Like Father, Like Daughter

They say mental illness runs in families. My dna test at 23andme.com gives the chance of several related diagnosis and thankfully says they are lower than normal. Some of you may discount these results.

There were several in the family who weren't so lucky. I have an Aunt in North Carolina that folks called crazy so much that most thought it was her first name. She was the one actually named for a boat, but that will be another story.

An interesting story I found recently is the father and daughter who were both committed to the same mental hospital. Stephen Fulford, a great great uncle owned a grocery store for many years in New Bern, North Carolina. On the 1910 census, at age 80 he was listed as an inmate and insane at the State Hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina. He died two years later and was buried in Cedar Grove Cemetery in New Bern.

It was not until recent months I learned about his daughter, Theresa Bowman Fulford. She was born in 1872 but since Stephen's name was misspelled on the 1880 census I just located his family on that report. When I did I also found the name of his daughter.

She was also committed to the State Hospital when the 1910 census was taken, listed as insane. Her mother had died in 1907 and with her 80 year old father in the hospital maybe she just wanted to be close by.

She recovered enough to leave the hospital because for both 1920 and 1930 she was living in the Bridgeton area of Craven County NC in a boarding house. She never married and died at age 74 in 1946. She was buried near her parents at the Cedar Grove Cemetery in New Bern.