Winnebago Mental Health Institutions

Northern Hospital for the Insane vs. Winnebago County Asylum: 

If you have discovered an ancestor was institutionalized for mental health issues in Winnebago County, it is important to understand that, while they served similar populations and were built near to one another, the Northern Hospital for the Insane and the Winnebago County Asylum were two different institutions.  

Northern Hospital for the Insane

The Northern Hospital for the Insane was (is) a state-operated institution, established in 1873 just north of Oshkosh to relieve overcrowding at the State Hospital for the Insane on the shores of Lake  Mendota. It later became known as the Winnebago State Hospital, and today operates as the Winnebago Mental Health Institute. The hospital served patients from multiple counties across northern and central Wisconsin who were committed by the courts at state expense. Its mission reflected late-nineteenth-century medical approaches to mental illness, emphasizing structured environments, classification of patients, work and routine, and the belief that institutional care could lead to recovery. 

Records for patients of the Northern Hospital for the Insane/Winnebago State Hospital are still held by the Winnebago Mental Health Institute and, thus, researchers must contact them to access these records.  In most cases if individuals learn that their ancestor was institutionalized in the Oshkosh area, it was more often than not at THIS institution.  

Winnebago County Asylum

The Winnebago County Asylum, in contrast, was a county-run facility serving primarily the residents of Winnebago County.  It also took in individuals transferred from of other county asylums. Established as an outgrowth of the county’s Poor Farm built across the street from the Northern Hospital, the Winnebago County Asylum functioned primarily as a custodial institution housing individuals with chronic mental illness, developmental disabilities, dementia, epilepsy, and other conditions that required long-term care. Treatment was limited, and the institution’s primary role was to provide housing and supervision for individuals who were not considered candidates for recovery or who could not be accommodated in state facilities. 

In practice, patients sometimes moved between the two institutions. Individuals initially admitted to the state hospital for treatment might later (often after two years) be transferred to the county asylum if their condition became long-term or if recovery was deemed unlikely.  
 
The UW Oshkosh Archives and Area Research Center only has records of the Winnebago County Asylum and Poor Farm.  This institution changed names over the years: Winnebago County Asylum, County Home and Poor farm (circa 1873); the County Asylum and Winnebago County Poor Farm (1893); Winnebago County Asylum Farm, Winnebago County Asylum for the Chronically Insane, County Home (1913); Winnebago County Hospital (1957), Pleasant Acres (1961); and the Park View Health Center (1973).   
 
The records for these COUNTY institutions are described in this Archival Finding Aid 

While the records are located here at the ARC, permission to access to the patient records in this collection must first be obtained via the Winnebago County Corporation Counsel. Researchers should request access by contacting them directly indicating the name of the individual you are researching, your connection to that individual and roughly the boxes and volumes you wish to access (get this information from the finding aid).  The office will often carbon copy our office on its reply and once secured, you can make plans to visit the archives to examine the records (reproduction of the records is not allowed unless granted by the Corporation Counsel).