I had more or less already decided on my topic when I came to the U.S.A. I wanted to find out more about one of my Great-aunts and her life on this continent. The reason why I wanted to research her life’s history is mainly because I think she lived an incredible life and that her story is worth telling. I have for several years been a keen genealogist, but after a while I got tired of tracing my roots further back in time and I started instead looking into the real history behind the 3.000 names I now have on my computer in Norway. I was thinking why not start with the immediate family and since I knew I was going to America and had heard stories about my great-aunt throughout my adolescence, it became natural for me to write about her.

Even though I will mostly try to tell my great-aunt’s story, it will also be a story about her family here in Washington. She got married and had two sons and they again have children spread out over Washington State, as well as in other states. The life she lived and how she coped with the things she had to go through are really amazing. It is not only a story about her life, but also the story about a period in the American history that hopefully never will be repeated. For more than 15 years, my great-aunt was hospitalized at Western State Hospital here in Tacoma, Washington, U.S.A. This was, and still is, a hospital for mentally insane. How Great-aunt lived through that ordeal and to reach the incredible age of more than 101 years, is to me quite amazing. A part of this paper will therefore deal with some of the questions connected to her forced hospitalization during the period from about 1929 – 1951.

The main source of this paper has been Great-aunt’s oldest son Benjamin. The part where I am telling her story at the hospital, Benjamin has allowed me access to Great-aunt’s files at Western State Hospital. Finally I am also using my family back in Norway as a source. Both Benjamin and my family in Norway are oral sources, so you will have to take my word for it that it is all true. Where I have used other sources, I have stated so in footnotes.

I hope I will be able to tell a story about a great woman and all the struggles she had to go through, and that I will be able to honor her memory and I hope this will be a lasting memory of a wonderful person.

Great-aunt was the eldest child in her family, born on the 8^th September 1896. She had one older sister, but she died early at the age of three when Great-aunt was only one year old. All together, Great-aunt’s mother bore 13 children. To tell the truth, she also had an older half-brother named Christopher, a son her father had before he married Great-aunt’s mother in 1895. This was something they never talked about in her family when she grew up because this was a great embarrassment at that time. Children born out of marriage were at that time considered a big disgrace. The worst thing was when she was going to school and when she was having her confirmation, because at those occasions she had to see her half-brother. This half-brother also emigrated to the U.S.A. and his daughter actually married here in Tacoma though most of the family is living in the Dakotas. Even today I am not sure if Christopher’s descendants know whether they have a family in Norway or not. My part of the family found out about this person only a few years ago, from Great-aunt actually.

Many people had emigrated to the U.S.A. and Canada from Gaupne and the area around it, and many of these people had made their fortunes "over there." The flock of children kept growing and Great-aunt's mother had more than enough to do raising and taking care of the children as they grew up. Apparently Great-aunt's mother and father were quite industrious, in spite of all the children, because later on when the big depression also hit Norway, the landowner had to come and ask them if they could help him financially.

At the time when Great-aunt was about 16, they decided that she should go to Canada and work as a maid for a family they knew and already had settled there. Great-aunt did not want to go and she could not see why she should go. She already had a job as a maid for another family in Gaupne and was making money to help support her parents. And she was not pregnant, as was the excuse for many of the young women who had to leave the village at that time. She begged her father and mother, and her father was really a good-hearted man and did not want her to go either, but her mother had already made up her mind on sending her over. The reason for Great-aunt’s mother wanting her to go to Canada was probably that they thought she would make a better life there, and in time, as with many other families, be able to help her family in Norway even more. I have learned that her mother was not someone you could argue or reason with once she had made up her mind, and Great-aunt did not like her mother at all. So it was with a heavy heart she had to say goodbye to her siblings, family and friends in Gaupne and leave for Canada. "I have been a little home-sick, but then I tell myself, What home? There was not enough time and mother had so little time…These days I have time to think back on so many things."

At the present I have not been able to find out with which ships Great-aunt traveled on from Norway. I do know though, that many of the shipping companies made a lot of money on poor people who went across the Atlantic Ocean to seek their fortune. I do know that she traveled through Liverpool in the U.K. and to Canada and most likely to Quebec in Canada.

When Great-aunt arrived in Quebec, she had to travel across Canada on her own. You have to remember that she did not know one word of English at that time, and when she finally arrived at the railway-station in Govan, nobody was there to meet her. Finally she got around and asked someone in Norwegian if they knew the family she was supposed to work for, fortunately they knew who the family was and went to get them.

On the 9^th of February 1918, Great-aunt married John Torson Hill from Vistdalen in Romsdal, Norway. John was born in Norway in 1891 and emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1909. John was a fisherman, and when he and Great-aunt got married, they moved to Petersburg in Alaska. Petersburg was named after Peter Buschmann, a Norwegian immigrant who arrived in the late 1890s, and a pioneer in the cannery business. He built the Icy Strait Packing Company cannery, a sawmill, and a dock by 1900. His family's homesteads grew into this community, populated largely by people of Scandinavian origin. By 1920, 600 people lived in Petersburg year-round. During this time, fresh salmon and halibut were packed in glacier ice for shipment. The cannery has operated continuously, and is now known as Petersburg Fisheries.

In 1929 Great-aunt’s husband admitted her to Western State Hospital. She spent 20 years at the institution off and on, and through the files of the hospital, I will try to tell a little about her life during those years. The children, Benjamin and Ernest, went to live with their aunt, their father's sister, in Bangor, Washington, for seven years in total. They started their school years there, but their aunt really did not want them to live with her family, so for one year they also lived with their teacher at the same place. Finally, just before Christmas 1937, Great-aunt’s children were put in a children's home in Poulsbo, and Benjamin thought about those years as the best ones in his childhood. He says that was when he really learned how to work. At that time, the children's home was a farm and the children had to work and help at the farm, like milking the cows and doing other farm work that was necessary. It was in Poulsbo that both the boys also got their High School education.

The files I have gotten access to, do not tell anything about what kind of treatment she went through, although they do tell about her having a hysterectomy in 1950. The psychiatrist I talked to asked after reading this if she had had anymore hospitalizations after this. And to my knowledge she did not have any more mental problems for the rest of her life. The psychiatrist thinks that the operation made her more calm after having the ovaries removed, and that her hormonal imbalance could have been an additional cause to her problems.

The fact that she was admitted for so many years, can also have something to do with the fact that a lot of the patients who are admitted for many years, feel more comfortable within the walls than on the outside. They are often afraid to go out and meet the community again and the anxiety to readjust gets too big, and therefore they choose to stay longer on their own initiative. I do not know if this was the fact for my great-aunt, but it is a possibility.

Western State Hospital and the land that it stands on, were first owned by an Englishman called Joseph T. Heath. When he went bankrupt because of his gambling debts, the State took over the buildings and the land, and by 1862 the U.S. Army had built what was to become Fort Steilacoom. The military abandoned the fort in 1868, and left the land and buildings unused. Finally, in April 1874 the Congress approved an act donating the military reservation at Fort Steilacoom to the Oregon Territory, as it then was called, and to be used as an "asylum".

The hospital has always been well known for its beautiful settings, both with views towards Mount Rainier and with wonderful gardens surrounding the buildings. Later on, it was said, "beauty all around is the cure". In the years later the gardens and trees of Western State Hospital have been a trademark and have always been well looked after, mostly by eager patients who needed something to do. And of course the hospital never said "no, thank you" to free labor.

In the papers from the hospital, it is stated that Great-aunt was an employee and not a patient the last years she was there. This concurs with the things Benjamin has told me about Great-aunt, - that she the last years was in charge of the clothing at the hospital and she was so trusted that she even got keys to the hospital. Great-aunt was also allowed to go downtown Tacoma for shopping in this period. I think this shows that she after all these years she was looked upon as one of the staff and one who could add something to all the others at Western State Hospital.

In the letters I have retrieved from Norway, Great-aunt does not say anything about her hospitalization. The letters I have are written to her sister Siri and most of them are from the 1980’s. I still get the feeling that in her later years she thought a lot about her childhood back in Norway, but at the same time she had her sister Trina in Denver, Colorado. Trina immigrated to the U.S.A. with her husband in 1925, and the two sisters talked together on the telephone regularly, at least once a week. Especially after Great-aunt could not get around much anymore and her eyesight started failing her, Trina was the one who had to call Great-aunt, and Trina often came out to Washington to visit. Both the sisters were eager to learn about their home-village in Norway and their siblings’ lives. Also, Trina wrote letters to her sister Siri and through these letters I also get an impression of both sisters’ lives and thoughts. I know that my grandfather Erik, one of the twins, was one of the siblings that wrote often to both the sisters, and they both said that after my grandfather died they missed getting his letters. "I know that you, and the rest of us are missing Erik. He was so good at writing letters."

