Yikes. Rockland?

Note: For the complete list of posts, go HERE.

Have you ever seen the Martin Scorcese film Shutter Island?  In the movie, U.S. Marshals Edward "Teddy" Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule travel to the Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island in Boston Harbor. They are investigating the disappearance of patient Rachel Solando, who was incarcerated for drowning her three children. Needless to say, good things do not happen.

Well….I can’t say what it’s like now, but the old and abandoned Rockland Psychiatric Hospital seems also to be a pretty scary place. 

Here’s a short description from The Abandoned Rockland Psychiatric Center in Orangeburg, NY is Now the Stuff of Nightmares by Jinwoo Chong. 

The semi-abandoned Rockland Psychiatric Center in Orangeburg, NY, formerly Rockland State Hospital, was one of the many asylums built during a particular time period in American history that sought, at least at first, to approach mental illness with spaciousness and tranquility. Opened in 1931, like most, it fell as treatment evolved from an agrarian philosophy to the use of more controversial methods. In addition, several unique cases of negligence and patient death marred its reputation.

At the start, it contained over 5,000 beds, and by 1959 was treating over 9,000 patients with around 2,000 on staff. Even with 2,000 staffers, however, the hospital languished throughout the two World Wars when doctors and nurses kept getting drafted to the army. Reports showed 300 patients assigned to one psychiatrist, at one point. Most patients alive today, many of whom comment with their own stories on blog posts and web tours of the abandoned hospital, reference some forms of treatment that would be considered abusive today.

Note: Many of the exterior scenes for the series Orange is the New Black were filmed here.

Yikes. So there was no fiery demise in the 1930s for my grandparents, but there was this. 

I decided the time had come to ask my Mom about all of this. And unless she is an actress worthy of an Oscar, I don’t think she knew. And when I shared everything I had found out the only thing she did say was, “But where did you get this whole fire thing?”

Now, this really threw me.

So I checked with my sister June and asked if she knew how Frank and Elizabeth had died. She said, “In a fire in the 1930s.” OK, check.

I asked genealogical savant Brother Joe, and he said he also wondered where I had gotten the whole fire thing, but figured I had it on good authority, so he didn’t say anything. And none of the rest of my siblings had heard the fire story either.

Quite an origins story.