My brother Richard Wright recently found these slides taken years ago, and I have digitized them for this blog post, among other uses. He took the photos in 1978, in the summer from the look of the grass. They show views of grave markers in the oldest of the four cemeteries associated with Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa, the "River Road" or simply the Old Bryce Cemetery.
Richard wanted the digitals to send to Matt Gage, Director of the Office of Archaeological Research at the University of Alabama Museums. We had talked about them in July when Matt and Carey Oakley, a former director of OAR, came to Huntsville to pick up the final batch of dad's artifacts being donated to OAR. When I emailed them to Matt, his response was fascinating:
"It’s amazing how between 1978 and the first time I saw it in the late 90s all the iron markers had been laid down and the cemetery looked totally different. Today, none of the iron markers are up. The concrete markers with the patient number and comments are mostly overgrown in saplings. When UA was in the process of updating the fraternity houses and demolishing the houses in front of the stadium, they brought us a box of the markers that was found in the basement of one frat. We have no clue where the graves are they were associated with."
In another email, Matt noted:
"The portion of the cemetery included in the photos are north of Jack Warner Parkway. When they built Jack Warner (formerly River Road), they moved the graves from the construction area only. Those to the north, which Richard photographed, were left in place. So now the cemetery is basically cut in half.
The markers that he photographed were then moved or stolen, so it doesn’t look like that anymore. Some of the iron markers are laid flat by the crews doing the mowing so they could go over the top. Some of these markers can be found under the grass root mat. Some were taken by fraternity pledges and souvenir seekers."
Matt suggested I contact Steve Davis, Historian for the Alabama Department of Mental Health and someone who really knows Bryce history. Part of his response further explains the situation:
"This cemetery is usually referred to as the Old Bryce Cemetery. It once spanned an area which is now jack Warner Parkway and was once called River Road. In 1967 the City of Tuscaloosa moved approximately 1289 graves to what is now called Cemetery 1-A. In 1922 Bryce had started a new cemetery East of the Old Cemetery that is now known as Cemetery #2 and in 1954 cleared land nearby for what is Cemetery #3.
"There simply are few primary sources concerning the old or original cemetery. There is no known cemetery book or plot map. The information on patients buried there is in individual patient records that because of HIPAA and Alabama Statute are not available to the public. There was a patient death in December of 1861 and documentation of a death and burial in the cemetery in January of 1862. Some records have handwritten notes that have date and time of death with burial location and some simply state 'patient died'. Since death certificates were not mandatory in Alabama until 1906 it is virtually impossible to determine exactly who and how many patients were buried in the old cemetery.
"When the 'new' cemetery now named Cemetery 2 was created in April of !922 there had been approximately 6,000 deaths at Bryce. (Circa 5,900 deaths at the end of FY 1921, 6,100 at the end of FY1922 with April being halfway through FY22) Because of deaths reported to the Tuscaloosa Court House from 1892-1902 we know 85 % of reported deaths were buried at the hospital. Cemetery #2 did have a burial list and we know the number of deaths from annual reports so can determine that 52% if patients that died in 1923 were buried at Bryce. I say all that to try to give credence to my guess that there at least 4,000 graves in the Old Cemetery. The Spanish Flu pandemic certainly would result in many more burials at the hospital just as the covid pandemic lead to four times as many burials as normal. That would also be close to the number of unmarked graves documented by GPR [ground-penetrating radar] by OAR.
"Patients were buried with markers that had their patient number. The original markers were headboards as described in the book, “An insight to an Insane Asylum” which was self-published in 1882 by a former patient. That would seem to indicate wood.
"Since patients were buried with just their patient number it does not really help to find a legible number except for that individual grave. If a patient was admitted in 1862 they would have a low patient number. If they lived for 30 years at Bryce and then were buried beside a patient that had been committed in 1892 the numbers could well be 17 and 4289 (chosen at random) there would be no numerical sequence to the graves.
"At some point the original markers were replaced with the iron ones that are also present in Mt. Vernon at the Searcy Hospital. I know this is all confusing so I will not even get into the history of the iron markers that are now at OAR and Bryce Hospital. I have a letter from the Superintendent of Bryce to a family inquiring about their ancestor’s grave dated 1943. He states that markers have become so weathered that it is not possible to locate their relative’s grave.
"Your [Richard's] photos provided are important in that they are dated. We have several photos of the Old Cemetery and 1-A but many are not dated so it is difficult to establish a pattern of vandalism, normal aging and maintenance .
"I went into this detail to show what we know and what we do not at this time. The first Bryce Cemetery was on the cliff overlooking the Black Warrior Rivers and by 1922 reached the mule barn on the Bryce Farm. When Highway 82 (McFarland Blvd) was rerouted with the Finnell Bridge there were almost certainly graves disturbed. When River Road was constructed, there were circa 1289 graves relocated without known documentation of the names or patient numbers being documented."
In paragraph four of his comments, Steve mentions the original grave markers as described in the book An Insight into an Insane Asylum by Joseph Camp, an elderly Methodist minister committed to Bryce by his family in 1881. After his release he self-published his account, which was reprinted by the University of Alabama Press in 2010. On pages 44-45 of that edition he describes visiting the cemetery to find the graves of two men he knew who had died at the hospital. He had numbers with their names, perhaps found in a register of deaths, and located them on "headboards" --numbered 647 and 740.
I'll quote one of my previous blog posts for a bit about the history of Bryce Hospital:
In the 1840s American mental health crusader Dorothea Dix visited state legislatures--including Alabama's--attempting to improve the care of the mentally ill. The state legislature responded with a law in 1852 establishing the Alabama Insane Hospital. Some 326 acres in Tuscaloosa were purchased as the site of the hospital; the facility opened in 1859 with Peter Bryce as the first superintendent. Eight years after he died in 1892 the institution officially became Bryce Hospital.
By the end of World War II Bryce was so overcrowded and poorly funded that conditions reached a crisis. In 1972, a ruling in a federal court case changed psychiatric institutions around the country and many including Bryce began scaling down patient numbers and eventually closed. The University of Alabama now owns the property and has extensively redeveloped the original building into a welcome center, museum, and more. Another article on the history is here. Another facility in Tuscaloosa still operates as Bryce Hospital.
I've written several pieces previously on this blog about Bryce. These include one on old photographs, a quick visit some of the family and I made to the hospital campus, a 1943 aerial view of the facility, a look at sewing and other fiber arts by patients there, and an early 2023 visit during the redevelopment efforts.
