May 8, 2025 • 51 mins
Host Larrison Campbell catches up with four of the people she interviewed for the podcast to hear new family stories and reexamine how this asylum continues to shape their lives.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Today we're dropping a bonus episode of Under Yazoo Clay.
The response to this series has been overwhelming, so as
a way of saying thank you to all our listeners,
we wanted to check back in with some of the
people we interviewed back in April of twenty twenty four
to see how the last year has treated them. One
of those is descendant Noah Saderstrom, the artist who told
(00:24):
his great grandfather's story in one hundred and eighty three
different canvasses. As it happens, Noah was the sort of
entry point for this whole series. Back in twenty twenty three,
I met up with Betsy Bradley, the director of the
Mississippi Museum of Art. I'd just released a podcast that
was about a skeleton in my own family's closet, so
(00:46):
to speak, and she wanted to know if I'd be
interested in talking to Noah. I was. I'd heard about
the Old Asylum. I knew that thousands of unmarked graves
have been discovered on its grounds and that the University
of Mississipi Medical Center was at a crossroads for how
to deal with them. In the words of the Southern
scholar mab Secrest, it had that Southern Gothic aura. I
(01:10):
was instantly fascinated. But as Noah and I started talking,
I realized that what grabbed me the most about his
story weren't the details of doctor Smith's life and this
mysterious old Asylum. It was Noah and how, one hundred
years after doctor Smith entered the Old Asylum, that trauma
(01:30):
continued to shape Noah and his family. As we met
with other descendants, I saw the same thing. Relatives they'd
never met and in some cases, like Wayne Lee, knew
almost nothing about, were still present telling them how to
interact with the world, how to view themselves. But I
also saw something else, a certain catharsis that comes with
(01:55):
finally looking straight at that big thing that everyone had
tried to hide. We talked to Noah in April about
what happens when, as he originally put it, the genie
is let out of the bottle. How the reception to
his exhibition last year has changed how he thinks about
his great grandfather, but also his own struggles with mental health.
(02:17):
Oh and in the meantime, Noah's also come across even
more of his great grandfather's medical records, records that show
it wasn't just Noah trying to uncover the truth. I'm
Larison Campbell and this is under yazuklay.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
You mentioned it talks about your family's contact with him.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
So my grandmother, Margaret never spoke of him. She was
the oldest, and then she had two younger sisters and
the youngest brother. It's said that the youngest brother had
gone to him as he was being shipped off to
World War two and sat down with him and was
told not to come back, and that he wanted everybody
(03:08):
to consider him dead, and that he told Ethel, his wife,
that no one should come see him. That was in
the forties and there was no contact beyond that.
Speaker 5 (03:22):
Yet.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Here's a letter from my grandmother's younger sister, Mary Jane,
who I loved. She died in the eighties, I think,
but she was a good like sitting at the table
smoking cigarettes and gossiping sort of, you know, great aunt.
And so she is writing here to the director of
(03:45):
social services at Whitfield in like nineteen sixty seven. Dear
mischefs she was the social services woman.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Can you help me?
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Forty two years ago, David Lawson Smith was committed to
the asylum through the years when I would wonder about him,
my family said it would be upsetting to him and
to me to try to see him. When I'm married,
my husband said the same thing. But I've reached the
age when I must know whether or not he is
(04:19):
still alive. If he is no longer living, is it
possible to find out where he would be if he
is still living? Is there anything I could do to
make life more comfortable for him? I know nothing of
the type or degree of insanity that my father has.
I don't know whether it could be inherited. In fact,
(04:39):
I know nothing of my father except that he is
there and that my mother loved him. But I have
been filled with many questions for many years. I would
very much appreciate it if you can help me with
some of the answers. Sincerely, yours, Mary Jane Hornsby.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
That's a wonderful letter.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
It's heartbreak.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
It's heartbreak.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
It tells you so much, Yeah, tells you so much.
You know, she had no information, she didn't know why
he was there. People only said it'd be upsetting for
him and you if you tried to figure this out.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
And so that's what I inherited.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
So the director of Social Services wrote her immediately back,
and so this is in nineteen sixty seven that they
were writing, Dear Missus Hornsby.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Mister David L.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Smith was admitted to this hospital on January twenty eighth,
nineteen twenty five, and lived here until he died on
March seventh, nineteen sixty five, so he had died just
two years before that that letter was sent. His correspondent
was given as missus Minnie Jane Smith, Vicksburg, Misissippi. And
when he died we tried to contact her that was
(05:55):
his mother, and were told that she was in a
nursing home in New Orleans. Since we were unable to
contact any relative, no one was notified of his death,
and he was buried here at the hospital. For many
years he lived on Cottage five, which we called the
re Educational Building. He got a long fine there and
worked in the out print shop regularly, and according to
his record, did excellent work and was excellent physical condition.
(06:18):
I'm sure that one does wonder about one's parents, and
it is difficult to know what to do, and instances
like this, many attitudes have changed. But I think your
family's attitude is certainly one that is true in most
families at the time in which your father was here.
If I can be of any further help to you
at any time, please let me hear from you.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
What a way to put that. It's very gentle, but
it's also saying that's how perhaps an old fashioned attitude.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yeah, but that's how it is. It was.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
It was very reassuring, and so we've always wondered, like
how my mother didn't know. They didn't know that he
had died until two years after he had died. So
it's not that they just got a letter from the
asylum saying that he had just died or from Whitfield
saying that he had died. They got a letter in
(07:12):
response to Mary Jane's and there was also another letter
that I can actually just paraphrase. But their younger sister, Helen,
also wrote to Whitfield to the medical Records office, but
her letter was completely different and said, I know that
(07:32):
my father was there, I don't have his birth or
his death date, and I want to join the Revolutionary
Dames Club or something, and they require proof of his
birth and death. Can you just provide that for me?
And that was the only time she ever reached out
(07:52):
as far as I know, grandmother never reached out, but
I could be wrong about that, you know, with you like.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Your own story obviously that I think resonated with a
lot of people because it really was one of the
few contemporary accounts of like mental illness and issues like
with mental health that we had in the whole show, right,
and so like, when it comes to your story and
putting that out there, have you found yourself having more
(08:23):
conversations about it since then?
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Yeah, I mean it it comes up. I wouldn't say regularly,
but when it comes up, it's like the door is open.
It's been so it's been so strange, you know, this
this story it started so apparently suddenly and eclipsed everything
(08:50):
for me. You know, like the year before I finished
this project, I had already been working on the project
for eight years or something, and I still didn't think
that it was about me in any kind of a way.
It didn't occur to me that my experience of mental
disorder could be funding this entire obsession with the mental
(09:16):
illness of my great grandfather, which seems like a very
dense kind of blind spot in retrospect. But you know,
it's amazing what the brain can do to guard ourselves
against ourselves if we feel like we have to.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
I guess so.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
At the very beginning, I was living in Glasgow in
like two thousand and two thousand and one. I was
in a marriage that was falling apart. I was broke,
living in literally one room a basement flat with bars
on the window in Glasgow, pretty depressing. And I was
(09:56):
painting for like twelve hours a day, and I thought
in my you know, I was in grad school and
I thought I was just being very focused. But when
life started to kind of crumble around me and I
was painting twelve hours a day and not taking care
of myself, it was a very short step from painting
(10:19):
all day to just walking around Glasgow all day, and
I found myself just completely lost and walking around smoking
cigarettes up alleys, down streets all day long. I was
walking down an alley in Glasgow and it was it
was late one night, and I remember there being an
(10:42):
open door and hearing a bunch of voices inside and
me just walking into this place and it turned out
to be like a Pentecostal congregation in there, and I
just went in and sat down and they were doing
some sort of like vocal chanting where it was just
(11:05):
like it was like their voices were just like flowing down,
like this waterfall of voices. And then I remember leaving
and going back to my flat and going to sleep,
and then waking up a couple hours later in the
midst of what I now know to be a depersonalization.
(11:27):
I woke up into it and it was a nightmare.
I felt like it was revealed to me the truth
was that I didn't exist, and that all of my memories,
even though I remembered them, they weren't grounded in any reality.
It was just like Wild West movie set storefronts, you know,
(11:51):
like I could keep up with conversations about things that
had happened, but they weren't actually connected to real life events.
It didn't matter that that didn't make sense.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
My version of it.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
What my brain was telling me was absolute truth, and
it was just a matter of time, in my view,
until other people realized it and I would be institutionalized.
And that was the only way through that I could
come up with. I didn't feel suicidal, and there was
no way to end it. If I had known when
(12:24):
I started to have symptoms of delusions, this sudden onset
of dissociation. Depersonalization can be like a hallmark of schizophrenia.
And I was exactly the right age for onset of schizophrenia.
I was like twenty four or twenty six or whatever.
And certainly if I had known that history, there would
(12:48):
have been a lot more testing done to make sure
that it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
That's not what we're looking at.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
But my fear of institutionalization was really rate and has
always been, though I guess not really anymore. You know,
this whole process has kind of like lifted all that.
