The study of history is akin to the work of a detective, collecting and analyzing historical “clues” to infer on and answer a question about what someone did or understand why something happened. Unlike detectives, though, historians seek out what they don’t know to try to better comprehend the past. We do everything to discover a complete story, but sometimes we only gain a greater understanding of something we didn’t before, which is how I fell headfirst into this article’s subject.
A large yet underutilized part of our collection are the county probates we hold in our archives for the Morrison County Courthouse spanning just over a century, and thanks to the hard work of employees and volunteers from the 1990s into the 2010s, these files are organized, indexed, and made easily accessible for research. Probates, while as interesting as drying paint, offer a wealth of information; for instance, someone’s estate administration details what someone owned and the worth of their property, as well as who received the property after their death. While the majority, estate management is not the only matter our probates cover. When flipping through the index, among the estate matters, one will find guardianships, juveniles, and the ever-tantalizing “INSANITY” cases.
If an insanity probate, known today as mental health probates, comes up during a patron’s research, it’s usually met with an acknowledgment of mental illness in the family and/or morbid curiosity. I don’t blame anyone for the latter reaction; the struggles of living with mental illness has long been a taboo subject and often kept secret from anyone outside the immediate family. Also, primary sources discussing something as intimate as mental health are uncommon, especially in smaller or poorer areas. When the files elicited this response, I would express sensitivity towards the subject but was unable to truly describe what the cases included because I simply didn’t know, so I decided to change that. After spending weeks sleuthing and analyzing insanity probates spanning the 1880s to the 1960s, I’ll reveal what I have learned about, and from, mental health probates; what the process looked like; why people would allege insanity; and how society’s perception and treatment of those with mental illness has changed over time.
Before that, there are some disclaimers to go over: First, I’m only discussing the probates filed between the late 19th century and the late 1940s, as it gives context on general mental health comprehension before the first publication of the DSM in 1952. Second, for brevity and clarity, the language used in this article will be replicating that of the probates, which includes the legal definition of insanity. Third, names and other specific identifying information about respondents will not be provided. The files offer few details, but their subjects will still be kept anonymous for their own and family members’ privacy. Next, insanity probates are restricted from public inspection. This matter is intriguing to many, and I hope this discussion is meaningful to readers, but we and the courthouse do not allow the public to browse these sensitive cases for personal examination. Finally, the legal knowledge herein is informed in part by MCHS board member and practicing attorney of over a decade, Kris Erickson, and my one-year experience as a legal assistant for a family law firm. Her vast amount of knowledge, and some of mine, will assist in better understanding these files in their historical context. So, with that out of the way, let’s talk insanity probates!
First, with help from Erickson, let’s begin with the basics: Probate is the legal process of settling a deceased person’s estate, which can include validating the decedent’s will, ensuring the payment of debts, and distributing the remaining assets to heirs or beneficiaries. The process is not always necessary; for instance, jointly held assets or those with a recorded Transfer on Death Deed already designate an existing or new owner can avoid the court, but it can be a forum for resolving any conflicts that may arise between beneficiaries. Probate court also handles matters like guardianships and juvenile cases because they involve people unable to manage their own affairs, which also applies to our insanity files.
What do historical insanity probates look like? Of all the probates we house, the insanity cases are, on average, the smallest of them. There are a couple reasons for this: They required far less documentation than the others and were more likely to be dismissed, leaving us with half-completed forms. Still, they all followed the same procedure; it began with someone—a relative, a doctor, or a sheriff—filing a petition, which prompted the court to examine someone’s abilities. In the earliest files, the petition form had a blank line for the petitioner to fill in what the respondent, the person subject to examination, was possibly experiencing. In the 1920s, the petition suggested four specific descriptions: insanity, inebriety, feeble-mindedness, or epilepsy. The petitions also set forth the determinants for adjudging a respondent as insane, which evolved over the years. The following is from the 1910s:
“1. A person incapable of managing [themselves] and [their] affairs by reason of the habitual and excessive use by [them] of intoxicating liquor, drugs, or other narcotics.
2. A person of unsound mind other than one who may be properly described as only an inebriate or feeble-minded person.
3. A person not insane, but so mentally defective as to be incapable of managing [themselves] and [their] affairs, and to require supervision, control, and care for [their] own or the public welfare.”
Once the petition was filed, the court would set a date for the hearing. The court would then assign examiners to the case, who subsequently pledged and signed an oath to fulfill their duty, both actions requiring separate filings. With that, the next course of action is the respondent’s examination.
Most data in insanity probates is found on a single examination page. The forms were different depending on the alleged mental illness; the court employed the insanity questionnaire for inebriety or senility for some time, while feeble-mindedness and epilepsy shared an analysis, with answers derived from respondent and petitioner testimonies and any other witness subpoenaed by the court. These reports can be light on details, but the forms themselves reveal plenty. The feeble-mindedness and epilepsy form, for one, had a “Morals of Family” section, which began with the prompt “Reputation in community,” and examiners would declare their reputation as poor for reasons such as a sexually active mother. In early cases, examiners considered “a lack of care for religion” as a sign of insanity or feeble-mindedness. Through the mid-1930s, the insanity report would ask about someone’s church attendance before their education level until it was revised to simply ask for their religion; it was also about this time the forms began to ask if the respondent was a military veteran or related to one. After completing the evaluation, the form was attached to the “Report of the Examiners,” in which the court adjudges the respondent as either sane or insane based on the previously stated determinants, ending the insanity probate process.
