A Creepy Sanitorium Where My Grandfather Forgey Worked/and a scary canyon road

 

I grew up in the city of Hacienda Heights, California at the foot of the Puente Hills. To get to the neighboring city of Whittier roads had to be carved through the hills. The oldest road over the hills to Whittier is Turnbull Canyon road. It winds along 4 miles of this canyon from Hacienda Heights to Whittier. My family often drove from Hacienda Heights to Uptown Whittier to buy some really delicious ice cream. Unfortunately the great ice cream parlor went out of business decades ago.

During the day it isn't very ominous but at night the canyon is dark and can be foreboding. It's especially eerie in foggy weather.  A plane crashed into a hillside in the canyon, in 1952 killing 29 people, in foggy weather. In the evening tarantulas often can be seen crossing the road. Old abandoned restaurant ruins at the top of a hill look like the ruins of an old cemetery. This atmosphere has given rise to stories of devil worshippers meeting at the restaurant ruins, and other strange occurrences. You'll find references, and videos, on the internet referring to this Turnbull Canyon site as the "Gates of Hell". 

There have been urban legends regarding a sanitarium once located in the canyon where lobotomies, and electric shock therapy, were performed. These stories sometimes include eerie references to these patients wandering the canyon. 

Researching my family in the recently released 1950 US Census I was curious about the sanitarium my grandfather, Charles Forgey, worked at as a gardener. He worked at Douglas Aircraft in shipping an receiving during WWII, but he decided to work closer to his home on 4th avenue in La Puente after the war, The El Encanto sanitarium was practically within walking distance from where my grandparents lived. 

4th Avenue home

This sanitarium was right off of Turnbull Canyon road. It's not in the canyon. It's a few miles away. I believe the stories of a mental facility in Turnbull Canyon stem from memories of the old El Encanto. 

When I found the El Encanto patients listed in the 1950 census they weren't all elderly, which surprised me. The El Encanto today is a nursing home mainly housing the elderly. My grandmother was a resident of that nursing home for several years. 

After the new nursing home was built I remember touring the old abandoned building site with a security guard who was living downstairs in the empty 1920s mansion. I was just a child and remember him telling us sometimes you could see ghosts in the old windows. I was afraid to look at the windows after that. Certainly many people died in those houses from 1841 until the new nursing home was built. 

1920s mansion was turned into a convalescent and mental hospital 

I decided to use my Newspaper.com subscription to learn more about the old El Encanto. I was surprised to find out that mental patients were housed there along with elderly convalescent patients in the early days. In the 1940s and 1950s patients were housed in the 1920s Spanish Style mansion. Next to this 1920s mansion is an even much older 1841 adobe which was upgraded later by William Workman into an English style manor house. 

Looking at old newspaper articles I discovered some dangerous mental patients were housed in the sanitarium. This shocked me thinking my grandfather could have been injured by a criminally insane patient. Below are some sample articles about escaped patients from the 1940s and 1950s:

Dangerous patients kept in locked rooms with restraints when my grandfather worked there.

One of the mentally disturbed patients was suicidal. I'm sure the environment in the sanitarium was enough to drive anyone to suicide. My mother visited someone inside on the convalescent side of the hospital and said the conditions weren't great. 

Below is a photo of my grandfather Charles with his dog Frank sitting in the grounds of the old sanitarium. Outside the manicured grounds where empty fields. My grandfather probably shot rabbits with the rifle he is pictured with. 

The old houses, which once housed the sanitarium, have been restored and are now open to the public. The Workman Temple Family Homestead Museum, in the City of Industry, offers guided tours and hosts special events throughout the year. 

If you look into the old windows at night you might catch a glimpse of the ghosts the security guard saw? 

Happy Halloween! 

A link to one of the videos on weird happenings in Turnbull Canyon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65pgeiUUVaM&ab_channel=RIVALZSS

Some Observations on the New SideView Technology DNA Match Feature

In August AncestryDNA introduced SideView which split our ethnicity results by parent. Now AncestryDNA is using the same technology to sort our matches by parent. 

The new landing page for the split matches is very nice and provides a visualization of  information by parent which links to more in-depth information.

My mother tested with AncestryDNA so I was able to separate my own matches that way. Of course her parents, who died in the 1970s, couldn't  take a DNA test. This feature is helpful in her case, and helps me with kits I manage because none of those kits have tested parents. Below you can see matches are now marked maternal and paternal. 

As far as the names frequently shared with matches they tend to be just common surnames in the population ancestors lived in. In my case they do seem to have some significance. Looking at other kits they don't seem to relate to our direct shared lines. Wray, Browning, and Holloway are names on my maternal tree. The others are likely just very common names. Adams should be on my paternal side. 