It was just a very bizarre, a very bizarre time.
It was a time out of time.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
And it's not like it just ended, you know, it didn't.
It never ended.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
It just that was maybe the time of the most
concentrated dissociative episode. I didn't know how I was supposed
to walk. I didn't know what my the cadence of
my voice was supposed to be. I heartily recognized myself
in the mirror. I mean, it was nothing. There was
nowhere for my thoughts to go because nothing that I
(13:45):
I thought of were trustworthy to me, and my memories
weren't trustworthy. It's like you wake up from a nightmare
and somebody's like, well, what's it about, And You're like,
there was this rug but and it doesn't sound frightening,
but it was just deeply terrifying. Depersonalization is a really
strange thing because there are no real outward manifestations of it.
(14:11):
I still had the person that I presented to the world,
but on the inside there was nothing, which is just
it's chilling. There was nothing at all. I kind of
decided that maybe it doesn't matter if my memories are real.
You know, what difference does it make, you know, if
I'm real or not. Maybe that's the case for everyone.
(14:37):
And I just kind of wake up the next day and,
you know, keep pretending that my memories are real. And
then I just did that four years and tried to
not think about it. But in trying to not think
about it, I also never spoke about it. I didn't
even think about it to myself, not because I was
(14:59):
ashamed of of it, but because I was afraid of it,
you know. And then I think about the letters that
the letter that Mary Jane wrote to Whitfield. Increasingly it
feels like all of doctor Smith's family wasn't thought they
were ashamed he was in there, but they were afraid,
(15:21):
you know, they were afraid of what would happen if
they made contact with them. They were afraid for him
and for them, and they were afraid that they had it,
whatever it was. They were afraid of all of it.
And when I was I had finally kind of cleared
(15:42):
the dangerous part of the dissociative episode. The only way
I could move on in life was to pretend that
it hadn't happened, and pretend that my memories were real,
pretend that I had an identity, pretend that my life existed.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
And so I did. That's what I did.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
Years after that is when I was staying at my
folks place and they had all of our family photograph albums,
and that's when I started painting from the family snapshots.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Of my own childhood.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Now, as I'm looking and thinking and painting and looking
and thinking and painting the photographs from my own childhood,
I could feel the heat of the seat belt clicking,
I could feel the smell the magnolia's or whatever, like
it was a sensory thing. And in that way, my
(16:48):
memories started to fill back out within myself, and I
started to not only remember things, but but but know
that those memories were rooted in actual lived experience, and
so I painted hundreds of those and that pulled me
(17:09):
out of it. I mean, that was me pulling a
rope to get back out of that pit.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
You know.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
There I'm my own suffering, my experience of suffering, and
I'm painting doctor Smith's suffering and my famili's and it
and letting it all out, you know, instead of trying
to keep it all suppressed and in myself, and and
(17:39):
the find that maybe it's not really suffering, it's just
how you know, complex it is to be alive. I mean,
everybody's complicated, you know. And I wound up with a
lot more compassion for doctor Smith and for his doctors,
and for Ethel and her children and her parents and myself.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
We also spoke with Kimberly Jackson. Kimberly's great grandmother, Zenny,
you'll remember, died in the asylum. And one of the
things I found so touching about her story was Zenny's
Family's commitment to making sure she wasn't forgotten, and that's continued.
In fact, just the weekend before we spoke, Kimberly was
with her cousins hearing even more about Zenny.
Speaker 7 (18:28):
So actually, my family, part of my family got together
this past Saturday. One of my cousins said that she
was told that my great grandmother may have suffered from
postpartum depression. So each brother seems to have had their
(18:49):
own story, you know, so to speak about what happened.
She had four children, three boys and a girl. My
grandmother was the girl was a daughter, so she had
her though she had her though kind of I guess
(19:10):
the people would say late because there was six years
in between her and her youngest brother, so possibly possibly
she had postpart on and then by the time my
grandmother came along, you know, it just progressively got worse
after each pregnancy. That's what my cousin told me. And
(19:33):
it doesn't sound too far off, honestly, too far fetched either,
that that could have possibly happened to her.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
So who all have you shared the information about Zenny?
Speaker 7 (19:44):
Wefth everybody as far asan my family, except for those
two who were really closer, because those would have been heard.
That's what her niece and nephew were great niece and
nephew actually, so aside from those two, yeah, all the
cousins I've grew up, I've grown up with. Yeah, everybody knows.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
What is the What have people's reactions been like? Sort
of the range of reactions that you've gotten.
Speaker 7 (20:11):
So initially it was like what really, you know, you
found awhere, you know, because nobody knew where she was.
This is the mystery that was Zenia has really opened up,
Like we are aesthetic. We didn't know what happened to her.
We didn't. We had no idea where she was. You know,
(20:33):
we kind of knew, but we didn't really know. This
was that you and MC do you know how many
of us have actually had to go to UMMC for appointments.
I've even been there. I was a patient. There had
no idea. So yeah, this has been great. I mean,
I hate what happened to her, but I'm glad we
found her.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
That's really incredible. I love that, And I love this
idea that the whole family is ecstatic because it really
like and you had talked about this before when we spoke,
but this idea that like she really was still a
huge part her presence was a part of your family.
Speaker 7 (21:10):
Still we never forgot her. Of course, Grandma av you,
which is out my grandmother's stepmother played a huge role
in our family. She really stepped in and was a
true mother grandmother to my grandma, her siblings, my mother,
(21:32):
her siblings, her cousins. She really was that person. She
did get to meet a few great grands you know,
which was awesome, But she really did. But we never
my grandmother wouldn't let us forget whose Inny it was
now that her siblings never let them forget who she was.
We all knew who she was and what she meant
(21:53):
to them. That was just this huge question mark.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
So have you any further about what you want to
do with all this new family knowledge that you have,
or what your family is going to do with this
new information about Zenny.
Speaker 7 (22:12):
As of right now, we haven't really talked about what
to do with the with the information. However, I know
just want people to be helped and just want people
to know that the if something is going on with
your loved one, just try to persevere and get them
(22:34):
to help the best way that you can, considering that's
what my great grandfather did in the nineteen twenties. I
just don't want anybody to stop. And there are some
there are a lot of roadblocks in getting your people help,
and then sometimes you can get your people help, and
then they don't want to stick with the you know,
with the program or with the prescription or with you know,
(22:57):
it's just a lot. I just don't want people to
give up. Just pray and keep going and reach out
if there are If there are resources, reach out for
those resources, ask for help because more than likely somebody's
gonna help you if they can. But also don't don't
(23:21):
don't take care of yourself as well, because it's a journey.
It's important as we are taking care of our loved
ones that we also take care of ourselves. That's the
main thing I think about. My great grandfather then had
to come home and look after four kids with the
(23:41):
help of community because at first, you know, like I said,
it was he was still married to her and he
did not remarry until my grandmother was ten or eleven,
if I'm not mistaken, eleven. So you know, he raised
his kids with the help of family and community. And
that's what I hope that people have family and community
(24:03):
as they are on this journey. If not family by blood,
then family by mud, just community. I just hope that
they have someone to help, I really do.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
I've never heard that expression before, but I love that.
Speaker 7 (24:21):
Well, you know, families are not necessarily you know, your
blood relatives. It would be awesome, though, I guess, to
put it on paper so that they can be widely shared.
I don't know how much more could be shared than
what to shared now, but you know, I just don't
want it to be lost. And I'm going to her reunion. Actually,
(24:43):
her family reunion is going to be this summer in June,
and maybe I can find anybody else that has some info,
especially the brother who told my great grandfather when are
you bringing home? His family's going to be there, so
I'm hoping maybe they can give me some info that
maybe he shared with them, or maybe that was passed
(25:05):
down to them. We'll see, but anyway, I'm going. I'm
looking forward to it. I'm wanting to go and share
whatever I can with them about what happened was in there,
just so that they'll know and she'll just be a
part of you know, family lord so to speak. She
may already be and I just don't know it, but
I just want to share that that, hey, she has
(25:27):
been found. What we're going to do next, I don't know,
but hopefully it'll help somebody, if it has assisted anyone,
encouraged anyone to hey, try to find what happened to
your lost loved ones, relatives, because you know, some people
are just lost out here. You know, some people are
missing and they don't have a clue. If if nothing else,
(25:50):
I'm hoping that that even gives them hope that your
people will come home, you will find out what happened
to them, Get them, get get some get your peace people.
The helped son, daughter, uncle, brother, sister, the help that
they need mom and dad, the help that they need
with their mental health issues, just whatever. I just hope
(26:11):
someone has been encouraged.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
The largest art museum in the state, the Mississippi Museum
of Art connects Mississippi to the world and the power
of art to the power of community. Located in downtown Jackson,
the museum's permanent collection is free to the public. National
and international exhibitions rotate throughout the year, allowing visitors to
experience works from around the world. The gardens at Expansive
(26:43):
Lawn at the Mississippi Museum of Art are home to
art installations and a variety of events for all ages.