Declaring someone insane in probate court wasn’t a finale but more so a catalyst for other actions to begin. For example, some insanity probates are also within guardianship files, since an adult deemed unable to handle their affairs would have someone appointed to manage those assets. Through all my investigation, there was one single case that truly demonstrated how people used the insanity probate process to save themselves: a file from 1931, wherein a man who abused his wife and children was adjudged insane; the petition even specified they were scared of him. Thus, on the report by examiners, they changed the language on the third determinant from saying the respondent needed supervision to “There is to be a legal separation,” indicating that this declaration allowed the family to escape their abuser.
Also, in files beyond the 1910s, once declaring a respondent insane, the court could institutionalize the respondent for treatment. Those cases would also include a notice from the hospital about them receiving a parole release, their release after treatment, or their death; these notes include patients who’d spent decades hospitalized before their death and those who passed within days or weeks of their institutionalization. Seeing someone’s life reduced onto a tiny slip of paper reminds researchers how little we can actually know about the lives of these files’ respondents; historians cannot say we genuinely know our subjects, as we often don’t have their personal accounts, only the observations of others.
Evidence of bias outwardly exists in the petitions and evaluations, such as an examiner who conjectured the causation of a man’s insanity to be “probably masturbation” or a woman who became insane over “remorse over having an illegitimate child,” neither of which truly cause mental illness, but the perceived lack of morality was enough of a root of insanity. This issue is especially apparent in the cases of women, where one may find her victimized because of her disabilities, or her victimhood was taken as a sign of insanity. Horribly common examples are those of young mothers with confirmed drastically low mental ages; for instance, a file of a 21-year-old woman declared feeble-minded with a mental age of nine while examiners described her as “promiscuous” for having illegitimate children. Somehow, the (all-male) examiners believed that women with the same mental capacity as children could not only consent to intercourse but also comprehend the repercussions of having a child and shamed them for it.
This isn’t to say men experiencing mental illness were treated with decency and grace; men make up nearly all inebriate probates, with some evaluations emphasizing that their children lost respect for them. But unlike women, men had the opportunity to rectify their social offenses because their failures didn’t become permanent faults. Case in point, a probate examining a man for inebriation answered a question that asked if the respondent threatened or hurt others with “no, except for his mother,” implying either he wasn’t actually abusive for hurting his mother or his mother didn’t technically count as a victim. Many inebriety probates consisted of multiple petitions, examinations, and commitments for a family member that would resume their addiction and abuse upon returning from treatment, but the documentation never expressed the same vitriol for domestic violence as they did for women’s sexuality.
Besides these social disparities, the causations and results of insanity probates between the sexes are fairly equal. Both men and women have files where disgruntled family members petitioned them as insane, which most often ended with a sane judgment or a dismissal. These cases were especially common in the late 19th century, such as a father who petitioned his son because he didn’t do enough work on the farm, or a “sensitive” woman whose examination stated the “conduct of her husband and son” caused her disease, the same people who petitioned the court, both of which the court dismissed. Due to the lack of information in the documents, it is hard to say whether the act of petitioning an examination of insanity was inherently abusive—a tool used to control family members into certain behaviors. But by thinking like a detective, a half-filled evaluation with a scribbled “no sign of insanity” can be evidence that the examiners and judges didn’t allow people to wield the probate court against others.
Interestingly, women and men equally struggled with by religious mania, which caused about 40 percent of insanity judgments, according to E.F. Shaw, Morrison County probate judge of decades, in a 1913 edition of the Little Falls Daily Transcript (LFDT). These files describe respondents, women and men, who think themselves to be evil, fearing that demons are after them, and obsessively praying and reading the Bible, hoping the answer to their hardships would be there. Shaw told LFDT that nearly half of the respondents that appeared before him suffered from their maladies “as the result of taxing their minds too much with religious matters,” and after studying probates from that era, his estimate appears accurate. Still, there were plenty of cases where the cause of insanity was unknown, but with the data we now have on the triggers of certain mental illnesses, one could speculate a more accurate diagnosis than judges and examiners decades past could not.
