Why did they stop doing it? Well, because Vermont changed its laws. and it changed its laws and said if somebody ends up in a state institution and dies, the person the town that sent them to that institution is responsible for the burial, not the institution. The states had some interest in not having to worry about these deceased bodies. So from that time on it was the overseer of the poor in that town who was in charge of burials for uh patients there. So that that was why that was the end point. But um she'll bring you the mic. Carol will bring you the mic. And oh, there we are for uh any questions. >> I was wondering if the state archaeologist's office has a timeline for when they might research where the memorial is in Waterbury. Um you said that they're aware of it, but I just wondered if you knew when they might try and find them. Um, I last talked to them. We we were actually going to meet in the spring. Um, my life took a little diversion this spring. So, I in fact I missed his email while I was in the ICU. I he emailed me saying he he had the funds that he could include for the Brattleboro one and I missed replying to him. So, he said, "I guess I guess the owner hasn't agreed yet." And I also missed the email from the owner saying, "Yeah, I've thought about it and I would agree to having this state ar." So that's going to happen, but it got delayed because of that. And the the the Waterbury site again, it, you know, it's on his radar. I don't think that one is much of a priority because it's kind of a tough it's if it's not what was the most logical spot but it's somewhere in that area and it's in the woods there's no way you can do like ground penetrating radars and you can't do earth scraping where it's a large area so intriguing sidebar what has to do with human remains detection dogs who can do antique fascinating story in the New York Times about dogs who have been trained in this who detected uh uh thousand-year-old human remains. So when they're really trained, they have incredible sense of smell. There's a woman in Vermont who has some dogs trained in that. We brought her she came down to the water breed down by the river and they indicated they they have levels of indication. I mean, if they're really sure, they will sit there and not move and, you know, and they didn't do that, but they were honing in. There were areas that they were giving an indication that they were smelling something in that area. So, um, but I think he he was going to go back and just do some testing of how deep the silk was, but that wasn't, you know, he wanted to do that just to satisfy curiosity. That wasn't going to lead to finding anything. the one up on Perry Hill. Um, again, it's going to be a tough I mean, he was trying to think of ideas of ways he could narrow it down. So, I don't think he has a timeline. I think it's uh on his mind as opposed to the Brattleboroough one where it's a much firmer uh plan to move forward. >> Yeah. >> Um, so we started at Waterbury and we wound up in Brown. Are there other um thing I'm thinking about Brandon or other places where um would this have happened these other places? >> Yeah, that's a great question. Um because I got led into some sidebars like Bradar. I also got led into the sidebar of the Windsor State Prison. They have a cemetery, but it did not start until the time after Windsor prison first opened. And because of a news article that had been in, somebody contacted me. It turns out that there it's more than rumors. A an elderly person who was a superintendent in the early days of Windsor and whose father was a warden before him. In the early years, they buried prisoners, unclaimed bodies of prisoners in the exercise yard, the state prison. And he said that back in the late 90s there was some excavation going on and somebody ran into some bones like look like human bones. Oh, what should we do? And they called the attorney or whatever the the prison attorney who said bury him back up and don't say anything. It was before the laws had been passed saying what you had to do if you ran into bones. Um, so we the state archaeologist and I and a couple other people actually went down there and the bottom line about that ground penetrating radar would do nothing because first of all it's under pavement now. It's a parking lot. There is now senior housing in the building. Um, and it was also used some of that area was used to dump stuff. It would not be able to detect anything with ground radar. and he said unless the desire, you know, would be to dig this whole area up, which nobody was interested in disturbing that, um, what was going to h I at that point had my hands full and I I turned it over to the historical society in Windsor was going to pursue seeing if they could get a little more information. This older guy, he was in his 80s. older isn't so old anymore now that I'm in my 70s. You know, 80s is not old. But at any rate, um he said he still had records up in his attic and they were going to work with him and and possibly like try to put a plaque up on the site um but not be able to be more uh definitive. Brandon is another one. Um, Brandon, I had always heard they had a marked cemetery. They had a record of burials. Uh, there was a rededication at one point, but actually it turns out that was of some of the later burials, not the earliest ones. And somebody just got in touch with me two weeks ago. Uh, this uh guy who's on his own like who wants to do who started on a project to try to identify and locate uh earlier burials at at Brandon the Brandon School. Brandon did open later than the state hospital. So presumably it was beyond the time when they would have been on the grounds as opposed to being the responsibility of of their hometown. Um but he's he's u planning to work on that. >> Yeah. Um, I've been to the uh Windsor Cemetery and is is there not an area with I think just white crosses? >> Yes. And is that like a memorial to the prisoners or >> No, th those are those are crosses for individual prisoners who were buried there, but I forget the year. It's starting at a certain year. >> Yeah. >> Later