Census Notes: St. Louis Insane Asylum, Part 2 OR Searching Institutions
I haven’t been posting much lately, but one of the good things about having a blog out there is you can still hear from readers and sometimes make connections to family members.
One comment today took me back to a posting I made a little over a year ago when I found the listing of the inhabitants of the St. Louis Insane Asylum on the 1900 census. In response, a reader wrote to ask about a great-uncle’s wife who was perhaps an inmate and died in 1881. I told him I had no info other than what I found on the census, and that he might check the 1880 listing for the institution.
Then it occurred to me that I should perhaps check to see if indeed there was a listing. Always a good idea, don’t you think? :-)
So I fired up my Ancestry.com subscription and limited the search to the 1880 census. But how to search for an institution when I didn’t know anyone’s name? So I decided to try just putting “St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA” into the “Lived In” box and entered “insane asylum” (without the quotes) in the keyword box. What I got was a listing for another agency in St. Louis–one for orphans with asylum in the title. So I tried just typing in insane, and again, I got listings for persons who were classified as insane. You may remember that this particular census year, enumerators were instructed to note persons who were “blind, deaf and dumb, crippled, maimed, idiotic, insane, bedridden, or otherwise disabled.” Typing in only the word asylum seemed to work the best. Or perhaps I just made the best pick from the list this time. In any event, it requires some trial and error.
The listings for the residents of the St. Louis Insane Asylum begin on page 1 (penned), 479 (stamped) in ED 438 for St. Louis County, St. Louis City. The enumerator also notes that this is the 237th Election Precinct of the 27th Ward. There are about 11 pages of inmates and workers listed. It is important to note that the census taker did not write the name of the institution at the top of the page but only along the left edge. In this same section, beginning on page 20 (penned), 484A (stamped) are the residents of the City Poor House–again, only noted along the left margin.
I think I remember that the Soundex system had a separate index for institutions. Finding the listings for these institutions without a persons name using the databases is a little trickier. Anyone know of a better method of finding institutions in census databases? I also found some schools, convents, and other hospitals in this quest, by the way–all enumerations of use to researchers but accessing them without a specific person’s name takes some patience.
Again, if you want more information about these institutions in St. Louis, I refer you to David A. Lossos’ page on Early St. Louis Hospitals, Homes and Asylums.