A disorder many respondents were most likely experiencing but kept unnamed was dementia. While psychologists were researching this disease and those related to it in the 1900s, education on them would not reach the probate court for several decades, so I based my conclusions of probable disorders on clues found in the documentation. First, I’d consider the recorded behaviors of respondents and their similarities to the symptoms of dementia: A respondent found walking aimlessly at night unable to get home, or one who stopped taking care of themselves, or one who suddenly became very agitated and hostile to others. If there were corresponding behaviors, their age would be the next indicator of dementia; many exhibiting such symptoms were in their late 60s to 70s, some younger in their 50s. Most of these cases resolved as insanity without a cause, but seemingly in the 1910s, the court accepted “senility” into the probate lexicon with the cause of “old age,” which resulted in future files receiving more accurate details of their disorders. Senile probates tended to coincide with guardianships, along with incompetency, as the objective was less so court-ordered treatment for the disease but instead the management of the respondent’s affairs.
Remember how early probate forms didn’t inquire about military service? Even after its addition, it’s difficult to determine if it had an effect on the outcomes of insanity probates. In the evaluations and petitions of veterans, there didn’t seem to be any evidence of understanding that a respondent’s time in combat could have influenced their newly erratic behavior. In 1931, the probate court examined a man aged 35 for insanity, as he suffered hallucinations and thought people were after him. The form did not inquire on his veteran status, but after stating the cause as unknown, the petitioner added, “[respondent] was gassed in the army,” suggesting the poisonous gasses he ingested while fighting in World War I altered his state, rather than simply the experience of being gassed and poisoned at war affecting him.
Although some people recognized that traumatic events could leave lasting impacts—in 1913, a woman’s cause of insanity was presumed to be her witnessing the slaughter of pigs—soldiers afflicted by PTSD precursors like shell shock or combat stress reaction faced significant stigma. Many people, medical professionals included, thought burdened veterans to be cowards or to have moral failings (Peterson, 2009). The shame led to veterans and psychologists alike downplaying post-traumatic stress symptoms or ignoring them completely, leading to situations like the World War II veteran who examiners said was “thinking a lot about his service” in his insanity evaluation, misunderstanding his real affliction.
Throughout insanity probates, examiners miss what, in the modern era, are obvious links between traumatic life experiences and a person’s divergent behaviors. An egregious instance of this is a case from 1941 in which a father petitioned his 23-year-old son, “John,” who lived and worked on the family farm, for insanity, supposedly caused by a nervous disorder. John’s father stated on the petition that his son “became possessed” with saving money, believing his family wouldn’t have enough food to survive. These fears impelled John to refuse to feed their livestock or himself, the latter causing his body to have a “consequent breakdown” in the name of saving money. According to the examination, John’s nervous symptoms began 12 years prior, meaning he began to fret over his family—his parents and eight siblings—starving at the age of 11, in 1929.
It does not take an expert to hypothesize that the 1929 stock market crash and subsequent Great Depression deeply affected John during key developmental years, even without knowledge of his family’s financial status. He completed schooling through the seventh grade, per his insanity examination, before he dedicated his time and energy to farmwork. John must have felt immense responsibility over the livelihood of his family for nearly his entire adolescence, to the point that he would disregard his own needs if it meant his family could eat. His anxiety over the well-being of his family in dire times extended past the worst of the depression, as his father’s language in the petition suggests John’s self-harmful attempts at saving money were unnecessary and even more detrimental, given his refusal to feed livestock. Granted, John attended a family physician and was shortly admitted to a university hospital a few years prior, and committal was a result of the probate, making it entirely possible that someone acknowledged the connection between his nervous disorder and lived experience. Even if that was the case, the probates do not present such information, leaving historians to their speculations.
While a detective’s work is usually to determine the circumstances around a specific event, I studied the mental health probate process to henceforth properly advise researchers with ties to them on the information it could provide. Many people find these matters darkly intriguing, and the forbidden nature of the files makes them all the more tantalizing, but I found that they are barely representative of a respondent’s life; the court documents didn’t require biographical information one wouldn’t find in a census or obituary, the interpretations of respondents’ behavior mostly displayed the era’s biases through disgruntled petitioners and misinformed examiners, and the clinical court processes coupled with the negative cultural attitudes rationalized disregarding respondents’ perspectives.
As a historian, I strive to consider people’s lives beyond a primary source, in this case, beyond their disability, even without evidence; they still had a favorite color, developed habits, held grudges, and looked at the same moon and stars. This isn’t to say respondents were infallible individuals—many files noted if someone had committed physical or sexual abuse—but no one deserves to be solely remembered for their deepest struggles. While a genealogist may be interested in a family member’s commitment file, it would either, at best, present little new information, or, at worst, reveal depressing family traumas; the family member in question is not heard from, only spoken about. Ultimately, the historical mental health probates fail to deliver objectivity toward the experiences of those struggling with mental health, proving to be poor references for family research but great insights on the evolution of societal perceptions of mental illness.
-By Alesha Oure
This article first appeared in the Morrison County Historical Society newsletter, Volume 38, Number 4, 2025
Sources
Causes of insanity. (1913, December 30). Little Falls Daily Transcript.
Peterson, D. (2009, December 1). From shell shock to PTSD. Illinois. https://las.illinois.edu/news/2009-12-01/shell-shock-ptsd#:~:text=By%20making%20the%20injury%20seem,%2Dfear%20would%20unfreeze%20them.%E2%80%9D