than when the prisoner opened. >> Okay. And the information is that there were prisoners buried just buried in the prison yard prior to the start of that cemetery. That one starts sometime in the early 1900s and goes through current there. The LA when I went up there, the most recent one was like 2024. >> Yeah. I couldn't remember if there there were names or just >> Yeah, there are names and dates on those. Okay. Thanks. >> Little white crosses. What about um the General Medical Hospital, excuse me, in Bronson? I don't know what year that hospital was started, but I'm just thinking about given all the um anchor research that was being done on these unnamed individuals. Where were their burials happening? to read, you know, some very dear folks in Burlington. >> Well, yeah. You know, I think um if it was somebody who was at the hospital, they would have cons had to consent and probably pre-arranged their burial. The problem for the medical students and for the research. It was both medical education and research is that they didn't have access to enough donor bodies. That's why there was the grave digging, grave robbery problem. And that's why the state passed that law saying if it's an unclaimed body at at any institution then any doctor who wants it for education or for research can requisition it was not restricted I mean as far as I know uh UVM was the only one who acted on it but was not restricted to a teaching institution or something was any physician can requisition uh a body uh if it's for education or research so I would assume that where they use them for education or research, it was either by consent um or it was um from one of the institutions and they did the hospital when they tried to look up some of this they had identified most of them were did seem to have been from the state hospital. They did have some from Brandon and they did have some from the battle retreat but their list was not complete and they did merge mine in so that they have a more complete list. It probably still is not complete. I'll tell you a big disappointment in my life. I got to say they had that convocation and they mentioned my work and the appreciation and I was only less than a mile away but I was in the I was in the UVM rehab post brain hemorrhage so I couldn't go. [laughter] Uh, >> I'm curious. Um, you've been working on this for a while and have discovered so much. I saw your presentation that you did to the Vermont Old Cemetery Association a couple years ago and was [clears throat] fascinated which is why I came back here. What is your next step? Where where are you going to focus your energy? Now, >> I don't know. There were really two big divides. The first chunk of my research, which a fair amount of it was misguided, but it some of it really did get places, was the first couple of years after Irene, I then got caught up with work and other stuff. And if any of you have ever just done genealogy, you know, you got to be sucked in like fully. You can't do it in dribbs and drabs. So, it was not until I had retired from my other job on the with the newspaper that I said, "Oh, I want to go up. I want to go up and close a few loopholes, you know, and put together that research had done. And I discovered, well, there more than loopholes, you know, there's a lot to do. And so then I really for a couple of years, you can ask the people at the archives, they were at times seeing me day after day, all days pouring over stuff. But um so the bigger chunk of it was done and then and then I put the book together. Um it was like a year and a half ago that I first started putting it in book form. Um I you know when I discovered the link to the retreat, this woman who I helped her find her great great aunt's uh death certificate. Um I turned that over I told the retreat about it. I I I didn't have time to go into a whole new one. I just turned that over to the retreat and they had some research student assistant or whatever who was going to try to look into things and when I finished my book and I hadn't heard much they hadn't made much progress at the retreat and I thought okay I want to look into this a little more and I just looked up some death certificates online and was like oh my gosh there's like 30 or 40 people I got to see if I can find this you know so I just kind of got lured into that new project So, um, that's kind of as far as I can go with that one. So, who knows what the next I don't have one in mind. This none of this was something I had in mind. >> I'm sorry, I arrived a little late, so you might have to address this, but the home that you were talking about that was built on the cemetery, >> was there any hauntings or anything like that? >> There were no reports of that by anyone. Um, I did not reach the intermediary owners of the home. Um, you know, there's some people you always wonder, yeah, if you send them registered mail and they don't answer, is that just cuz they didn't get it or they couldn't be bothered or is there a reason they're not answering me? You know, [laughter] the surveyor who did that survey, why is she not answering? But, um, no, as far as I know, it wasn't that. I I was not able to reach them. I did reach the person who built it. So, the first number and the people who are there now and and uh there were no I went to one of the Brattleboro um uh cemetery uh association meetings and uh nobody there had ever heard any reports of that. So, >> I'm going to circle back to my question before. Aside from the anatomical research, um I don't know when the first hospital went up in Burlington, but is it not possible that there's um areas or one cemetery with many marked because lots of people were dying, you know, all sorts of things infection. Uh yes, I don't know about related to the hospital. I do know from getting to know the state archaeologist, there's a whole area in Burlington where there's an old Civil War unmarked uh burying ground that's under where homes have been built now. And from time to time there's some kind of work being done and they turn up pieces of it and they've done a lot of work trying to identify the