Plan your visit today at MS Museumart dot org. That's
MS Museum Art dot org. In the year since we
first spoke with Lida Gibson, she's moved on from working
(27:04):
directly with the Asylum Hill Project. She's now director of
the Museum of Medical History at UMMC. But you'd be
hard pressed to find someone who knows more about the
Asylum than Lida. And I was curious to hear where
the descendant community stands now. So I think the thing
that you know, obviously the listeners of this like really
(27:27):
responded to, was you know the descendants themselves. So have
you connected with more descendants since you and I since we.
Speaker 5 (27:37):
All last spoke, Well, we have connected with more descendants
we have had, especially after Noah's show. It's been such
a great way to tell people about this project, a
little more about how complicated the stories are, and we're
hoping we're spurring more discussions about again about mental health.
(28:00):
Currently sometimes it's easier to look at these stories through
a historical lens instead of in our own neighborhoods. Right
now as we're on our way to work and so
what we hope to do is really, you know, just
get these conversations going in a more comfortable way about
mental health and about treatment options, you know, one hundred
(28:26):
years ago in treatment options now. So yes, it has
spurred a lot more conversation about it. And I do
run into people and they say, oh, what do you do.
And of course I'm director of the Museum of Medical
History now, but I always mentioned that I'm also still
involved with the Asylum Hill project, and people have heard
about it. Whereas you know, five years ago people might
(28:48):
have said, what are you talking about?
Speaker 8 (28:54):
So I do think we're getting a lot more exposure.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
That's really cool.
Speaker 9 (28:58):
How many descendants total do you think total come out
of the Yeah, just to date since Asylum Hill got
up and running.
Speaker 5 (29:10):
So, as you know, and as I may have pointed
out before, you know, many people who are interested in
genealogy are older.
Speaker 8 (29:16):
So we have had some people who've just sort of disappeared.
Speaker 5 (29:20):
I did see the obituary for one of our key
descendants a few weeks ago. So we've had people who
have you know, sort of dropped off the list, are
no longer active, and then we've had people added. But
if we're looking at totals, I would say two hundred
and twenty five probably, and our list is our active
(29:42):
list is pretty well maintained at about one hundred and
sixty or so.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
That's incredible. That is a ton of stories.
Speaker 8 (29:53):
Oh, it's so many stories.
Speaker 5 (29:55):
And so the the other thing, I mean, we're almost
We're up to almost Jennifer and her crew are up
to almost seven hundred exhumations.
Speaker 8 (30:05):
The weather this.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
Fall and spring has been problematic. It's you know, it
has you.
Speaker 8 (30:14):
Know, when it rains. It's one thing.
Speaker 5 (30:16):
If it rains a week and then it doesn't rain
for another three weeks. It's another challenge when it rains
one day and then it dries out for two days,
and then it rains again the third day. It's just
I mean, the rain has been difficult. But despite that,
they have gotten a lot done. They have also found
some things that are helping us really narrow the time
(30:39):
frame in certain parts of the cemetery, which will be
very useful eventually in possibly identifying some of these remains,
which will be really exciting.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Can you tell us a little bit about the things
that they found.
Speaker 8 (30:54):
Well, it's.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
The thing that has helped them date the bearurials more
than anything is the nails that have remained from the coffins.
And then there have been a few burials that have
had coins sort of stacked where a pocket might have been,
and so you know, in looking at those coins, we
(31:20):
had to clean them up first, and Mississippi Department of
Archives in History has been very gracious in helping them
get those cleaned up so we could see what was
on them. But those dates help us narrow as well.
So when these things sort of coincide, and that's really good.
There was a pair of shoes and there's a scholar
at Mississippi State who was able to help us narrow
(31:44):
down the time frame that those shoes would have been made.
Speaker 8 (31:47):
Now that means they couldn't have been worn before.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
That, but then they could have been who knows, they
could have been worn for you know, fifty.
Speaker 8 (31:54):
Years after that.
Speaker 5 (31:55):
So these little clues will eventually help us put together
enough information in one spot to narrow things in the
way that we would like to. Unfortunately, as you know,
because of the as you clay, different parts of the
cemetery have better preservation than other parts of the cemetery.
(32:19):
So the remains in certain parts, the bones, the shoes,
things like that are in better shape than certain parts
of the cemetery than others. Right now they are in
a spot where almost nothing is preserved. So that has
been just a challenge and sort of you know, discouraging
(32:41):
for the crew. But they will get finished with that
at some point and move to another section, and we
hope that there will be more that remain in the
burials when they move on.
Speaker 8 (32:52):
To another spot.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
I mean, you think somewhere in some archives they would
have a cemetery, a planned they would have had, you know,
something like that.
Speaker 5 (33:03):
I don't know, and I am sure they probably did,
but you know, the records that remain, the patient records
that remain are not even complete.
Speaker 8 (33:13):
And again I keep hoping.
Speaker 5 (33:15):
I go to estate sales, I go to flea markets
and one and I always look in the boxes. They're
just full of old papers, and I think, could this
possibly be something from the Old Asylum.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Have you ever had luck?
Speaker 1 (33:32):
No?
Speaker 8 (33:32):
Not yet.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Have you been able to learn anything new about the
Old Asylum since we last spoke?
Speaker 8 (33:56):
Wow?
Speaker 5 (33:56):
That, you know, I think I learned something new every day.
I certainly learned something new from Jennifer every day. Because
if they're not out in the field doing their archaeological work,
their inside cleaning the remains and cleaning any other artifacts
that were in the burials.
Speaker 8 (34:15):
This is not something new that.
Speaker 5 (34:16):
I've learned, but this is another thing that I sort
of took part in with doctor Mack and doctor Didlake.
There was a record somewhere that represented a concern among
the asylum staff that a patient was going to be
that an overweight patient was not going to be able
(34:37):
to be transported up to the cemetery in the coffins
that they built. And part of the issue was that
the coffins on the bottom didn't have.
Speaker 8 (34:47):
A solid piece of wood.
Speaker 5 (34:49):
It was two pieces of wood that were sort of
joined in the middle, and so you would think it
would be pretty easy for anybody really to kind of
fall through the bottom. So Jennifer decided to do an
experiment and doctor Didlake, who of course is a retired
surgeon and director of the Center for Bioethics and Medical
(35:09):
Humanities here, is also a very good woodworker, and so
he built a coffin that we believe was very similar
to what would have been used at the asylum, and
then we got bags of sand and poured them in.
I say we, I was not doing the heavy lifting.
(35:30):
I was just there taking pictures and so they we
all put the sand in and got up to two
hundred and fifty pounds and it did not break. Let
me see if there's anything else, Cole Lee.
Speaker 8 (35:45):
I know, Oh, yes, okay, there is something else.
Speaker 5 (35:48):
So a physician here in Mississippi who is also a
historian and is a medical historian in his own run.
It's something he does in his spare time, donated a
collection to us of various things he has he has
bought or collected over the years having to do with
(36:11):
medicine Mississippi. And one of them was an etching of
the Old Asylum from eighteen sixty eight, and it was
an image I had never seen before, and we are incredibly.
Speaker 8 (36:25):
Grateful to have that. I mean, it's an original etching.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
That's really cool.
Speaker 8 (36:29):
It's very small.
Speaker 9 (36:32):
Can you see anything in there that you haven't been
able to see any you know?
Speaker 5 (36:38):
I think the thing that surprised me is that all
of the images that we have of the Old Asylum
show it after things were added to it, especially in
the front, so it had, you know, the wings on
both sides, and this particular eighteen sixty eight etching only
has two wings, which of course the wings didn't get
(36:59):
added until the first wing didn't get added until eighteen
seventy two, So I've never seen that image like that,
and it just sort of like, of course, that's logical.
I should have been envisioning it that way in my head,
but I just had. I just had always envisioned it
as it was when it closed down in nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 8 (37:20):
I will mention this that might.
Speaker 5 (37:23):
Be interesting to y'all. Wayne Wayne came and visited because
we got to the spot where he believed that his
grandfather was and I won't go any further than that,
but it was.
Speaker 8 (37:36):
It was a good visit and we all left.
Speaker 5 (37:40):
He left very satisfied, as did we about the resolution.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Wait what you you can't go any further line up.
Speaker 8 (37:52):
I feel like it's Wayne's to.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Tell, So obviously we had to talk to Wayne Lee.
When we spoke to him last he already had his
grandfather's medical records. What became of his grandfather within the
walls of the asylum, it was no longer a mystery,
But there was another part of the story that needed resolution,
(38:16):
the location of his grandfather's grave, and Wayne A Gravedowser,
believed he'd located it.
Speaker 10 (38:24):
About a month ago I received a message from doctor Jennifer,
the archaeologist, and she said that they were getting ready
to do the excavating were my grandfather where I had
placed across about five years ago, where I felt like
(38:47):
he was located. And I had told them that when
they got to that point to call me.
