Genealogy and the Challenge of Sanitizing Family History

I inherited my family's genealogy from my mom.  The really tough stuff had already been done and it was more a matter of maintenance.  At least that is what I thought.  But then I realized that some "sanitizing" had been done.  Early on it was pointed out that a "cousin" was really an uncle and the anecdote that surrounded that one was very commonplace for the time.

My maternal grandfather's first wife and two of his three children died in the flu epidemic in 1919. 

Here was a young man of 26 left with an infant son.  His son was 'given' to his sister who was married, to raise.  I would have assumed this was a temporary arrangement until he got married again.  However, the woman he married a year later came from a very Catholic family and having met (and been raised in that situation) them likely did not approve of the previous marriage even though it did not end in divorce (oh my, imagine what that would have brought on).  So my Uncle Worthington, whom I have only seen in a single photo from his WWII military service, was always mentioned as a cousin, until I was old enough to ask questions. Then that little discrepancy was cleared up.  Why such a need to hide the truth?  There was no scandal.

When I started working on the history in my twenties and supplementing it with the census records and documents that I could find, I discovered that my Great Uncle John who we had been told as children was a wanderer, who loved to travel and he went off and did not return from his adventures...was not at all a wanderer.  He had been placed in a mental asylum in Michigan where he lived until he died. Apparently in this very same strict Catholic family not only could you not be a widower, but it was also frowned upon to be depressed or mentally ill.

No one could tell me where or when he died or what name he had been there under.  And at the time I was searching that lead in 2002, Michigan records were a tough nut to crack. It is probably time to try that again.  All I really want to know is where the location of his grave is.  They were adamant that no information about his health could be released due to privacy laws.  He's dead?  And I don't want to know about his health record.

Thanks to Ancestry.com I did locate a copy of his World War I registration card which indicated that he was in a hospital in Ohio as early as the age of 20.  That was an interesting experience, finding that document and the eye strain to read the fading scan.  When the words ("unemployed patient at Massillon State Hospital") appeared before my eyes I felt like I had another piece of the puzzle after all this time.  It was a sad piece, but still a piece.  I have no idea when he was shipped off to Michigan, though there is a substantial amount of info on the asylums located there online.

Not long ago, spurred on by the information from draft card and legal documents, I kept digging on relatives and had a surprising find.  I discovered that my father's sister had been married before being married to the uncle I knew growing up.  I saw in the court documents that her mother had gone to the court and authorized her underage marriage to a young man leaving for War in 1944.  I had this wonderful romantic story of the quickie marriage and tragic loss of her husband in battle.  Not quite.  This one was a divorce.  That and the Protestant background of my father were two strikes in the eyes of my Mother's large Catholic family.

I've been working on a friend's genealogy and have hit an interesting somewhat related brick wall.  When his paternal grandmother died, at nearly the same time as my grandfather's first wife, though I suspect of complications of childbirth, the other children were not as lucky as my Uncle Worthington.  They were not placed with a relative.  They were place in an orphanage run by Catholic Nuns in Western Massachusetts called Brightside.

Knowing that it was a Catholic run facility, I knew up front that it would be difficult to locate "facts" no matter how you define the word.  The stories related from my friend were not glowing, warm fuzzy tales of loving care that you read in the history of the facility posted on the church sites in the area.  The facility still exists today though not in the same location or with the same purpose.  Two of the four boys were adopted out, one died in care and my friends father was returned to his home after his father remarried.  At a very young age, he had to care for his sick brother in the facility until the older brother died.

I found just one article in a mental health journal that referenced an overwhelming number of babies during the time period (1920's) that died in care due to failure to thrive specifically mentioning Brightside.  The article also outlined the difficulties of those researchers to find anyone willing to say that the generous nuns had not given all they could in taking in these children and how the closed mouths hindered their research.  No one wants to say bad things about a Nun.  (My Great-Aunt was a Nun....and believe me....I know that she essentially gave her life to a cause, but I never understood how what I saw as a child in her behavior squared with the near royal treatment that Nuns and Priests received).

My confusion lies in the fact that there was not one message board to be found that had adult children looking for family members or relaying stories of their care or lack of care.  I am guessing that the internet came late for the communication.  I am hoping that I can find where my friend's uncle is buried. It would be great also to locate the adopted brothers, but one needle in a haystack at a time.

If anyone who researches cemeteries in Western Mass knows of a cemetery associated with Brightside Orphanage, I would be very grateful for the name and address of it. 


From here on out, I think family members should just be honest with each other.  It makes doing a genealogy challenging when stories are told that are sanitized - which can be fun for someone like me, but it can also leave holes in people's hearts too. 


#brightsideorphanage #orphanage #genealogy #familyhistory


UPDATES:   I was able to locate my friend's uncle who died at age eleven.  He had been shipped from the Brightside orphanage to a hospital in eastern Massachusetts where he died.  I have not found the grave yet (in North Adams, far northwestern Mass. - he really criss-crossed the state).  My friend expressed a lot of gratitude for this knowledge.  Each piece of knowledge is a gift.