area. That is actually one of the places that was a problem with grave robbery. When they adopted the law in 1888, students had kind of caught word that you could find bodies in these uh unmarked graves or this big field or whatever in Burlington from the Civil War series. And and that's when the legislature said, "No, no, no, no, no. We'll give them a legal way to get these to get bodies for their work." Um, so >> well forgetting the legal way was through. >> Oh, I don't know exactly the old north end maybe. >> North. >> Yeah. Okay. >> They were doing some road work 5 10 years ago and found three bodies when they went to >> Okay. So, I there's actually a fascinating story going on right now in I think it's in Minnesota where there's a a group of descendants who have formed a group and there's a law that got passed there about what happens if something is found. And there was a hospital expanding their footprint into where this old poor farm and mental institution graveyard was. And they were just kind of digging them up and sending them to the local museum, I guess. And uh under the new law, this is this family descending group sued um and were the hospital was ordered to follow the plan presented by this group of how to respectively disinccate them for this hospital expansion. The hospital the hospital counter sued saying, "Oh, that's too expensive a plan. We're not going to do that." And the last I checked on it, um this woman the woman involved had gotten in touch with me about it. How did you get the law changed in Vermont? Because we're trying to get the law changed. Um and uh but the last I checked it was still in the courts being battled over the appropriate way to address this cemetery that had been found. >> It's very humane for a hospital. >> Oh yeah. Hospital fighting doing the right thing. But of course the museum there is saying but we're doing the right thing. We're using it for education and we're treating them respectfully and wrap it up. >> Great. Thank you all so much. [applause] The slides you couldn't see of the people interested in the Waterbury site. Um, I've got the uh you can come up and look on my laptop. Uh, and and also of the um the Bridalboro maps. I I overlay them on each other. >> Well, there you go. Why don't we we can just go through them quickly now. Let's see. I can point out to you that see that bump on the river? That's the land we're talking about. Here's the interstate. This is the old farmlands when they were still being farmed before they got reforested. So somewhere under here is the path that goes there's a tunnel under the interstate that was preserved because it was the way to get up to the farms. This here is the old dump road. This here is where the new dump went because they could no longer use the dump that was on the other side. This is the Johnson Cemetery. And so if you look at this and you say, "Well, this part was owned by the Johnson's when the burials were taking place and this is the part that was being farmed that was between the dump road and the Wiski River, then you're saying that that's why my best guess is here." And then if you look at the next one that shows you, oh well, this was the map I finally found that showed this was the piece that Waterbury owned. You see, it's a huge piece of land compared to this little piece that was part of what uh the state owned, but it was a great trade because they could put up their ice center and all there and they changed the the dump road and so they traded that and all those bike trails are now there. So then next one. Yeah. So then this is an overhead flight. This is where I drew this line here at about where that's divided. This is the ice center. This is the line of the old dump road because they realigned the road for the parking and all. This is a soccer field, but again, so this is the spot. It's it's all trees and overgrown. Um, this would be the the hypothetical spot. All right. Uh, next one. This is the same same thing. Uh, but it's flipped. Uh, the aerial photos flipped. So again, this is the suspected area. This is the Johnson Cemetery. This is now a gravel pit for Waterbury was the was the town dump the ice center. It's a little clump of trees is where there's a foundation of an old farmhouse. And so they sort of said it should be preserved. And here is where the uh underpass goes. And when you go up that first bike trail, that's where the uh the the cemetery marker is. And then okay, the Brattleboro. Next one. This is just briefly where it says list of interments in the new retreat cemetery known as Fair View. All right. And then the next one, this is my fun one where I took these four maps, got them to the same size proportions and got them to face the same directions cuz they were all different. And here, uh, let's see which one. This is the the 31 one, which said cemetery. It's marked cemetery. This was the ninehole golf course. This part was not rented to the country club, but there's this little piece that was added to what's not rented. And then this one, 1930, the new golf course with the 18 holes and this piece marked off clearly, part of the rental, but no golf course built on it and some kind of landscaping done to separate it. And then this is the 2002 which is where they decided to draw the lines to create uh this building line. So you line them all up and you say, "Gee whiz, looks to me like that's where the cemetery is." [laughter] So great. Glad you got the slides. [applause] We had all but the last [applause] ones. So great. >> So thank you all for coming this afternoon. Um Cara, when is the next speaker series? Yes. So the next one is September 17th. We have a handout if you need it. It's going to be Kate Kenny talking about her archaeology and the records related to Fort Vengeance in Pittsburgh, Vermont. Um so that's really exciting. Um so we have a handout that also has a QR code for any feedback. So please feel free to take one and then feedback. Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> I don't know when you stepped in, but they're very great. >> Yes. Well, I heard lots of applause. [music] >> [music]