19th Century Women & Mental Illness in Aroostook County

Arminta Margaret "Meda" Clark was born on September 11, 1866 in Carleton, New Brunswick to Nehemiah Clark, a successful farmer, and Emeline Rideout Clark, both of New Brunswick. She was the only daughter out of nine children. Her brothers were Willard, Adolphus, Richard, James, Colby, Frank, Delbert, and Wesley. It is unclear what year the family moved to Maysville, Maine, a rich agricultural town organized in 1859 and later annexed by present-day Presque Isle. The Clark family is listed as living in Maysville in the 1870 Aroostook County census. Arminta must have been a very young child, perhaps with little memory of her birth-home across the Canadian border by the time she met and married Frank Thomas.

Ten years her senior, Frank Thomas was a native to Maysville. He was born on November 5, 1856, three years before the town officially organized. The 1860 census for Maysville names Frank Thomas as the second youngest of six children: Oscar, Charles, John, Angeline, Frank himself, and his youngest brother, Orin. Frank Thomas grew up to be a successful farmer and owned land near his father, Leonard Jarvis Thomas's farm.

Frank and Arminta married in December of 1885. No images or newspaper articles were found about their wedding, which is to be expected. It would not be common for even wealthy farmers in Northern Maine to have photographs of their wedding recorded for history during that time period.

It was a winter wedding, and winter in Aroostook County Maine can be dreary and difficult even in present-day 2022. In 1885, winter was bleak. It was just three short years before the Great White Hurricane or the Blizzard of 1888, where snowfall was up to 58 inches in parts of New England! That's almost five feet! We don't know for sure how mild or frigid the winter of 1885 might have been, but chances are it looked a bit like this snowy Houlton scene believed to have been taken sometime that same year. For more information about the 1888 Blizzard, click here.

A winter wedding in the late 1880s meant Arminta would have had to dress warmly. Thanks to women's fashion magazines dating back to the early 19th century, we have some idea what the highly fashionable wealthy woman would have worn for a wedding. While she may not have had the funding for chic, haute couture, she likely would have worn a Victorian corset popular of the time period, to cinch in her waist. Sometimes called "stays," this garment was intended to provide support throughout the day. The dress likely had puffed sleeves and a bustle as these were popular trends that year. It is also possible her dress was not the white color so many in Western culture have come to recognize as typical for brides as that color had only become popular for weddings a few short decades before when Queen Victoria wore a white gown at her own wedding.

According to Summer Brennan's 2017 article, A Natural History of the Wedding Dress, "By 1849, women’s magazines were already proclaiming that not only was white the best color for a wedding dress, but that it had in fact always been the best and most appropriate choice. In a bit of revisionist history,  Godey’s Lady’s Book  announced that “[c]ustom has decided, from the earliest ages, that white is the most fitting hue [for brides], whatever may be the material. It is an emblem of the purity and innocence of girlhood, and the unsullied heart she now yields to the chosen one.” Victorian ideals of weddings, romantic love, and purity were projected backwards to rewrite the white dress as a symbol of innocence and virginity rather than wealth" ( Brennan ).

While Arminta's father had some money, we do not know if she wore such a high fashioned dress as pictured above. Her dress may have been more subdued but elegant such as the one in the photo below. Possibly, Arminta may have worn one of her better dresses instead of a wedding dress. We will never know since there is no description of the wedding in the area newspapers of the time. It is interesting to speculate.

Figure 5: The photo to the right depicts a stylish but not haute couture wedding dress. While we do not know what Arminta wore for a wedding dressing, we can imagine she may worn something similar to this Central Aroostook County bride. This photo is part of a private family collection from Woodland, Maine. Compare the wedding dress that this woman is wearing to that featured in  Magazin Des Demoiselles. 

Life in mid-19th century rural Maine would have been very different than it is today. Arminta was born just one year after the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished in the United States. It was in 1869, following the end of that war that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association. It would be another fifty years before women would be granted the right to vote (  Library of Congress  ). Prior to that, "At the 1866 national women’s rights convention, the first since before the war, white and Black reformers founded the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) to secure suffrage 'irrespective of race, color, or sex'" (  Goodler)  .

Figure 6: This 1869 Currier and Ives lithograph is called The Age of Brass Or the Triumphes of Women's Rights.  Click here  to learn more about Currier and Ives.

Daily life for women was different in the the late 19th century before the right to vote allowed them a voice in politics and therefore a say over how their lives (and bodies) were governed. Women were often cared for by their fathers until they married into a new family. If their fathers died before they wed, they would often become the ward of a brother. It was rare that women could own land, find sustainable work, or manage their own lives until or unless they were married. However, some women did manage to do this as shown by land records and wills. Life for women differed based on their social class.

