From the first time I saw the chains strung across Broughton's cemetery grounds, I've wondered about those buried at Broughton Hospital. Recently I did a little digging. I found information at the hospital library and through speaking with community members and former staff.
Notations entered in a 1920 ledger book page of family contacts for hospital patients:
Patient S.B: Body to go home.
Patient R.J.: Remains to go home.
Patient V.S: Sheriff thinks family will take remains home. Able to do so.
And one patient's note said: Bury here.
When the Western North Carolina Insane Asylum (now Broughton Hospital) opened in 1883, workers cleared land on a gentle hillside for a cemetery. They missed a lone dogwood sapling in the center which still grows there, now 125 years old. Located behind the hospital between Enola Road and East College Street in Morganton, the grassy area is marked by brick posts holding chains across rows of graves.
Maintenance crews dug the first grave in May of 1883. Since that time, 1,625 persons have been buried there. Only about 20 of the graves have headstones. The hospital cemetery became the final resting place for those who died with no family to claim them.
Physicians and nurses of the hospital prepared the bodies for burial. Workers often dug the next grave at the same time, covering the future one with a box until it would be needed. Those interred include physicians, teachers, farmers, preachers, the young as well as the old, and both rich and poor. Also there are veterans from the Civil War, Spanish American War, World Wars I and II and the Korean War.
In 1953 patients' home counties agreed to accept unclaimed bodies of their deceased, so Broughton burials ended. In some cases, bodies were sent to the UNC School of Medicine for research. In 1991 a newly hired chaplain, H. Phillip King, was so moved by the sight of the hospital's graveyard barren of personal markers, that he began a project to commemorate each of the deceased.
With the financial help of individual donors, churches and Sossoman Funeral Home in Morganton, King obtained steel ground markers displaying the name, birth and death dates of each patient. For years, only a metal medallion engraved with a number and initials identified the buried. These simple round medallions hung from the chains across each row of graves. Some of the chains have been removed now that the ground markers are in place. This four-year project cost more than $20,000.
During this time Calvin Sossoman recalled helping one family who discovered an ancestor buried around 1916. "We disinterred the remains at the request of the grandsons, both in their 70s. They never knew what had happened to their grandfather and wanted to take him home." This former patient's remains now rest in Huntersville beside his wife's grave.
Broughton's cemetery remained closed until 1997. That year, a longtime resident died with no surviving family, and staff arranged to reopen the cemetery for this much-beloved patient. One hundred staff, patients and friends attended his service.
In early years, the mentally ill were often left and forgotten by their families. As a result of the cemetery project, the hospital named and made public all patients interred on its grounds. This allowed relatives searching for their roots and genealogical closure to find lost loved ones.
People from California, Texas, Minnesota, Virginia and Florida contacted the hospital in their searches.
Of the persons buried at Broughton, eight were babies commemorated only with a last name. Former Chaplain King said, "All indications are that these infants were born to women patients who were either pregnant when admitted or got pregnant while at the hospital. Some of our questions are unanswerable."
Gwen Veazey is a member of the Morganton Writers Group and recently won third place in the Elizabeth Simpson Smith Contest for Short Fiction sponsored by the Charlotte Writers' Club.
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