Jennie Slack, The Sister Who Never Got Out (of the Asylum)
In the 1910s, Wyoming pioneer Jennie Slack Parkin entered the Wyoming State Hospital as a psychiatric patient. While there, her husband remarried and created a second family in a new city.
“It’s like she was forgotten!”
Aileen Gronewold, the great-niece of Jennie, has shared the tragic tale of her family where not only one, but two, sisters from the Slack family were committed to mental health institutions in the same decade [1]. Descendants suspect a connection between the sisters, Melissa Slack Bloom (1881–1964) and Jennie Slack Parkin (1888–1964), that would draw both of them into a mental health crisis.
*Click here to read about Melissa’s experience.
Jennie’s Story
In 1906, Cody, Wyoming resident Jennie Slack married Don Parkin (1881–1958), a Mormon from Utah. They settled on a farm about forty miles south of the Slack family homestead in the unincorporated frontier town of Sunshine, Wyoming. Together, they had three boys; the last being born in 1910.
Tragedy struck the Parkin family when their last son, Henry, died in infancy [2]. Shortly after this loss, Jennie Parkin experienced an emotional or mental health breakdown.
It might be too “on the nose” to assume twenty-two-year-old Jennie suffered from post-partum depression symptoms, though temporary hospitalization was an extremely common solution for distressed mothers at this time. Usually, an extended period of rest and solitude could “cure” the melancholy enough for mothers to return home feeling refreshed.
Jennie doubtless experienced prolonged grief from the loss of a child, though specifics on her breakdown are not yet available. Accessing helpful records from mental health facilities has posed a significant problem for truth-seekers. Aileen has reported that the little she can access is “cryptic” and lacking meaning [1].
In any case, the breakdown prompted Jennie’s husband of four years to admit her to the State Hospital, or the Wyoming Insane Asylum, as it was called back then.
A difficult decision
“Jennie was committed to the Insane Asylum in Evanston sometime between 1910 and 1920,” says Aileen [1]. More specifically, Jennie was admitted before 1914; the year her husband found himself a new wife back in Utah.
Aileen has searched and unsuccessfully found a divorce record for her great-aunt and uncle that might separate the family from a scandal. A quick search for the Hospital’s patient rosters of 1930, 1940, and 1950 (ie. the U.S. Census Records available on Ancestry.com), reveal that Mrs. Jennie Slack Parkin was still a married woman (or at least listed as such for the duration of her care) [3].
It is possible that after admitting his wife, Don adopted the narrative that Jennie was essentially a member of the walking dead, as many institutionalized patients have lamented over the years [4].
As an example, the author’s great-grandmother, Martha Nasch, spent nearly 7 years as patient #20864 at the St. Peter State Hospital for the Insane in Minnesota. In her writings during confinement, she described how the patients felt:
We sit so lonely. Our eyes are blurred and wet… for days, for months, and years, just waiting… We’re waiting for our death.”
- Martha Nasch, “The Asylum,” in Poems from the Asylum, (2021 nonfiction).
*Click here to read more about Martha Nasch’s experience
Don‘s double life
Researchers do not know the full context of the new relationship, but there are a few facts worth mentioning:
- Don Parkin’s new wife, Ethel, was 14 years younger than Jennie and 21 years younger than Don (reminiscent of Melissa’s story).
- Ethel delivered her first child on February 24, 1914.
- The couple married the day after she gave birth, in the Salt Lake Temple.
- Don brought his new wife back to Wyoming, where they raised seven children and ranched sheep in Cowley (400 miles away from where Jennie lived in Evanston).
While the idea of Don starting over can be upsetting, it wasn’t so uncommon. In this era of primarily confinement-based psychiatric care, hospital workers were known to suggest that loved ones try and move on with their lives.
So, how did Don communicate to his family what happened to his first wife, while taking a second? One consideration is that there might have been a sense of community approval for Don’s decision to remarry (despite the illegal nature of plural marriages in the 1910s). Or was it possible that he told his family that Jennie had died in connection with the death of his third son?
Patient… or Inmate?
Another curiosity is that in the 1930 census, Jennie Slack Parkin is listed as a “patient” of the Wyoming State Hospital for the Insane, but starting in 1940, her status changed to “inmate.”
One clue about this shift comes from Evanston historian Barbara Bogart, author of Images of America: Evanston (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing Co., 2009). She explains in an article for WyoHistory.org, “During the Great Depression, the only building added to the campus was the Building for the Criminal Insane in 1935, constructed as a Federal Works Project” [5].
There are some theories for the re-classification of Jennie’s residency. Being transferred to the inmate side may have come as a result of behaviors that are harmful to either oneself or to others. Another may be that she did not show remarkable signs of improvement in her first twenty-five years of treatment.
