Portal:Featured Article Of The Week
Featured Article Of The Week
Lapeer State Home
In August 1893, Gov. John T. Rich, an Elba Township native, named a committee to decide the location of a state home for the feeble minded. Lapeer was in the running along with Saginaw, Bay City, Charlotte and Greenville. Lapeer was selected, partly because of the creek running through the property. It was thought the creek would be handy for sewage disposal, but a neighbor didn’t like that idea and the city ended up having to extend a sewer line to the property. The Michigan Home for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic opened in June 1895, and there were more than 1,000 applications for employment prior to its opening. Later that year, in November, there were 91 male and 40 female inmates.
In 1910, a smallpox epidemic broke out at the asylum, and a company of the Flint National Guard camped out on the grounds that fall and winter to keep the disease contained to the asylum grounds. Many victims of the smallpox epidemic were buried in the now-forlorn cemetery at the southern edge of the grounds.
By 1919, there were 1,560 patients, and patient load peaked at more than 4,600 in the middle of the century. The home was the largest in the state and one of the largest in the entire country, and it was the largest employer in Lapeer County. Treatment options for the “feeble-minded” were changing by then, and the number of residents began its final decrease. By 1976 there were fewer than 1,500 patients but a record 1,386 employees.
The facility had a number of different names during its operation: The Michigan Home for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic, the Michigan Home and Training School, the Lapeer State Home and Training School and, finally, the Oakdale Regional Center for Developmental Disabilities. Many who remember it now either refer to it as simply “the State Home” or “Oakdale.” Click here for more...
