South Carolina Mental Health cemetery survey

Finding public records and making them accessible is a painful process.  Whenever internet access is mentioned the territorial curtain goes up. Every now and then, however, someone does something that make my "open access heart" soar.  On a lark, I called someone at the SC Dept of Mental Health about the sanitorium records. I found a remarkable public servant who has a passion for the history of the instutition and happily shares with others. In fact she shared with me a nearly 10,000 record survey of  burials in SCDMH cemeteries and gave me permission to put the list online. 

Right now the survey is available as a list only.  I promise to get it into our obituary index soon so it is keyword searchable but the Ancestry list can be searched with "Control-f".  I am not overly fond of our arrangement with Ancestry to store records but for the purpose of getting this doc accessible quickly it worked fine.

Records are sealed for 75 years. Records earlier than March 15, 1938 (tomorrow it be from March 16, etc) can be obtained at the SC Dept of Archives and History.  Records 75 years to present will have to be obtained from the SCDMH. You can contact Tracy (803) 898-8581.

I asked the archives to look up four records from the list. They found something on all four. Available records and information will vary.

 1.Allen Leard: #13714 Admitted September 19, 1908 Died July 18, 1909 (Record of Deaths S190038 Vol. 2 (1904-14) pp. 76-77

2. Mattie Graves #15335 Admitted April 28, 1911. Died May 9, 1911 (Records of Deaths S190038 Vol. 2  (1904-14) pp. 104-105

 3. Willie Tisdale #16428 Admitted October 1, 1912. Died December 27, 1912 (Record of Deaths S190038 Vol. 2 pp. 142-143

 4. Meg/Mag Anderson #4510 Admitted June 18, 1885 Died November 3, 1899 (Record of Deaths S190038 Vol. 1 (1893-1903) pp. 58-59

SCDMH survey

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