Nettie’s Story
Find a Grave Memorial ID 204392490, Sacred Grounds Lower Cemetery, Skillman, Somerset County, New Jersey, USA. Maintained by McGiiver (contributor 47857751). Photo used with permission.
My family was surprised when I told them that my great-grandmother, Florence Roberts, had three siblings. They only knew of one, her older brother Walter. The explanation for one of these missing siblings is easy to understand. Florence’s younger brother Schuyler was born in 1895 and died as a child between 1900 and 1905. In that era, the fact that his family didn’t talk about his death is unremarkable. The mystery of what happened to Florence’s older sister, however, is a much more complicated story.
Agnes Jeanette Roberts, usually called Nettie, was born in 1889 and appears unmarried and living with her parents in the 1900, 1910, and 1920 federal censuses. After 1920, she disappears. Seeing this, I initially assumed that Nettie had died—it was quite unusual, although not impossible, for someone in that era to marry for the first time after age 30. But then I found her in the 1930 federal census, living as a patient at the New Jersey State Village for Epileptics. She can be found there in the 1940 and 1950 censuses, too, and she died there in 1963 at the age of 74 and is buried in one of the graveyards attached to the institution.
The New Jersey State Village for Epileptics was founded in 1898 and was, in many ways, a progressive institution. At that time, epilepsy was seen as a form of insanity, which led to a great deal of social stigma. It was assumed that individuals with epilepsy had limited mental ability and thus should be excluded from churches, schools, and jobs. Many ended up in poorhouses, since they could not get a job to support themselves, and others were confined in mental hospitals or sent to homes for developmentally disabled people (Jubenville 1957; Borowski 2022).
The founders of the State Village, on the other hand, recognized that people with epilepsy could benefit from education and vocational training as well as medical care. The State Village was designed as a place where people with epilepsy could live in a self-sustaining community and contribute to their own support through work at the institution and the attached farm (Jubenville 1957; Borowski 2022). Early reports from the institution describe patients assisting in building their own residences, growing crops, caring for farm animals, preserving fruit and vegetables, sewing bedding and mending clothes, and doing laundry (Board of Managers 1901-10).
Photos from Board of Managers. 1907. Tenth Annual Reports of the Managers of the New Jersey State Village for Epileptics, Skillman, Somerset County, New Jersey. Trenton, NJ: MacCrellish & Quigley, State Printers.
At least in its early years, the State Village sounds like a pleasant place to live. There was a school for children and an assembly hall in which residents could gather for worship services and entertainments such as community singing, dances, plays put on by the residents themselves, and a monthly birthday party for everyone with a birthday that month. The State Village offered classes in subjects such as drawing, knitting, basketry, and music, and residents played sports, formed art, drama, and book clubs, and started a band to play at their entertainments (Board of Managers 1901-10; Jubenville 1957).
Over time, however, the State Village changed. During the Great Depression, limited funding led to overcrowding and a policy of accepting only individuals whose epilepsy was particularly severe and who needed the most care. These individuals were less able to participate in the life of the community than had been the case in the past. Problems continued at the State Village as World War II caused staffing shortages, and by the late 1940s, the institution was in very poor shape (Jubenville 1957; Nevins 2009). A series of newspaper articles published in May 1950 in the Camden, NJ, Courier-Post, described residents of the State Village as “pathetic prisoners” in a “snake pit” and outlined problems with overcrowding, unsanitary facilities, fire hazards, and poor treatment by underpaid and overworked staff members. These articles place the blame for these terrible conditions on the state legislature’s unwillingness to provide adequate funds for the institution (Morse 1950).
Photo from Morse, Wilbur, Jr. May 12, 1950. “State Village for Epileptics at Skillman Shows Great Need for Rehabilitation.” Courier-Post. Camden, NJ: 3.
The problems with funding—together with improvements in medications to control epileptic seizures and cultural changes that reduced the stigmatization of individuals with epilepsy—resulted in many patients leaving the State Village. In 1953, the State Village was renamed the New Jersey Neuro-Psychiatric Institute and repurposed to serve people with a range of physical and mental illnesses (Jubenville 1957; Borowski 2022). Despite this change, some patients with epilepsy, including Nettie Roberts, continued to live at the institution.
In hindsight, the State Village seems much less progressive. While its founders certainly intended to make life more comfortable for people with epilepsy, their underlying beliefs led them to make some very problematic choices. In particular, leaders of the State Village believed that epilepsy is hereditary and could be eliminated by preventing people with epilepsy from having children. This belief led to attempts to separate the sexes and prevent patients from forming sexual relationships, a practice clearly at odds with the image of the State Village as a self-sustaining community (Borowski 2022).
The efforts to prohibit sexual relationships among State Village residents were, unsurprisingly, not very successful, and there is some evidence that female patients who became pregnant were given abortions. It is unclear if they were given the opportunity to consent to the procedure. State Village leaders were also involved with the eugenics movement of the time, and the case that led the New Jersey Supreme Court to rule that the state’s forced sterilization law was unconstitutional involved a patient from the State Village. Whether or not State Village patients were sterilized, with or without their consent, remains an open question, but what is clear is that these individuals were not seen as adults with the right to make their own life choices, regardless of any disability (Borowski 2022; Nevins 2009).
Nettie Roberts’s story leaves me with many questions. Why did she enter the institution, after living at home for over 30 years? One possible explanation is that her parents were in their sixties by that time and may not have been able to provide her with the care she needed. Did her family visit her at the State Village or bring her home for holidays? Did they write to her and send her gifts? Was she happy and well-treated at the institution? Why did she remain at the State Village for a decade after its mission changed? Was her epilepsy too severe to be treated with medication? Did she not have somewhere she could go? And why didn’t my family know anything about her? My grandmother must have met Nettie as a child—they lived in the same city at the same time—but may not have known what happened to her. My great-grandmother, who lived in New Jersey until her death in 1987, had to have known Nettie was still alive during the 1940s and 1950s but seems to have never talked about her with her grandchildren or perhaps even her children. Was the stigma of epilepsy and institutionalization so great that she had to be hidden from the family? I’ll never get answers to these questions, but Nettie’s story will continue haunt me for a very long time.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1930. Fifteenth Census of the United States. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration.
Works Cited
Board of Managers. 1901-10. Fourth-Thirteenth Annual Reports of the Managers of the New Jersey State Village for Epileptics, Skillman, Somerset County, New Jersey. Trenton, NJ: MacCrellish & Quigley, State Printers.
Borowski, Emily. 2022. “Eugenics in New Jersey: How the New Jersey State Village for Epileptics Perpetuated Eugenics throughout the State.” New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 8 (1): 260-317.
Jubenville, Charles P. 1957. A History of the New Jersey State Village for Epileptics at Skillman. [doctoral dissertation]. Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University.
Morse, Wilbur, Jr. 1950. “State Village for Epileptics at Skillman Shows Great Need for Rehabilitation” (May 12, p 3), “13 Buildings Condemned as Fire Traps House Patients at Home for Epileptics” (May 13, p. 3), “Lack of Funds Hampers Treatment at Skillman Village for Epileptics” (May 15, p 15), “Better Staff Pay, Safety Urged at Skillman (May 16, p. 14). Courier-Post. Camden, NJ.
Nevins, Michael A. 2009. A Tale of Two “Villages”: Vineland and Skillman, NJ. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse.