What is the Institution Cemetery Project?
The Institution Cemetery Project maps and describes cemeteries associated with state mental hospitals and developmental centers across the United States. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these institutions–then called asylums and training schools–held millions of people deemed mentally ill or mentally disabled. When residents died within an institution, some were returned to family or friends for private burial and some were sent to their county of origin to be buried at public expense. But tens of thousands of deceased residents were instead buried in cemeteries directly affiliated with the institution. This project documents where those cemeteries are, how many graves they are suspected to contain, and their history and current status. Some cemeteries are well-maintained and have visible gravestones in good condition, though often stones bear numbers rather than names. Others are abandoned and overgrown, unmarked or with markers disappearing. Some institution cemeteries have been (re)claimed by groups of community members, disabled and non-disabled, working to provide recognition and dignity in death to people who were denied these things in life.
This project is an outgrowth of Heather Cassano’s in-progress documentary film, The Fate of Human Beings, which examines the stories of people buried in these cemeteries across the United States, and the stories of those working to memorialize and preserve these spaces. Although the Institution Cemetery Project has launched with just Pennsylvania and Connecticut, it will expand to eventually cover the entire nation and over 250 cemeteries.
Who is Behind the Institution Cemetery Project?
Heather Cassano (she/her) is an assistant professor of film/video at the University of Connecticut and an independent documentary filmmaker. She is the director of the award-winning documentary film The Limits of My World (2018). She is currently working on her second feature documentary, The Fate of Human Beings, which uncovers the stories of people buried in mental institution cemeteries across the United States. Heather recently released a short documentary about the same subject, The Wild Girl of Brushvalley Township (2025). The film was broadcast on Connecticut Public Television in 2025 and won a Regional Emmy® Award for Outstanding Historical Documentary. Heather is the lead designer and contributor of images and media to the Institution Cemetery Project. She also compiled scattered existing research to create the project’s list of institution cemetery locations.
Chelsea Chamberlain (she/her) is an assistant professor of History in the Division of Global Cultures at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on histories of medicine, disability, and childhood, especially institutionalization and so-called “feeblemindedness” in the modern United States. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Social History, the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, and on the academic blog Nursing Clio. Chelsea is the lead researcher and writer for cemetery biographies in the project.
With financial support from the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, Melina Sandel, Natalie Lacroix, and Joel Salisbury of UConn’s Digital Experience Group (now i3) developed the underlying framework for the webpage and map, prioritizing accessibility and ongoing growth of the project.
Under a mentoring grant from Wilkes University, Emma Broda and Anthony Elms researched and wrote numerous cemetery biographies from Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Minnesota. Emma and Anthony both graduated from Wilkes in 2026 and are pursuing graduate degrees in History.
The project relies on original data compiled by Steve Seim. Our research has expanded and adapted the list, but Steve’s work is a crucial foundation that has made this undertaking possible.
What’s Next for the Institution Cemetery Project?
We will gradually expand the reach of the project beyond Pennsylvania and Connecticut as we complete research on additional cemeteries. To meet our goal of including as much information as we can about all the nation’s institution cemeteries, we hope to develop new systems of community input and engagement so we can learn from people on the ground about the status of cemeteries near them.
We hope that this project will help people discover nearby cemeteries and develop plans to claim those buried within them as people worth remembering and caring for. We hope stories of successes in New York, Massachusetts, Oregon, Minnesota, and other states will provide inspiration and frameworks for many more victories over stigma, abandonment, and forgetting.