What We Don’t Talk About Enough

Learning about our family history is exciting. We’re hoping to find interesting people who have done interesting things--maybe even outstanding things. We’re hoping to connect to famous people in history. Sometimes we do, but most of us have ancestors and family members who just lived normal lives, working hard at surviving and making a life for themselves and their families.

Along the way, we discover family members who struggled with surviving and supporting themselves or their families. They may have even abandoned their families. We ask ourselves why? Often these stories don’t get passed down through the family and we don’t learn why.

Often the root cause is mental illness, something we only recently talked about in our culture. In the past, a person with mental illness may have been sent away to a hospital or home and forgotten. It’s a shock when we discover a family member in a mental home or hospital through a census record or an obituary.

My first experience with this is discovering my great-grandfather, Johan Anton Hork, was so distraught that he drank carbolic acid in the backroom of a saloon when they would not serve him anymore. I discovered this very early in my research. I just asked for an obituary from the library in Sheridan, Wyoming, and got a lot more than I expected.[1]

Later, I discovered that two of his sons, Frank W. Hork and Raymond J. Hork, were sent to the Montana State Hospital where they died, Raymond at age twenty-eight, and Frank at age sixty-seven.[2] The Montana State Archives have records from the state hospital but these are closed to researchers. So, I don’t know why they were sent there. Frank died of chronic myocarditis and Raymond of exhaustion of dementia precox.

His third son, my grandfather, lived his last years in a veteran’s hospital, likely due to alcoholism, though he died of suppurative tracheobronchitis due to bullous emphysema.[3] When I asked my aunts about why he was in the hospital, they said he was violent when drinking.

A pattern can be seen here. The father was a heavy drinker and may have been violent. He was kicked out of his home. Three sons had mental issues. Two were sent to the state hospital and the third was sent away. My grandparents never divorced but my grandmother kept her children from their father.

We should talk about mental illness that runs in the family. Keeping it secret doesn’t help descendants who may suffer from their mental illness. Knowing the history of mental illness may help in getting the proper treatment.

#52Ancestors-Week 36: “We Don’t Talk About It”

This is my seventh year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow (https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/) at Generations Cafe.

I write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

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[1] "The Carbolic Route," The Sheridan (Wyoming) Enterprise, 17 Aug 1906, p 3. Many newspapers across the west covered this incident. I found the news in San Francisco papers once newspapers were digitized widely.

[2] For Frank, see Montana State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, death certificates, no. 15115, Deer Lodge Co, Frank M. Hork, 1952. For Raymond, see Montana State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, death certificate, no. 126234, Deer Lodge Co, Raymond J. Hork, 1917.

[3] California State Department of Public Health, certificate of death, local no. 7097-049175, Los Angeles County, William Cyril Hork.

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