Speaker 6 (38:54):
I would like to be there. And so I went and.
Speaker 10 (38:57):
I was very rest with their professionalism. There were about
ten archaeologists working in the mud, laying on their bellies,
on their knees. I mean, they really go through everything
with like a fine toothcomb brush. I was very impressed
(39:18):
with them and very respectful to me. What had been
raining a lot, and so everything was muddy. You could
barely walk, you could barely stand up. Everything the ground
was uneven.
Speaker 6 (39:31):
I'll say this.
Speaker 10 (39:34):
The dowsing that day. I did some dowsing that day,
but it just didn't seem right. It was very hard
to even stand up. And when we got to the location,
nothing seemed to.
Speaker 6 (39:49):
Be quite right. I can't explain why that is. But
when after they spent all the time and.
Speaker 10 (40:01):
The bodies are so decomposed, I mean all you see mostly.
Speaker 6 (40:06):
Is a shadow of a body almost.
Speaker 10 (40:10):
It's It's like you can see where a bone was,
and if you were reached in to try to pick
it up.
Speaker 6 (40:17):
It would just kind of crumble, just like dirt.
Speaker 10 (40:21):
And they found some things, but the sad part was
that they said that there was no DNA to be found,
and so they couldn't, you know, guarantee that that was him.
The one thing that didn't really match very well was
(40:42):
in the location. The archaeologist said she really didn't think
that he was in the right location that he would
that he would have been buried there. They they've kind
of found certain things that kind of clued them in
as to what year it might have been or what decade.
(41:03):
So nothing seemed to be quite right. Like I said,
I can't really explain that other than it just didn't
seem quite right. Afterwards, I asked the archaeologist if she
thought that was my grandfather, what's your gut feelings. She said,
I don't think it is. And my gut feeling was
that too, and I do I do appreciate doctor Max's
(41:30):
opinion and.
Speaker 6 (41:31):
Her gut feeling.
Speaker 10 (41:33):
In talking to her, she said, you know the sad
thing about her jobs, she said, I don't work with exacts.
She said a lot of times, I don't have closure
because I can always look back and say, well, you
could have been this, or it could have been that.
But the other thing was that team was so dedicated.
I was really impressed with you know, they spent hours
(41:56):
out there in the mud and you know, just to
find almost nothing.
Speaker 6 (42:03):
And so it's just kind of the end of that.
Speaker 10 (42:08):
I'm okay with it because I feel like I've done
everything that I could do to to show respect.
Speaker 6 (42:18):
From my grandfather and all the others that were buried there.
Speaker 10 (42:23):
I wish that there had been better records KEP, but
you know, I think they are doing everything they can
right now to be professional and to handle things correctly.
Speaker 6 (42:37):
I've been asked, will you go back.
Speaker 10 (42:39):
Yes, I'm going to go back because I think it's
going to take another six, seven, maybe ten years to
complete the project, and I just want to make sure
that it's completed. One other thing that has happened in
just the last few days, you know, my cousin Billy
had said one of the headstones from back in the seventies,
(43:04):
and after talking to Billy and talking to Elida and
talking to doctor Mac, he returned to headstone just a
couple of days ago, and so so Billy won't have
that at his home anymore. He'll be back at the hospital.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
How did he feel about that? Did you talk to
him about it?
Speaker 6 (43:23):
Yeah? I thought I had to persuade him to give
up the headstone.
Speaker 10 (43:29):
You know, he's carried it around since the seventies and
he wanted to be sure that it was not going
to be just dumped again, you know. So I took
a little persuading, but he gave it up and he
felt good about it.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
You know, it's interesting the way you are talking.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
You know, not you were.
Speaker 9 (43:48):
Down there a few weeks ago when they got to
the site where you thought your grandfather was. Now you've
now you're going to go back and see Timothy or
Reardan and his head stone's new new sort of place.
I mean, are you really do you have you sort
of become a part of this community.
Speaker 10 (44:10):
Well, I feel like I feel like I'm almost family
with Lida and doctor Mack.
Speaker 6 (44:17):
They're really good people. I'm really impressed with them.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
This history has really become you know, you said it
was really your brother's mission that you took on, but
it's really become a large part of your is that
accurate to say that it's become a big part of
your life.
Speaker 6 (44:35):
Yeah, it really has.
Speaker 10 (44:38):
And not just that, with the dowsing in general. I'd
heard about it, but I didn't really know anything about it.
Speaker 6 (44:44):
It was all new to me.
Speaker 10 (44:46):
It was just so odd how it all came together
that right before I well, while I was, you know,
trying to find my grandfather, and that's when I received
the gifts and started using it. But you know, after
they removed the cross, and after they and they said
(45:11):
they had to remove it. I mean, it was there
for about three or four years, but when they removed it,
they were cutting trees down and they had heavy equipment
coming in and moving dirt and stuff. So they transformed
that whole heel, and after that, it just never seemed
the same. When I would go back and do some dowsing,
(45:35):
it just never seemed the same. And so I mean,
they guarantee me that they put that they pinpointed exactly
where I'd had the cross, and I believe that, but
it never seemed quite the same. That was just because
it had changed so much. They took out all the trees.
The equipment would take off the top two to three
(45:57):
feet of soil, and so they would have large mounds
of soil and they would have a stretch of land
there that the top two to three feet had been
removed and most of the people were buried I say four
to five feet, and so that way they only had
(46:17):
to go down another foot or so before they got
to the remains. But the landscape had changed so much
you couldn't you really couldn't.
Speaker 6 (46:27):
Just you couldn't make heads or tails of it dowsing it.
And I've told you guys this before.
Speaker 10 (46:38):
I wholeheartedly believe in it.
Speaker 6 (46:42):
It works.
Speaker 10 (46:43):
I've done it over and over and over again where
I have found people in cemeteries that I didn't know
where they were, and so it's proven to me.
Speaker 6 (46:54):
But if I'm not concentrating.
Speaker 10 (46:58):
If for whatever reason, God doesn't want me to be
able to, if he doesn't want it to work that day,
then it doesn't work. And when I do doubting for people,
I tell him that I said, if God wants it
to work, then it'll work. If he doesn't, or if
(47:21):
I'm not paying attention, if I'm not focused, then it doesn't.
And that day it just didn't see it just didn't
seem right. But I'm okay. I'm okay with it because
it probably no matter where he's buried in that field,
if that was him or not him. There's no DNA
because he's been buried for so long, and because of
(47:43):
the Yazoo clay, there was very little of anything left.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
How are you feeling about things now?
Speaker 6 (47:58):
Well, I feel like.
Speaker 10 (48:00):
I feel like I've done everything I could do, but
I do wanna see them complete the project. And I'm
glad that I did what I did with placing the
cross there, cause I think that drew attention to the
project and maybe there was one more thing that might've
nudged them a little bit to.
Speaker 6 (48:19):
Keep going forward with this mission.
Speaker 10 (48:22):
That was my sole purpose for doing it, was to
find him, but also to keep them moving forward. You know,
I I really wanted to find my grandfather. I really
wanted to if I had some remains, take them back
to Kentucky and have them remains placed with his wife.
Speaker 6 (48:46):
And his children. But you know, I believe in God,
and I believe in heaven, and I believe that's where
he is.
Speaker 10 (48:56):
So he's already with him anyway, and he's with my brother,
and so I guess what I was wanting to do
with the remains. It's not that important to me now.
I did everything I could do, and I don't feel
like there's anything else I can do, and so I'm
just satisfied with myself and.
Speaker 6 (49:21):
We'll just go on.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
About a week after I spoke to Wayne, he texted
me a photo of himself and his cousin Bill Lee
at the new site of Timothy o'rierdon's headstone, and he
had something else to share another text, which I'll read here.
We asked doctor Mac if we could do an experiment
in the lab where all the remains are located. Billy
is also a dowser, and separately with her present, we
(49:52):
asked if my grandfather was in the lab or if
he's still buried at the cemetery. Without knowing the other's conclusion,
we got the same answers. He's not in the lab
and is still buried in the cemetery. Doctor Max said
she'll let me know when she thinks she's in the
area where the ones that were buried after nineteen hundred are.
(50:14):
I don't know why things are taking this turn of events,
but it looks like it may not be over.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
Wayne's right of course, if.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
There's one thing this asylum and its patients have taught us,
it's that as long as someone's listening, this story's never over.
Under Yazoo Clay is executive produced by the Mississippi Museum
of Art in partnership with pod People. It's hosted by
(50:44):
me Laris and Campbell and written and produced by Rebecca
Shassan and myself with help from Angela Yee and Amy Machado,
with editing and sound design by Morgan Fous and Erica Wong,
and thanks to Blue Dot Sessions for music. Special thanks
to Betsy Bradley at the mississipp Museum of Art, as
well as Leida Gibson at the Center for Bioethics and
Medical Humanities at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Visit
(51:07):
Jackson and Jay and Deny Stein.
