MetFern Cemetery Project

09/08/2025

Hi Folks--Alex Green here at MetFern Cemetery Project. I could use a hand with something if you have a bit of spare time. See below!

How's Your Cursive?
I have images of names and information from the Fernald School (1863-1918) that need to be typed from the photographs of the originals in cursive. I have transcribed 1600, but there are still about 1600 to go. If you have time to volunteer to transcribe a page (34 rows) or more over the next month, please send me a
direct message with your email address and I will send you a file and instructions. I could use the help!

09/05/2025

Sudden deaths in the State Hospitals of Massachusetts. The total number of sudden deaths of disabled inmates of state hospital asylums from 1914-1932 was 2,284. Along with the recently opened Metropolitan State Hospital, this figure includes the Fernald School and similar state "schools for the feeble-minded." Officials in the Department of Mental Diseases were alarmed by the astronomical rise in accidents and deaths overall.

Many disabled dead people were buried in nameless graves at state institutions like MetFern Cemetery. Massachusetts currently considers records of their burial locations to be medical records rather than vital records and does not release them, even to family members of the deceased, unless they are declared next of kin by a probate judge. The Special Commission on State Institutions, a disability-led state commission, has called for a revision of this interpretation of existing statute.

09/02/2025

This 1910s letter is from a Massachusetts mother to Dr. Walter Fernald protesting the idea of sending her disabled daughter to the Wrentham State School for the Feeble-Minded, a massive segregated state institution where disabled people were routinely abused, killed, or died from cruelty and neglect.

Just like thousands of other parents throughout the 19th and 20th century, the woman's doctor led her to believe that Fernald's school, the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded, which was renowned for its educational methods, would be the best place for her daughter. While this was true, the conditions were equally horrific and only grew worse in subsequent decades.

She writes:

"Dear Sir,

I do not wish to send my child to Wrentham, as she is not feeble-minded, The only thing which is the matter is that she has paralysis on one side. If there is not room for her well I don't wish her to go to other places. The doctor said that it was the best place for her.

Yours Truly,

[Redacted]"

09/01/2025

The Work: Uncovering thousands of hidden stories, one page at a time

Happy Labor Day to all

08/31/2025

A heart-wrenching story about the denial of access to records in the Boston Globe. Kimberly Turner's great grandmother was sent to the Fernald School for giving birth out of wedlock. Her son was placed in the school for being born out of wedlock. Both were considered "feeble-minded." Turner has been blocked from getting the records of their incarceration, but Governor Healey is proposing changes that will enable people like Turner to get those records--if they exist--for the first time.

This is the work of our disabled allies across the state and especially the dozens of institutional survivors, disabled people, scholars, archival experts, and state employees who came together on the Special Commission on State Institutions to end the erasure and cover-up of the state's longstanding abuses of disabled people in institutions.

A proposal from Governor Healey would make it easier to access records about Massachusetts' notorious state institutions.

08/30/2025

Our work has been endorsed by the Boston Globe Editorial Board:

"The institutionalization of people with disabilities in Massachusetts is one of our state’s more shameful episodes. Yet the records needed to document that time have generally been closed to both researchers and, often, to family members seeking to investigate the treatment of their loved ones.

"In May, a Special Commission on State Institutions issued a report that recommends a thoughtful process to release records to family members and the public in a way which also protects the privacy rights of former patients. Governor Maura Healey included some of the recommendations in a supplemental budget bill she introduced earlier this month. Separate legislation to open these records is also pending in the Legislature. Lawmakers should pass a bill and allow the stories of institutionalized patients with disabilities to be more fully disclosed."

Healey’s bill would give public access to records over 75 years old.

08/21/2025

Our efforts are working! In the days to come we'll ask for your help in reaching out to legislators and the governor, supporting these policy proposals and calling for a formal apology from the state for the atrocities that have been committed against disabled people over the last 175 years through the use of large-scale institutionalization.

The measure, tucked into a spending bill, relates to historic records from the tens of thousands of people with disabilities who were institutionalized in Massachusetts.

07/05/2025

America's first Disability Pride Day was celebrated 35 years ago in Boston. For the first time, you can read the story behind it here. One of the organizers, Sybil Feldman, aka "Sybil Disobedience" had been held as an inmate of the Fernald School for her entire youth and spent her later years fighting to shut institutions down and serving the Boston Center for Independent Living.

As the nation's first disability pride event turns 35, a founder, attendee, and speaker look back

07/05/2025

Our MetFern Cemetery page exists to ensure all disabled people are remembered with respect, with love, with the rituals in death that everyone deserves, and we have so often been denied. If you can, please chip in to make sure Hector, who went to Waltham Public Schools, has a tombstone.

As many of you may know, little hector passed away back in may due to complications wit… Michelle Sheehan needs your support for A tombstone for little hector

06/11/2025

Today's GBH News featured a powerful discussion about institutions, disability human rights, and the failures of the state. You can watch and listen here. https://www.youtube.com/live/NiXhqPkc9uA?feature=shared&t=3995

06/06/2025

For 41 years, the state withheld the names of 298 disabled people buried from 1947-1979 in the Fernald School and Metropolitan State Hospital's institutional cemetery. Institutional employees and residents walked past it without doing anything. Most of the disabled dead who are buried here were locked away for life in conditions of enslavement, sexual violence, torture, and abuse.

As this powerful piece in The Boston Globe this month shows, it was high school students working with teachers Alex Green, Yoni Kadden, and Kevin Levin, who broke down those barriers. (though contrary to the piece, they were not given the names by the state...they tracked them down).

As Elissa Ely writes:

"As part of a 'disability history' class, they [then] petitioned for legal permission to pore through census records; birth, death, and immigration certificates; marriage licenses; and draft documents, and then published their remarkable findings on a web page. Numbers became lives; a paragraph for each grave. The facts are reported with such care, it is as if the researchers wore gloves to cradle the details."

There are 14,000 more graves like this statewide. Support and honor the work of these students by asking your state rep to co-sponsor and pass H.3335 and your state senator to co-sponsor and pass S.2102 and begin to live the shameful veil that keeps the idea of institutionalizing disabled people alive by hiding the past about how they lived and died in those institutions.

Find your legislator by putting in your address here: https://malegislature.gov/Search/FindMyLegislator
Link to House Bill: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/H3335
Link to Senate Bill: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/S2102

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/05/31/opinion/essay-metfern-cemetery-burials/

The facts are reported with such care, it is as if the researchers wore gloves to cradle the details.

05/23/2025

An incredibly powerful statement from the largest disability rights group in Massachusetts, the The Arc of Massachusetts about the report by the Special Commission on State Institutions.

"The Special Commission on State Institutions’ report affirms what so many survivors and families have known for years – that we cannot move forward without a reckoning of the full truth of our past and the painful legacy of institutionalization. We must fully acknowledge and understand what happened at places like the Walter E. Fernald Developmental Center in Waltham and other state institutions, where people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) were too often subjected to neglect, isolation, and harm.

This moment is not only about remembrance – it is about recommitting to the rights and dignity of people with IDD today and protecting individuals from the mistakes of the past. That includes embracing transparency, respectfully memorializing former institutional grounds, and supporting education that centers on those impacted. At a time when disability rights are being eroded and access to services is under threat, this report reminds us of the risks of going back. We must remain committed to a future where people with IDD live in the community and achieve their greatest potential, with full inclusion and the support of community-based services."

Through advocacy, programs that promote inclusion, and engaging the community, The Arc creates tangible changes in the community and in the lives of people with disabilities.