A third theory hinges on the mental health reforms beginning in the mid-1930s through 1960s. “Two more trends affected the operation of the Wyoming State Hospital,” Barbara explains. “First was the rapid development of psychotropic drugs, used to control symptoms and regulate the behavior of the mentally ill, reducing the need for long-term care. The second was the emergence of … community-based mental health care,” which included outpatient treatments and social worker oversight [5].
Starting in the 1930s, overcrowded hospitals began looking to the patient’s family or next of kin to care for them at home (as long as the patient’s symptoms were manageable). This practice “resulted in a steady decline in patient populations in mental hospitals and [even] the closure of many institutions across the United States,” Barbara continued [8].
As an example, after 20+ years of being institutionalized, Jennie’s older sister Melissa Slack Bloom was released from her confinement at the Wyoming School for Defectives in Lander in 1938. She remained in the care of her daughters for the next nine years.
But Jennie didn’t get out… why?
A fourth theory recognizes that, in order to be released back then, a woman needed a male next of kin to sign for her (ie. assume the responsibility of her continual care). Family researchers have not yet uncovered if this ever was an option for Jennie, but it is disheartening to consider that if doctors had cleared her for discharge, Jennie’s (or anyone’s) family could have denied her that freedom.
The unanswered questions and lack of clarity grieve descendants who simply want to understand their family’s experiences. “I don’t have any of that information on my great-aunt,” Aileen has lamented [6].
In the author’s case, her great-grandmother’s psychiatric hospital records from Minnesota are inaccessible for 70–100 years after the patient’s death (depending on the type of record). If similar timeline restrictions apply in Wyoming, then Jennie and Melissa’s descendants will have to wait until at least 2036 before a records request can even be considered!
Jennie spent at least 50 years in the State Hospital
Hers is, as Aileen has shared, “a tragic story, one that will likely never be [completely] told” [7].
Jennie Slack Parkin died on March 14, 1964, exactly 24 days after her older sister, Melissa Slack Bloom, died after spending most of her lifetime in multiple institutions.
As descendants have tried to piece together this family tree puzzle about the Slack sisters, there have been some personal revelations. In a 2022 interview with the Wyoming Historical Society, Aileen shared her motivation to not give up on returning dignity to those who struggled:
“I feel compelled about pursuing this research [because] the women we hear about in Wyoming history are the ones who fit a certain narrative. They were tough ol’ gals, you know, the true grit kind … women who survived and thrived. But what about the women who didn’t? What about the women who struggled mightily with mental illness? … Those are valid stories. And it’s important to me that her voice has a chance to be heard” [1].
*To view a sample of the video interview with Aileen Gronewold, please click here.
Note: There is still much more to be learned about the mental health practices of the early 1900s. It is both a great privilege and responsibility to share the testimonies of patients. As a matter of due diligence, the author has provided Aileen Gronewold full authority to preview this article’s content and correct it for any issues with information or tone. Any follow-up questions about the Slack family history in Wyoming should be directed to her. *Click here to be redirected to her blog, Come On, Aileen
Learn More
- Aileen Gronewold, Women of Wyoming, Then & Now episode, recorded Dec.22, 2022: https://youtube.com/watch?v=B4YgN9zdm_8&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE
- According to descendant records shared on Ancestry.com, William Henry Parkin lived from Sept. 10 to Dec. 4 of 1910 (“Salinas Family Tree,” Jeri Jo Salinas).
- See “Jennie Parkin” listings in the 1930, 1940, and 1950 United States Federal Census; Uinta, Wyoming; Wyoming State Hospital.
- This sentiment is shared widely by current folx* in the mental health community, as evidenced in numerous personal essays shared in the U.K. publication, Asylum. *The respelling of “folks” is intentional, to include all gendered and non-gendered identifications.
- Barbara Bogart, “The Wyoming State Hospital,” WyoHistory.org, Nov. 8, 2014. https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/wyoming-state-hospital
- Aileen Gronewold communication to Janelle Molony, Oct. 25, 2022.
- Aileen Gronewold communication to Janelle Molony, Oct. 16, 2022.
- Aileen Gronewold, “Finding Wesley Bloom,” blog at Come On Aileen, dated Aug. 22, 2018: https://comeonaileenblog.com/finding-wesley-bloom/
About the Author
Janelle Molony, M.S.L., is a family historian and co-biographer of her great-grandmother’s story and poetry anthology, Poems from the Asylum (2021, Nonfiction by Martha Nasch). Her writing has been featured in magazines and journals such as Harbinger’s Asylum, The Michigan Historical Review, Minnesota Genealogist, Annals of Wyoming, Women’s History, and more.
See more from the author by following on Medium and on social media. More publications by Molony can be found on her official author webpage.