Today we're dropping a bonus episode of Under Yazoo Clay.
The response to this series has been overwhelming, so as
a way of saying thank you to all our listeners,
we wanted to check back in with some of the
people we interviewed back in April of twenty twenty four
to see how the last year has treated them. One
of those is descendant Noah Saderstrom, the artist who told
(00:24):
his great grandfather's story in one hundred and eighty three
different canvasses. As it happens, Noah was the sort of
entry point for this whole series. Back in twenty twenty three,
I met up with Betsy Bradley, the director of the
Mississippi Museum of Art. I'd just released a podcast that
was about a skeleton in my own family's closet, so
(00:46):
to speak, and she wanted to know if I'd be
interested in talking to Noah. I was. I'd heard about
the Old Asylum. I knew that thousands of unmarked graves
have been discovered on its grounds and that the University
of Mississipi Medical Center was at a crossroads for how
to deal with them. In the words of the Southern
scholar mab Secrest, it had that Southern Gothic aura. I
(01:10):
was instantly fascinated. But as Noah and I started talking,
I realized that what grabbed me the most about his
story weren't the details of doctor Smith's life and this
mysterious old Asylum. It was Noah and how, one hundred
years after doctor Smith entered the Old Asylum, that trauma
(01:30):
continued to shape Noah and his family. As we met
with other descendants, I saw the same thing. Relatives they'd
never met and in some cases, like Wayne Lee, knew
almost nothing about, were still present telling them how to
interact with the world, how to view themselves. But I
also saw something else, a certain catharsis that comes with
(01:55):
finally looking straight at that big thing that everyone had
tried to hide. We talked to Noah in April about
what happens when, as he originally put it, the genie
is let out of the bottle. How the reception to
his exhibition last year has changed how he thinks about
his great grandfather, but also his own struggles with mental health.
(02:17):
Oh and in the meantime, Noah's also come across even
more of his great grandfather's medical records, records that show
it wasn't just Noah trying to uncover the truth. I'm
Larison Campbell and this is under yazuklay.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
You mentioned it talks about your family's contact with him.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
So my grandmother, Margaret never spoke of him. She was
the oldest, and then she had two younger sisters and
the youngest brother. It's said that the youngest brother had
gone to him as he was being shipped off to
World War two and sat down with him and was
told not to come back, and that he wanted everybody
(03:08):
to consider him dead, and that he told Ethel, his wife,
that no one should come see him. That was in
the forties and there was no contact beyond that.
Speaker 5 (03:22):
Yet.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Here's a letter from my grandmother's younger sister, Mary Jane,
who I loved. She died in the eighties, I think,
but she was a good like sitting at the table
smoking cigarettes and gossiping sort of, you know, great aunt.
And so she is writing here to the director of
(03:45):
social services at Whitfield in like nineteen sixty seven. Dear
mischefs she was the social services woman.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Can you help me?
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Forty two years ago, David Lawson Smith was committed to
the asylum through the years when I would wonder about him,
my family said it would be upsetting to him and
to me to try to see him. When I'm married,
my husband said the same thing. But I've reached the
age when I must know whether or not he is
(04:19):
still alive. If he is no longer living, is it
possible to find out where he would be if he
is still living? Is there anything I could do to
make life more comfortable for him? I know nothing of
the type or degree of insanity that my father has.
I don't know whether it could be inherited. In fact,
(04:39):
I know nothing of my father except that he is
there and that my mother loved him. But I have
been filled with many questions for many years. I would
very much appreciate it if you can help me with
some of the answers. Sincerely, yours, Mary Jane Hornsby.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
That's a wonderful letter.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
It's heartbreak.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
It's heartbreak.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
It tells you so much, Yeah, tells you so much.
You know, she had no information, she didn't know why
he was there. People only said it'd be upsetting for
him and you if you tried to figure this out.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
And so that's what I inherited.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
So the director of Social Services wrote her immediately back,
and so this is in nineteen sixty seven that they
were writing, Dear Missus Hornsby.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Mister David L.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Smith was admitted to this hospital on January twenty eighth,
nineteen twenty five, and lived here until he died on
March seventh, nineteen sixty five, so he had died just
two years before that that letter was sent. His correspondent
was given as missus Minnie Jane Smith, Vicksburg, Misissippi. And
when he died we tried to contact her that was
(05:55):
his mother, and were told that she was in a
nursing home in New Orleans. Since we were unable to
contact any relative, no one was notified of his death,
and he was buried here at the hospital. For many
years he lived on Cottage five, which we called the
re Educational Building. He got a long fine there and
worked in the out print shop regularly, and according to
his record, did excellent work and was excellent physical condition.
(06:18):
I'm sure that one does wonder about one's parents, and
it is difficult to know what to do, and instances
like this, many attitudes have changed. But I think your
family's attitude is certainly one that is true in most
families at the time in which your father was here.
If I can be of any further help to you
at any time, please let me hear from you.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
What a way to put that. It's very gentle, but
it's also saying that's how perhaps an old fashioned attitude.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yeah, but that's how it is. It was.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
It was very reassuring, and so we've always wondered, like
how my mother didn't know. They didn't know that he
had died until two years after he had died. So
it's not that they just got a letter from the
asylum saying that he had just died or from Whitfield
saying that he had died. They got a letter in
(07:12):
response to Mary Jane's and there was also another letter
that I can actually just paraphrase. But their younger sister, Helen,
also wrote to Whitfield to the medical Records office, but
her letter was completely different and said, I know that
(07:32):
my father was there, I don't have his birth or
his death date, and I want to join the Revolutionary
Dames Club or something, and they require proof of his
birth and death. Can you just provide that for me?
And that was the only time she ever reached out
(07:52):
as far as I know, grandmother never reached out, but
I could be wrong about that, you know, with you like.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Your own story obviously that I think resonated with a
lot of people because it really was one of the
few contemporary accounts of like mental illness and issues like
with mental health that we had in the whole show, right,
and so like, when it comes to your story and
putting that out there, have you found yourself having more
(08:23):
conversations about it since then?
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Yeah, I mean it it comes up. I wouldn't say regularly,
but when it comes up, it's like the door is open.
It's been so it's been so strange, you know, this
this story it started so apparently suddenly and eclipsed everything
(08:50):
for me. You know, like the year before I finished
this project, I had already been working on the project
for eight years or something, and I still didn't think
that it was about me in any kind of a way.
It didn't occur to me that my experience of mental
disorder could be funding this entire obsession with the mental
(09:16):
illness of my great grandfather, which seems like a very
dense kind of blind spot in retrospect. But you know,
it's amazing what the brain can do to guard ourselves
against ourselves if we feel like we have to.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
I guess so.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
At the very beginning, I was living in Glasgow in
like two thousand and two thousand and one. I was
in a marriage that was falling apart. I was broke,
living in literally one room a basement flat with bars
on the window in Glasgow, pretty depressing. And I was
(09:56):
painting for like twelve hours a day, and I thought
in my you know, I was in grad school and
I thought I was just being very focused. But when
life started to kind of crumble around me and I
was painting twelve hours a day and not taking care
of myself, it was a very short step from painting
(10:19):
all day to just walking around Glasgow all day, and
I found myself just completely lost and walking around smoking
cigarettes up alleys, down streets all day long. I was
walking down an alley in Glasgow and it was it
was late one night, and I remember there being an
(10:42):
open door and hearing a bunch of voices inside and
me just walking into this place and it turned out
to be like a Pentecostal congregation in there, and I
just went in and sat down and they were doing
some sort of like vocal chanting where it was just
(11:05):
like it was like their voices were just like flowing down,
like this waterfall of voices. And then I remember leaving
and going back to my flat and going to sleep,
and then waking up a couple hours later in the
midst of what I now know to be a depersonalization.
(11:27):
I woke up into it and it was a nightmare.
I felt like it was revealed to me the truth
was that I didn't exist, and that all of my memories,
even though I remembered them, they weren't grounded in any reality.
It was just like Wild West movie set storefronts, you know,
(11:51):
like I could keep up with conversations about things that
had happened, but they weren't actually connected to real life events.
It didn't matter that that didn't make sense.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
My version of it.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
What my brain was telling me was absolute truth, and
it was just a matter of time, in my view,
until other people realized it and I would be institutionalized.
And that was the only way through that I could
come up with. I didn't feel suicidal, and there was
no way to end it. If I had known when
(12:24):
I started to have symptoms of delusions, this sudden onset
of dissociation. Depersonalization can be like a hallmark of schizophrenia.
And I was exactly the right age for onset of schizophrenia.
I was like twenty four or twenty six or whatever.
And certainly if I had known that history, there would
(12:48):
have been a lot more testing done to make sure
that it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
That's not what we're looking at.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
But my fear of institutionalization was really rate and has
always been, though I guess not really anymore. You know,
this whole process has kind of like lifted all that.