When I saw that my mother had matches who were related to both of her parents I was at first confused? Her father had colonial American roots and her mother was Nicaraguan? Looking at who the matches they are one niece and two grandnieces, so of course they are related to both of her parents, and of course I'm also related on both sides. 

Actually the information I found the most interesting is the number of matches by parent. My mother has 4,492 matches on her Nicaraguan mother's side. It's interesting that many people with Nicaraguan and Central American ancestors have tested. 

On her father's side, he had colonial American ancestry, she has 26,142 ancestors. I still think 4,000 Nicaraguan matches is really good considering when I tested nearly a decade ago didn't find many at all. 
All new features like these are helpful, but we still could use a chromosome browser which would definitely make AncestryDNA the best place to test. 

Viewing A FHL film Not Online via Zoom/ Online Consultations/My Irish research

Viewing a film with restrictions from California

A few years ago an Irish Valuation office revision book became available online via the Family History Library digitized films posted at their site. I assumed the rest of these films held by the Valuation office in Ireland would eventually be available also.  The film for my Huane family  land  has never been posted online. Apparently there is some sort of restriction on that film? Not sure why because it's held by the same office as the other films which are online. A Valuation office staff member emailed me and told me that they would be putting these online at some point. 

Above you can see some with a camera (are online) and some just a film icon (not online)

Recently I found out there were online consultations with research specialists who work at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. You can consult them if you are new to genealogy research or you have a brick wall you'd like them to take a look at and get some suggestions on research you may not have considered. 

Another service they can provide, during a consultation, is allowing you to view a film you can't view because of restrictions or you don't live near a Family History Center and your film isn't viewable from home. The time allotted for a consultation is 20 minutes, but if they aren't busy they can spend more time with you. One research specialist spent an hour with me.  

My primary reason for the Irish consultation I signed up for was to view the revision book film covering the townland of Fallakeeran, Co. Mayo. The Irish research specialist I talked to, Dan Poffenberger, had some wonderful suggestions for further research aside from just viewing the film. I had assumed David Rutledge was the owner of the land (as recorded on Griffith's Valuation). The research specialist pointed out that David Rutledge was likely leasing land from a large landowner. Knowing the name of the landowner can sometimes lead to the names of tenants, if the landholders records survived. My family was Irish Catholic and couldn't own land until land reforms were instituted. They rented land from David Rutledge. 

Irish deed books and indexes are online at FamilySearch. I checked to see if I could figure out who the owner of the Fallakeeran, Co. Mayo townland land was? I noticed that after land reforms allowed lessors to buy their land, with low interest government loans, the Rutledge family bought land the Fallakeeran land from a large landowner named Lady Eva Fitzgerald. If the Fitzgerald family papers still survive there could be more information about Fallakeeran and its inhabitants. 

I suggest being ready to take notes if you do one of the consultations. The first consultation I did I wasn't prepared and regretted it.  

I decided to order copies of these pages from the Valuation Office in Ireland. It cost 30 euros for the copies. The films the FHL has aren't in color. Changes to land ownership were recorded using colored ink. Different colors were used every year. In the far left had column (2nd image below) you can see the years changes were recorded. Apparently 1912 changes were recorded in light blue and 1916 changes in red. 

The cross out in 1912 of Thomas Huane's name shows a change of ownership. Thomas Huane's son Austin, who was the eldest son, now owns his father's interest in the Fallakeeran property. What his interest was isn't completely clear. I have not been able to find a deed transferring the 187 acres these families owned in common as recorded in Griffith's Valuation in 1855. Maybe the deeds transferring the land were never recorded? Recording deeds wasn't required. I was hoping the land would have been divided at some point but they continued to own the land in common. Holding land in common land was customary in this part of Ireland. 

The lowercase letter by the names of these land holders and tenants represents the house these families lived in. They each had their own house but held the land in common. The lower case e represents my Huane ancestors house. 

It appears the Ruttledge family purchased the 187 acres of land in Fallakeeran, after land reform, from the Fitzgerald family. In the case of my Mullen family they were able to purchase their land in 1909 when they received the certificate to the land. Most tenants owned the land by the1920s, the Huanes were the exception. 

In 1925 this 187 acres was transferred from the Ruttledge family to the Irish Land Commission. I need to do more research on this transfer. I believe at some point the Huane family did own some of this land, but I can't verify that. The land records online at FamilySearch only go up to 1929. Since I haven't found the Huanes in the deeds index, if they bought the land, they likely purchased it after 1929. The Irish Land Commission Records may be key to finding out what happened to this land. 

In 1926 Austin Huane's land was transferred to his son Thomas in a different color representing 1925 the common land was transferred from the lessor to the Land Commission

I would like to know the exact location of the land in hopes of visiting there in the future. I will likely order a copy of the map that corresponds with the revision books.