The Kindness of Genealogical Strangers

The other day, I read a NY Times article on the graveyard at a state asylum in Mississippi, and this led me to think again about a family member who died in Camarillo State Hospital in California, Mabel Manson Ortmann. I've wanted to be able to tell the story of her life, which was sad and maybe even tragic, but I've been stuck on learning the diagnosis that led to her admission in 1930 and finding information about why she remained there until her death in 1967. My two requests to the CA state archives yielded nothing, not even a letter saying they couldn't release information to me, so I had put those questions back behind the brick wall concealing this part of Mabel's life. The article set me to wondering whether I could find out if she had been buried in a similarly unmarked grave in Camarillo, so I began the process of googling here and there. I came upon something called the " Asylum Projects ," a wiki full of information about asylums in the