It was just a very bizarre, a very bizarre time.
It was a time out of time.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
And it's not like it just ended, you know, it didn't.
It never ended.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
It just that was maybe the time of the most
concentrated dissociative episode. I didn't know how I was supposed
to walk. I didn't know what my the cadence of
my voice was supposed to be. I heartily recognized myself
in the mirror. I mean, it was nothing. There was
nowhere for my thoughts to go because nothing that I
(13:45):
I thought of were trustworthy to me, and my memories
weren't trustworthy. It's like you wake up from a nightmare
and somebody's like, well, what's it about, And You're like,
there was this rug but and it doesn't sound frightening,
but it was just deeply terrifying. Depersonalization is a really
strange thing because there are no real outward manifestations of it.
(14:11):
I still had the person that I presented to the world,
but on the inside there was nothing, which is just
it's chilling. There was nothing at all. I kind of
decided that maybe it doesn't matter if my memories are real.
You know, what difference does it make, you know, if
I'm real or not. Maybe that's the case for everyone.
(14:37):
And I just kind of wake up the next day and,
you know, keep pretending that my memories are real. And
then I just did that four years and tried to
not think about it. But in trying to not think
about it, I also never spoke about it. I didn't
even think about it to myself, not because I was
(14:59):
ashamed of of it, but because I was afraid of it,
you know. And then I think about the letters that
the letter that Mary Jane wrote to Whitfield. Increasingly it
feels like all of doctor Smith's family wasn't thought they
were ashamed he was in there, but they were afraid,
(15:21):
you know, they were afraid of what would happen if
they made contact with them. They were afraid for him
and for them, and they were afraid that they had it,
whatever it was. They were afraid of all of it.
And when I was I had finally kind of cleared
(15:42):
the dangerous part of the dissociative episode. The only way
I could move on in life was to pretend that
it hadn't happened, and pretend that my memories were real,
pretend that I had an identity, pretend that my life existed.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
And so I did. That's what I did.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
Years after that is when I was staying at my
folks place and they had all of our family photograph albums,
and that's when I started painting from the family snapshots.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Of my own childhood.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Now, as I'm looking and thinking and painting and looking
and thinking and painting the photographs from my own childhood,
I could feel the heat of the seat belt clicking,
I could feel the smell the magnolia's or whatever, like
it was a sensory thing. And in that way, my
(16:48):
memories started to fill back out within myself, and I
started to not only remember things, but but but know
that those memories were rooted in actual lived experience, and
so I painted hundreds of those and that pulled me
(17:09):
out of it. I mean, that was me pulling a
rope to get back out of that pit.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
You know.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
There I'm my own suffering, my experience of suffering, and
I'm painting doctor Smith's suffering and my famili's and it
and letting it all out, you know, instead of trying
to keep it all suppressed and in myself, and and
(17:39):
the find that maybe it's not really suffering, it's just
how you know, complex it is to be alive. I mean,
everybody's complicated, you know. And I wound up with a
lot more compassion for doctor Smith and for his doctors,
and for Ethel and her children and her parents and myself.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
We also spoke with Kimberly Jackson. Kimberly's great grandmother, Zenny,
you'll remember, died in the asylum. And one of the
things I found so touching about her story was Zenny's
Family's commitment to making sure she wasn't forgotten, and that's continued.
In fact, just the weekend before we spoke, Kimberly was
with her cousins hearing even more about Zenny.
Speaker 7 (18:28):
So actually, my family, part of my family got together
this past Saturday. One of my cousins said that she
was told that my great grandmother may have suffered from
postpartum depression. So each brother seems to have had their
(18:49):
own story, you know, so to speak about what happened.
She had four children, three boys and a girl. My
grandmother was the girl was a daughter, so she had
her though she had her though kind of I guess
(19:10):
the people would say late because there was six years
in between her and her youngest brother, so possibly possibly
she had postpart on and then by the time my
grandmother came along, you know, it just progressively got worse
after each pregnancy. That's what my cousin told me. And
(19:33):
it doesn't sound too far off, honestly, too far fetched either,
that that could have possibly happened to her.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
So who all have you shared the information about Zenny?
Speaker 7 (19:44):
Wefth everybody as far asan my family, except for those
two who were really closer, because those would have been heard.
That's what her niece and nephew were great niece and
nephew actually, so aside from those two, yeah, all the
cousins I've grew up, I've grown up with. Yeah, everybody knows.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
What is the What have people's reactions been like? Sort
of the range of reactions that you've gotten.
Speaker 7 (20:11):
So initially it was like what really, you know, you
found awhere, you know, because nobody knew where she was.
This is the mystery that was Zenia has really opened up,
Like we are aesthetic. We didn't know what happened to her.
We didn't. We had no idea where she was. You know,
(20:33):
we kind of knew, but we didn't really know. This
was that you and MC do you know how many
of us have actually had to go to UMMC for appointments.
I've even been there. I was a patient. There had
no idea. So yeah, this has been great. I mean,
I hate what happened to her, but I'm glad we
found her.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
That's really incredible. I love that, And I love this
idea that the whole family is ecstatic because it really
like and you had talked about this before when we spoke,
but this idea that like she really was still a
huge part her presence was a part of your family.
Speaker 7 (21:10):
Still we never forgot her. Of course, Grandma av you,
which is out my grandmother's stepmother played a huge role
in our family. She really stepped in and was a
true mother grandmother to my grandma, her siblings, my mother,
(21:32):
her siblings, her cousins. She really was that person. She
did get to meet a few great grands you know,
which was awesome, But she really did. But we never
my grandmother wouldn't let us forget whose Inny it was
now that her siblings never let them forget who she was.
We all knew who she was and what she meant
(21:53):
to them. That was just this huge question mark.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
So have you any further about what you want to
do with all this new family knowledge that you have,
or what your family is going to do with this
new information about Zenny.
Speaker 7 (22:12):
As of right now, we haven't really talked about what
to do with the with the information. However, I know
just want people to be helped and just want people
to know that the if something is going on with
your loved one, just try to persevere and get them
(22:34):
to help the best way that you can, considering that's
what my great grandfather did in the nineteen twenties. I
just don't want anybody to stop. And there are some
there are a lot of roadblocks in getting your people help,
and then sometimes you can get your people help, and
then they don't want to stick with the you know,
with the program or with the prescription or with you know,
(22:57):
it's just a lot. I just don't want people to
give up. Just pray and keep going and reach out
if there are If there are resources, reach out for
those resources, ask for help because more than likely somebody's
gonna help you if they can. But also don't don't
(23:21):
don't take care of yourself as well, because it's a journey.
It's important as we are taking care of our loved
ones that we also take care of ourselves. That's the
main thing I think about. My great grandfather then had
to come home and look after four kids with the
(23:41):
help of community because at first, you know, like I said,
it was he was still married to her and he
did not remarry until my grandmother was ten or eleven,
if I'm not mistaken, eleven. So you know, he raised
his kids with the help of family and community. And
that's what I hope that people have family and community
(24:03):
as they are on this journey. If not family by blood,
then family by mud, just community. I just hope that
they have someone to help, I really do.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
I've never heard that expression before, but I love that.
Speaker 7 (24:21):
Well, you know, families are not necessarily you know, your
blood relatives. It would be awesome, though, I guess, to
put it on paper so that they can be widely shared.
I don't know how much more could be shared than
what to shared now, but you know, I just don't
want it to be lost. And I'm going to her reunion. Actually,
(24:43):
her family reunion is going to be this summer in June,
and maybe I can find anybody else that has some info,
especially the brother who told my great grandfather when are
you bringing home? His family's going to be there, so
I'm hoping maybe they can give me some info that
maybe he shared with them, or maybe that was passed
(25:05):
down to them. We'll see, but anyway, I'm going. I'm
looking forward to it. I'm wanting to go and share
whatever I can with them about what happened was in there,
just so that they'll know and she'll just be a
part of you know, family lord so to speak. She
may already be and I just don't know it, but
I just want to share that that, hey, she has
(25:27):
been found. What we're going to do next, I don't know,
but hopefully it'll help somebody, if it has assisted anyone,
encouraged anyone to hey, try to find what happened to
your lost loved ones, relatives, because you know, some people
are just lost out here. You know, some people are
missing and they don't have a clue. If if nothing else,
(25:50):
I'm hoping that that even gives them hope that your
people will come home, you will find out what happened
to them, Get them, get get some get your peace people.
The helped son, daughter, uncle, brother, sister, the help that
they need mom and dad, the help that they need
with their mental health issues, just whatever. I just hope
(26:11):
someone has been encouraged.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
The largest art museum in the state, the Mississippi Museum
of Art connects Mississippi to the world and the power
of art to the power of community. Located in downtown Jackson,
the museum's permanent collection is free to the public. National
and international exhibitions rotate throughout the year, allowing visitors to
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(26:43):
Lawn at the Mississippi Museum of Art are home to
art installations and a variety of events for all ages.
