Product Description
by Linda S. Stuhler (Author)
THE INMATES OF WILLARD 1870 TO 1900, A GENEALOGY RESOURCE, was written for those who want to glimpse the past and enjoy reading historical documents with little or no interpretation. I had three objectives for writing the book: to make the names of the Inmates of Willard from the U.S. Federal Censuses available to people who are searching for an ancestor; to share the old documents that I have collected and transcribed; and to make people aware of the thousands of former patients who were buried in anonymous, unmarked graves. Although this book deals with the specifics of the Willard Asylum for the Pauper Chronic Insane, and its inmates; the laws, rules, and regulations applied to all county poor houses, city alms houses, and public and private insane asylums in the State of New York during the nineteenth century. It outlines the struggle between the county poor house system of caring for the mentally ill and the eventual takeover by the state hospital system. Visit my blog at: https: //inmatesofwillard.com
Author Biography
Linda Stuhler is a Genealogy Geek from Rochester, New York, who loves to find out the facts. She has been researching her family tree for twenty years and has accumulated an abundance of information on various subjects that she enjoys sharing on her blog at: https: //inmatesofwillard.com/. She was responsible for the creation of the New York State Senate Bill S840, initiated in August 2011, which allows for the release of the names, dates of birth and death, of former patients who were buried in anonymous graves in New York State Custodial Institutions. The bill was changed from the original draft to S840A and does not work the way it was intended. It became a law on August 18, 2016, but it did not include provisions for a searchable database available to the public as New York State lawmakers and the Office of Mental Health believed that if they did so, they would be sued. Although she rarely gets the credit for her efforts, without her and her blog, the word would never have made it out to the general public