After some years, it was discovered that John suffered from what we now call Alzheimer's disease. To make it easier for their parents, Benjamin and Ernest built a house for them in Poulsbo. At first, Great-aunt lived together with Ernest and his family in Edmonds, while John was in a nursing home, but as soon as the house was finished, they both moved in there. They lived in the house in Poulsbo for only six months before they realized that John was getting too sick to live without daily care, - a care that only could be provided in a nursing home by professionals. Now John was admitted to a nursing home on Bainbridge Island and he stayed there until he died 15^th of January 1971. Great-aunt wanted to have a nice funeral for her husband, so she decided to ask Dr. Palnesson, who also was a singer with the Seattle Opera, if he wanted to sing in the funeral. When people heard what she had planned they said that the doctor was too important and too busy to attend the funeral. Well, Great-aunt said, I will ask him and he will sing! He did and in fact the whole Palnesson family attended the funeral of John.

Great-aunt went back to Norway twice after she came to America. The first time was in 1954 when her father was sick and was dying. By that time, she had not yet received her U.S. citizenship, but was studying to become a citizen. This meant she would have problems leaving and entering the country again and she needed a special permit to leave the country and to re-enter. People claimed that she would not get such a permit, but she said that she would get it and went to see Senator Magnusson. She talked to him and explained him her problem and after a few phone-calls he had fixed her problem and she was able to go to Norway. Sadly her father died before she had made it back home to Gaupne. The second time, both Great-aunt and Trina went to visit in the 1970’s. I can remember it was a big circus getting visitors to Gaupne from America, even though I was just a little boy. A thing I remember clearly is that they dressed very strange and the women had strange glasses!

First of all I want to say that I have gotten to know a person I only met once when I was a child. My admiration for her has not diminished, - on the contrary. I think that this woman, Great-aunt Hill, was a remarkable person with an enormous big heart. She was able to empathize with everyone, even her husband when he got sick and needed help. I do not think that any woman today would have accepted the treatment she got and afterwards go back to the husband. Maybe she realized that it was not his fault, but his sisters’ and therefore found room for forgiveness in her heart. She continued to have faith in God and one of her great sorrows when she was not able to go somewhere on her own, was missing the services for the big holidays in church.

She was very grateful for the good life she was able to live in the U.S.A., but still I think she would rather have stayed with her family in Norway. She was also very thankful for her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and my impression from her letters is that she valued the special moments she had with her grandchildren. She writes in a letter to her sister Siri "Mary [grand daughter] was here too. She will be 15 in a few weeks, is very pretty and good at school." In a post-card to Siri, Great-aunt says "If I was well enough, I would take both Benjamin, Olivia and Bertha to Norway. Ernst does not have the same interest as his brother, but they are good and my grand children are so nice. Olivia is about number One on the scale. She turns 18 on the 15^th of January."

Something that must have put a mark on her memory was the act of war. Great-aunt mentions it several times in her letters to her sister Siri that she is so grateful that there is not a war going on and that she could live as a free person. In her life, she went through a lot of conflicts in the world. In Norway, Great-aunt experienced the liberation from Sweden and getting our own King in 1905. In the U.S.A., she lived through WW1 and WW2, the Vietnam and Korean War and finally she experienced the Gulf War in 1991. I fully understand that she wanted a peaceful and secure future for her children and grandchildren. "…I have 5 great-grand children now and my wishes for the future are that it will be peace and some joy in their lives."

I certainly hope so, and I think so! Today’s modern psychiatry tries to keep people in the community at all costs. No matter how ill a person is the psychiatry will go to great length to keep the person in touch with his or her normal environment. Fortunately the laws have been changed and today protect the individual to a greater extent than they used to do.

During the last few days when I have been finishing this paper, mental illness has been put on the agenda by one of the most recognized doctors in the country, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher. His study shows that as many as one out of five Americans will get some kind of mental illness every year, but many will not seek to get treatment. The reasons vary, but still there are people who believe that they will experience "discrimination because of the stigma attached to mental illness…" Another reason for not seeking help is that many can not afford to pay for it or because of lacking insurance. This should not be possible in today’s society, neither in the U.S.A. nor in any other developed country for that matter.

First of all I want to thank my professors here at Pacific Lutheran University, Dr.’s Mutchler, Leitz and Kraig for their help and support when writing this paper. At times I thought I would not go through with this project, but they helped me getting my motivation back. I also owe great gratitude to my "cousin" Benjamin for supplying me with stories and pictures of his mother. I hope that this will give him and his family a lasting memory of a wonderful woman and a story about a very courageous woman. I still feel there is much more to write about Great-aunt and especially since mental illnesses has been put on the health agenda again. This will have to be another paper.

1) Benjamin Hill; Conversations during the fall of 1999

2) Cooley, Clara (1964); Western State Hospital, Fort Steilacoom,Washington. History 1870 - 1950

3) Geller, Jeffrey and Harris, Maxine; The women of the asylum, Doubleday 1994

4) Internet source; http://www.go2net.org/adventure/petersbu.htm#top