Plan your visit today at MS Museumart dot org. That's
MS Museum Art dot org. In the year since we
first spoke with Lida Gibson, she's moved on from working
(27:04):
directly with the Asylum Hill Project. She's now director of
the Museum of Medical History at UMMC. But you'd be
hard pressed to find someone who knows more about the
Asylum than Lida. And I was curious to hear where
the descendant community stands now. So I think the thing
that you know, obviously the listeners of this like really
(27:27):
responded to, was you know the descendants themselves. So have
you connected with more descendants since you and I since we.
Speaker 5 (27:37):
All last spoke, Well, we have connected with more descendants
we have had, especially after Noah's show. It's been such
a great way to tell people about this project, a
little more about how complicated the stories are, and we're
hoping we're spurring more discussions about again about mental health.
(28:00):
Currently sometimes it's easier to look at these stories through
a historical lens instead of in our own neighborhoods. Right
now as we're on our way to work and so
what we hope to do is really, you know, just
get these conversations going in a more comfortable way about
mental health and about treatment options, you know, one hundred
(28:26):
years ago in treatment options now. So yes, it has
spurred a lot more conversation about it. And I do
run into people and they say, oh, what do you do.
And of course I'm director of the Museum of Medical
History now, but I always mentioned that I'm also still
involved with the Asylum Hill project, and people have heard
about it. Whereas you know, five years ago people might
(28:48):
have said, what are you talking about?
Speaker 8 (28:54):
So I do think we're getting a lot more exposure.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
That's really cool.
Speaker 9 (28:58):
How many descendants total do you think total come out
of the Yeah, just to date since Asylum Hill got
up and running.
Speaker 5 (29:10):
So, as you know, and as I may have pointed
out before, you know, many people who are interested in
genealogy are older.
Speaker 8 (29:16):
So we have had some people who've just sort of disappeared.
Speaker 5 (29:20):
I did see the obituary for one of our key
descendants a few weeks ago. So we've had people who
have you know, sort of dropped off the list, are
no longer active, and then we've had people added. But
if we're looking at totals, I would say two hundred
and twenty five probably, and our list is our active
(29:42):
list is pretty well maintained at about one hundred and
sixty or so.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
That's incredible. That is a ton of stories.
Speaker 8 (29:53):
Oh, it's so many stories.
Speaker 5 (29:55):
And so the the other thing, I mean, we're almost
We're up to almost Jennifer and her crew are up
to almost seven hundred exhumations.
Speaker 8 (30:05):
The weather this.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
Fall and spring has been problematic. It's you know, it
has you.
Speaker 8 (30:14):
Know, when it rains. It's one thing.
Speaker 5 (30:16):
If it rains a week and then it doesn't rain
for another three weeks. It's another challenge when it rains
one day and then it dries out for two days,
and then it rains again the third day. It's just
I mean, the rain has been difficult. But despite that,
they have gotten a lot done. They have also found
some things that are helping us really narrow the time
(30:39):
frame in certain parts of the cemetery, which will be
very useful eventually in possibly identifying some of these remains,
which will be really exciting.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Can you tell us a little bit about the things
that they found.
Speaker 8 (30:54):
Well, it's.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
The thing that has helped them date the bearurials more
than anything is the nails that have remained from the coffins.
And then there have been a few burials that have
had coins sort of stacked where a pocket might have been,
and so you know, in looking at those coins, we
(31:20):
had to clean them up first, and Mississippi Department of
Archives in History has been very gracious in helping them
get those cleaned up so we could see what was
on them. But those dates help us narrow as well.
So when these things sort of coincide, and that's really good.
There was a pair of shoes and there's a scholar
at Mississippi State who was able to help us narrow
(31:44):
down the time frame that those shoes would have been made.
Speaker 8 (31:47):
Now that means they couldn't have been worn before.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
That, but then they could have been who knows, they
could have been worn for you know, fifty.
Speaker 8 (31:54):
Years after that.
Speaker 5 (31:55):
So these little clues will eventually help us put together
enough information in one spot to narrow things in the
way that we would like to. Unfortunately, as you know,
because of the as you clay, different parts of the
cemetery have better preservation than other parts of the cemetery.
(32:19):
So the remains in certain parts, the bones, the shoes,
things like that are in better shape than certain parts
of the cemetery than others. Right now they are in
a spot where almost nothing is preserved. So that has
been just a challenge and sort of you know, discouraging
(32:41):
for the crew. But they will get finished with that
at some point and move to another section, and we
hope that there will be more that remain in the
burials when they move on.
Speaker 8 (32:52):
To another spot.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
I mean, you think somewhere in some archives they would
have a cemetery, a planned they would have had, you know,
something like that.
Speaker 5 (33:03):
I don't know, and I am sure they probably did,
but you know, the records that remain, the patient records
that remain are not even complete.
Speaker 8 (33:13):
And again I keep hoping.
Speaker 5 (33:15):
I go to estate sales, I go to flea markets
and one and I always look in the boxes. They're
just full of old papers, and I think, could this
possibly be something from the Old Asylum.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Have you ever had luck?
Speaker 1 (33:32):
No?
Speaker 8 (33:32):
Not yet.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Have you been able to learn anything new about the
Old Asylum since we last spoke?
Speaker 8 (33:56):
Wow?
Speaker 5 (33:56):
That, you know, I think I learned something new every day.
I certainly learned something new from Jennifer every day. Because
if they're not out in the field doing their archaeological work,
their inside cleaning the remains and cleaning any other artifacts
that were in the burials.
Speaker 8 (34:15):
This is not something new that.
Speaker 5 (34:16):
I've learned, but this is another thing that I sort
of took part in with doctor Mack and doctor Didlake.
There was a record somewhere that represented a concern among
the asylum staff that a patient was going to be
that an overweight patient was not going to be able
(34:37):
to be transported up to the cemetery in the coffins
that they built. And part of the issue was that
the coffins on the bottom didn't have.
Speaker 8 (34:47):
A solid piece of wood.
Speaker 5 (34:49):
It was two pieces of wood that were sort of
joined in the middle, and so you would think it
would be pretty easy for anybody really to kind of
fall through the bottom. So Jennifer decided to do an
experiment and doctor Didlake, who of course is a retired
surgeon and director of the Center for Bioethics and Medical
(35:09):
Humanities here, is also a very good woodworker, and so
he built a coffin that we believe was very similar
to what would have been used at the asylum, and
then we got bags of sand and poured them in.
I say we, I was not doing the heavy lifting.
(35:30):
I was just there taking pictures and so they we
all put the sand in and got up to two
hundred and fifty pounds and it did not break. Let
me see if there's anything else, Cole Lee.
Speaker 8 (35:45):
I know, Oh, yes, okay, there is something else.
Speaker 5 (35:48):
So a physician here in Mississippi who is also a
historian and is a medical historian in his own run.
It's something he does in his spare time, donated a
collection to us of various things he has he has
bought or collected over the years having to do with
(36:11):
medicine Mississippi. And one of them was an etching of
the Old Asylum from eighteen sixty eight, and it was
an image I had never seen before, and we are incredibly.
Speaker 8 (36:25):
Grateful to have that. I mean, it's an original etching.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
That's really cool.
Speaker 8 (36:29):
It's very small.
Speaker 9 (36:32):
Can you see anything in there that you haven't been
able to see any you know?
Speaker 5 (36:38):
I think the thing that surprised me is that all
of the images that we have of the Old Asylum
show it after things were added to it, especially in
the front, so it had, you know, the wings on
both sides, and this particular eighteen sixty eight etching only
has two wings, which of course the wings didn't get
(36:59):
added until the first wing didn't get added until eighteen
seventy two, So I've never seen that image like that,
and it just sort of like, of course, that's logical.
I should have been envisioning it that way in my head,
but I just had. I just had always envisioned it
as it was when it closed down in nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 8 (37:20):
I will mention this that might.
Speaker 5 (37:23):
Be interesting to y'all. Wayne Wayne came and visited because
we got to the spot where he believed that his
grandfather was and I won't go any further than that,
but it was.
Speaker 8 (37:36):
It was a good visit and we all left.
Speaker 5 (37:40):
He left very satisfied, as did we about the resolution.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Wait what you you can't go any further line up.
Speaker 8 (37:52):
I feel like it's Wayne's to.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Tell, So obviously we had to talk to Wayne Lee.
When we spoke to him last he already had his
grandfather's medical records. What became of his grandfather within the
walls of the asylum, it was no longer a mystery,
But there was another part of the story that needed resolution,
(38:16):
the location of his grandfather's grave, and Wayne A Gravedowser,
believed he'd located it.
Speaker 10 (38:24):
About a month ago I received a message from doctor Jennifer,
the archaeologist, and she said that they were getting ready
to do the excavating were my grandfather where I had
placed across about five years ago, where I felt like
(38:47):
he was located. And I had told them that when
they got to that point to call me.
