This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: jeremy5848 Surnames: KIRKPATRICK, SHURR, SPIRR, SPURR, STURR Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.northam.usa.states.california.counties.sonoma/6127.1.1.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Caution is advised in blindly accepting information posted here or on the related mail list. For example, the story of Leonora SPURR, as recently reported, describes her as an inmate of the "Feeble-minded Home" or the "Sonoma State Home," today's "Sonoma Developmental Center" (often called simply "Eldridge" historically or "SDC" in modern times). To the best of my knowledge, this is not true - Nora was never at Eldridge, much less for 50 years. Nora was indeed a "longest-term inmate" but at the nearby "Sonoma County Hospital" near Santa Rosa. I have no information to suggest she was ever at Eldridge. [Note the difference: the Sonoma County Hospital was a county institution while Eldridge was run by the State of California.] Nora SPURR, fourth child and first daughter (and possibly a twin of Daniel, Jr.) of Daniel SPURR and his first wife, the former Sarah A. KIRKPATRICK, was born 1-22-1855 in Bellvue, Jackson, Iowa. Sarah SPURR died in December 1865, possibly from complications associated with the birth of her 9th child. Daniel SPURR immediately remarried. He and his new wife apparently did not want to care for these eight children [Nora's possible twin seems to have died in Iowa], for they farmed out each one to a different Sonoma County family, with Nora going to the MULGREW family of Healdsburg. As an attorney, Daniel SPURR no doubt knew how to get around the law; in fact there is nothing about these children in the probate records (the Probate Court handled matters relating to orphans). It is clear from US Census records that Nora was diagnosed as developmentally disabled by or before her 14th birthday: the 1870 US Census for Healdsburg, Sonoma, California enumerates her as "SHURR [sic], Leonora, living with the MULGREW family, age 14, born Iowa, 'kept,' and 'idiotic.'" According to the "DDD" [Defective, Delinquent, and Dependent] schedule attached to the 1880 US Census, on September 1, 1878, Nora SPURR, aged 22, was admitted to the Sonoma County Hospital with the diagnosis "idiotic." In every Census thereafter she appears at the County Hospital. She is never enumerated at Eldridge. [I grant the possibility that she could have been occasionally taken to Eldridge for treatment but she was always returned to the County Hospital.] My conclusion is that Nora was not moved to Eldridge when it opened in 1891 because she was comfortably settled at the Sonoma County Hospital and because it was cheaper to keep her there than move her to Eldridge, for which the county would have to pay. It is also possible (I have no information on the degree of Nora's disability) that the operators of the hospital were able to find some little job that Nora could do. This would help both her and the hospital. In any case, Nora SPURR lived her entire remaining life in the Sonoma County Hospital and seems to have been "buried" and forgotten by her siblings, several of whom remained in the area. After 50 years, when Nora died in 1928, so little was remembered of her that her obituary in the [Santa Rosa] Press Democrat is almost entirely untrue. Nora SPURR was buried in the County Cemetery, one of over 1,500 pauper burials in that old graveyard, which I have been restoring since 2003. This is covered in much greater detail in my book "Potter's Field" [Heritage Books, 2009], a history of the old Sonoma County Cemetery and those buried in it. Also see http://www.chanatecemetery.org/. For a fictional account of Eldridge and its inmates (no doubt written from first-person encounters), read "Told in the Drooling Ward," (1914) by Jack London, whose "Beauty Ranch" adjoined the Feeble-minded Home. My apologies for running off at the keyboard. Jeremy Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.