Good morning everyone,
I am currently building maybe 402+/- profiles of Native Americans who were committed to the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians. I have just this moring added all those who have been identified as Navajo to the project.
The Hiawatha Asylum Cemetery project is complete, with maybe one exception, with 122 entries (six recently discovered graves are unaccounted for at this time)
The St. Elizabeths Hospital project is in progress and partially complete with an anticipated 69-71 profile entries
The Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians will house the remaining 209+/- profiles when my bandwidth allows
I continually have difficulty finding genealogical documentation of these people, I think primarily because the geographical area of the Navajo Reservation was so large that without the help of the army, requested but not provided, the Indian Agents were not able to accurately complete annual censuses. thus, I am stuck with what the Canton Asylum has kept, and the asylum is notoriously delinquent in its paperwork, so I feel the profiles are incomplete, the stories incomplete.
My projects aim to identify these 402+/- people, patient/inmates, to provide exposure to those who may have descended from them so that stories can be told. Simultaneously, when I complete a profile on Genit, I add it to Wikitree so that with the combined power of the two platforms, it is hoped that we can reach more people who may know...
If you know about additional resources, or have access to sources that I may not, and can add to the Navajo profiles created, please do so.
For example, the date of death for Zonna Yazza is shown as May 15, 1974, in Washington, District of Columbia, United States, but that information comes only from a legacy entry on Family Search, it has NOT been confirmed by documentation!
I have census reports that show her as a resident of St. Elizabeths hospital in 1940 and 1950. There is a source that has her death date as May 15, 1974, buried in Washington DC, that I'm trying to confirm. The 1960 and 1970 census reports for St. Elizabeth I cannot find. She is not buried in the St. Elizabeth East Campus Cemetery per the source I have for that. I checked most other Washington DC cemeteries and she does not show up. I also checked FaG with no luck.
There is an FS Legacy source that shows her married with a daughter Lenna which CANNOT be correct (cannot be her) since Lenna was born c. 1914. If Zonna were born c. 1908 she would have been too young to mother a child in 1914. Carla Joinson says that Zonna Yazza was transferred to St. Elizabeths on December 22, 1933, but no Navajo census reports from 1929-1933 indicate that.
Canton paperwork refers to her as a Southern Navajo committed from Ft. Defiance, but since the Navajo did not have good, or for that matter any, census before 1929 that is hard to confirm. Also, Drag Toes is referred to as a Western Navajo so that relationship is still questionable, again it comes from Carla Joinson, although Navajo migration was common.
There is almost NO data on her, still searching, all I've found is from Canton or the 1940 and 1950 federal censuses from St. Elizabeth. If your source is Ancestry I'll need the document, a link will not get me past the paywall so I won't be able to see it.
Thank you for any help that you can provide.