Speaker 6 (38:54):
I would like to be there. And so I went and.
Speaker 10 (38:57):
I was very rest with their professionalism. There were about
ten archaeologists working in the mud, laying on their bellies,
on their knees. I mean, they really go through everything
with like a fine toothcomb brush. I was very impressed
(39:18):
with them and very respectful to me. What had been
raining a lot, and so everything was muddy. You could
barely walk, you could barely stand up. Everything the ground
was uneven.
Speaker 6 (39:31):
I'll say this.
Speaker 10 (39:34):
The dowsing that day. I did some dowsing that day,
but it just didn't seem right. It was very hard
to even stand up. And when we got to the location,
nothing seemed to.
Speaker 6 (39:49):
Be quite right. I can't explain why that is. But
when after they spent all the time and.
Speaker 10 (40:01):
The bodies are so decomposed, I mean all you see mostly.
Speaker 6 (40:06):
Is a shadow of a body almost.
Speaker 10 (40:10):
It's It's like you can see where a bone was,
and if you were reached in to try to pick
it up.
Speaker 6 (40:17):
It would just kind of crumble, just like dirt.
Speaker 10 (40:21):
And they found some things, but the sad part was
that they said that there was no DNA to be found,
and so they couldn't, you know, guarantee that that was him.
The one thing that didn't really match very well was
(40:42):
in the location. The archaeologist said she really didn't think
that he was in the right location that he would
that he would have been buried there. They they've kind
of found certain things that kind of clued them in
as to what year it might have been or what decade.
(41:03):
So nothing seemed to be quite right. Like I said,
I can't really explain that other than it just didn't
seem quite right. Afterwards, I asked the archaeologist if she
thought that was my grandfather, what's your gut feelings. She said,
I don't think it is. And my gut feeling was
that too, and I do I do appreciate doctor Max's
(41:30):
opinion and.
Speaker 6 (41:31):
Her gut feeling.
Speaker 10 (41:33):
In talking to her, she said, you know the sad
thing about her jobs, she said, I don't work with exacts.
She said a lot of times, I don't have closure
because I can always look back and say, well, you
could have been this, or it could have been that.
But the other thing was that team was so dedicated.
I was really impressed with you know, they spent hours
(41:56):
out there in the mud and you know, just to
find almost nothing.
Speaker 6 (42:03):
And so it's just kind of the end of that.
Speaker 10 (42:08):
I'm okay with it because I feel like I've done
everything that I could do to to show respect.
Speaker 6 (42:18):
From my grandfather and all the others that were buried there.
Speaker 10 (42:23):
I wish that there had been better records KEP, but
you know, I think they are doing everything they can
right now to be professional and to handle things correctly.
Speaker 6 (42:37):
I've been asked, will you go back.
Speaker 10 (42:39):
Yes, I'm going to go back because I think it's
going to take another six, seven, maybe ten years to
complete the project, and I just want to make sure
that it's completed. One other thing that has happened in
just the last few days, you know, my cousin Billy
had said one of the headstones from back in the seventies,
(43:04):
and after talking to Billy and talking to Elida and
talking to doctor Mac, he returned to headstone just a
couple of days ago, and so so Billy won't have
that at his home anymore. He'll be back at the hospital.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
How did he feel about that? Did you talk to
him about it?
Speaker 6 (43:23):
Yeah? I thought I had to persuade him to give
up the headstone.
Speaker 10 (43:29):
You know, he's carried it around since the seventies and
he wanted to be sure that it was not going
to be just dumped again, you know. So I took
a little persuading, but he gave it up and he
felt good about it.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
You know, it's interesting the way you are talking.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
You know, not you were.
Speaker 9 (43:48):
Down there a few weeks ago when they got to
the site where you thought your grandfather was. Now you've
now you're going to go back and see Timothy or
Reardan and his head stone's new new sort of place.
I mean, are you really do you have you sort
of become a part of this community.
Speaker 10 (44:10):
Well, I feel like I feel like I'm almost family
with Lida and doctor Mack.
Speaker 6 (44:17):
They're really good people. I'm really impressed with them.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
This history has really become you know, you said it
was really your brother's mission that you took on, but
it's really become a large part of your is that
accurate to say that it's become a big part of
your life.
Speaker 6 (44:35):
Yeah, it really has.
Speaker 10 (44:38):
And not just that, with the dowsing in general. I'd
heard about it, but I didn't really know anything about it.
Speaker 6 (44:44):
It was all new to me.
Speaker 10 (44:46):
It was just so odd how it all came together
that right before I well, while I was, you know,
trying to find my grandfather, and that's when I received
the gifts and started using it. But you know, after
they removed the cross, and after they and they said
(45:11):
they had to remove it. I mean, it was there
for about three or four years, but when they removed it,
they were cutting trees down and they had heavy equipment
coming in and moving dirt and stuff. So they transformed
that whole heel, and after that, it just never seemed
the same. When I would go back and do some dowsing,
(45:35):
it just never seemed the same. And so I mean,
they guarantee me that they put that they pinpointed exactly
where I'd had the cross, and I believe that, but
it never seemed quite the same. That was just because
it had changed so much. They took out all the trees.
The equipment would take off the top two to three
(45:57):
feet of soil, and so they would have large mounds
of soil and they would have a stretch of land
there that the top two to three feet had been
removed and most of the people were buried I say four
to five feet, and so that way they only had
(46:17):
to go down another foot or so before they got
to the remains. But the landscape had changed so much
you couldn't you really couldn't.
Speaker 6 (46:27):
Just you couldn't make heads or tails of it dowsing it.
And I've told you guys this before.
Speaker 10 (46:38):
I wholeheartedly believe in it.
Speaker 6 (46:42):
It works.
Speaker 10 (46:43):
I've done it over and over and over again where
I have found people in cemeteries that I didn't know
where they were, and so it's proven to me.
Speaker 6 (46:54):
But if I'm not concentrating.
Speaker 10 (46:58):
If for whatever reason, God doesn't want me to be
able to, if he doesn't want it to work that day,
then it doesn't work. And when I do doubting for people,
I tell him that I said, if God wants it
to work, then it'll work. If he doesn't, or if
(47:21):
I'm not paying attention, if I'm not focused, then it doesn't.
And that day it just didn't see it just didn't
seem right. But I'm okay. I'm okay with it because
it probably no matter where he's buried in that field,
if that was him or not him. There's no DNA
because he's been buried for so long, and because of
(47:43):
the Yazoo clay, there was very little of anything left.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
How are you feeling about things now?
Speaker 6 (47:58):
Well, I feel like.
Speaker 10 (48:00):
I feel like I've done everything I could do, but
I do wanna see them complete the project. And I'm
glad that I did what I did with placing the
cross there, cause I think that drew attention to the
project and maybe there was one more thing that might've
nudged them a little bit to.
Speaker 6 (48:19):
Keep going forward with this mission.
Speaker 10 (48:22):
That was my sole purpose for doing it, was to
find him, but also to keep them moving forward. You know,
I I really wanted to find my grandfather. I really
wanted to if I had some remains, take them back
to Kentucky and have them remains placed with his wife.
Speaker 6 (48:46):
And his children. But you know, I believe in God,
and I believe in heaven, and I believe that's where
he is.
Speaker 10 (48:56):
So he's already with him anyway, and he's with my brother,
and so I guess what I was wanting to do
with the remains. It's not that important to me now.
I did everything I could do, and I don't feel
like there's anything else I can do, and so I'm
just satisfied with myself and.
Speaker 6 (49:21):
We'll just go on.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
About a week after I spoke to Wayne, he texted
me a photo of himself and his cousin Bill Lee
at the new site of Timothy o'rierdon's headstone, and he
had something else to share another text, which I'll read here.
We asked doctor Mac if we could do an experiment
in the lab where all the remains are located. Billy
is also a dowser, and separately with her present, we
(49:52):
asked if my grandfather was in the lab or if
he's still buried at the cemetery. Without knowing the other's conclusion,
we got the same answers. He's not in the lab
and is still buried in the cemetery. Doctor Max said
she'll let me know when she thinks she's in the
area where the ones that were buried after nineteen hundred are.
(50:14):
I don't know why things are taking this turn of events,
but it looks like it may not be over.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
Wayne's right of course, if.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
There's one thing this asylum and its patients have taught us,
it's that as long as someone's listening, this story's never over.
Under Yazoo Clay is executive produced by the Mississippi Museum
of Art in partnership with pod People. It's hosted by
(50:44):
me Laris and Campbell and written and produced by Rebecca
Shassan and myself with help from Angela Yee and Amy Machado,
with editing and sound design by Morgan Fous and Erica Wong,
and thanks to Blue Dot Sessions for music. Special thanks
to Betsy Bradley at the mississipp Museum of Art, as
well as Leida Gibson at the Center for Bioethics and
Medical Humanities at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Visit
(51:07):
Jackson and Jay and Deny Stein.
Host
Larrison Campbell