In the Southern part of Maine between 1816 and 1860, the Industrial Revolution created a wave of jobs for women as factories and mills popped up along rivers and populated areas. While working class women could find jobs in these mills, the working conditions were often grim and the wages barely livable. According to Carol Toner's 2004 article, “Hard Work to Make Ends Meet:" Voices of Maine's Working-Class Women in the Late Nineteenth Century," it wasn't until 1887 that Maine would create the Bureau of Labor and Statistics in response to the many complaints about working conditions for women and children throughout the state.

Arminta Thomas, on the other hand, lived the life of a housewife to a farmer operating a profitable northern Maine farm. Bordering Canada, Maysville would have been almost a week's carriage ride to Portland, Maine, the state's largest metropolitan area. And it was not until 1893 that a railroad would be available to travel between Houlton and Bangor, shortening the trip considerably. Census records tell us that the average farm in Maysville, farm was between 50 and 100 acres in the late 19th century. They also tell us that the population was between 600 and 1200 between 1860 and 1880. This is the world in which Arminta Thomas lived. Can you imagine how isolating that must have felt?

To learn more about the history of railroads in Central Aroostook Maine click on this article:   A Brief History of Railroads in Maine. 

As a New England Farmer's wife, Arminta would likely have spent her days balancing household chores with family care. Because her husband's farm was profitable, it is possible she employed a household laborer, such as a scullery or kitchen maid, to assist her, but most of the work of maintaining the home would fall to her. It would likely have been her responsibility to manage the household finances, ensuring there was enough food in the pantry, water in the well, and clothing to dress the family as well as cover whatever luxuries the family might like.

According to Frank Thomas's probate documents, they had more than a few household luxuries, too. When he died, he left behind a Buffalo coat like the one worn by Buffalo Bill himself, a costly garment for a New Englander far from where buffalo roamed. He also owned a piano and receipts were found showing he paid for piano lessons for one of his children (Wilkinson and Matthews).

One luxury the profitable farm household might have possessed would be a subscription to the popular   New England Farmer Magazine  , which was published between 1822 and 1905 out of Vermont.

An 1852 edition of the New England Farmer featured an article by "a Lady," (likely a farmer's wife herself), that described the daily lives of New England farm housewives:

"But there are those who sincerely believe, that no class of women in this country, do work so hard as the farmer’s wives. That circumstances often require this, it is useless to deny. But that a woman is constantly to work, and have no leisure, because she is a farmer’s wife, I do deny. A man who owns a small farm, is not required to hire much help, so that the labor of his wife is not very great. One who owns a larger one, and is required to hire help “out of doors,” if he manages as he ought, with economy and skill, will also be able to hire all needful assistance “in doors.” Where a man owns a large farm and is still unable to hire all needful help for his wife, we infer that there is an exception, and is not the general rule. Bad management, an avaricious disposition, or anything which tends to increase the burden of the wife, are wrong management somewhere, and this makes not necessarily the result of tilling the soil, but these same habits and traits of character would exhibit themselves in any other situation in life, and of course the result would be the same" (  New England Farmer  ).

Whatever Arminta's daily lifestyle might have been, it was to be forever upended by the birth of her first child. On January 10, 1887, Arminta and Frank welcomed their first child into the world. Their daughter, Eva, was born just two years after the young couple married, and the life of new parents would begin to change them both forever.

Figure 10: To the right is the 1877 Colby and Roe Atlas page of Maysville overlaid on a current day map. Click on the red markers to learn more about where The Thomas families and the Clark family lived.

When Eva Thomas was born in 1887, Arminta and Frank resided at their farm estate which neighbored Frank's father, Leonard Jarvis Thomas's farm. Several miles to the northeast, Arminta's parents, Nehemiah and Deborah Clark lived at their farmstead.

Take a moment to imagine what it might have been like to become a new parent in the late 19th century northern Maine landscape. Many new parents describe those early days of parenthood as sleepless as infants tend to need feeding every 90 minutes or so, sleeping for a mere hour at a time. It can take several months before an infant learns to sleep through the night, and those early days can be hard on a new parent--especially a new mother as her body heals.

Young children require constant supervision well into early childhood, and often children can't be left untended for any length of time until they are much older. Young Eva was a mere three years-old (possibly still toilet-training) when Arminta and Frank welcomed their second child, Verna on May 8, 1890. Less than a year later--on May 2, 1891, when Eva was barely 4 and Verna not yet a full year old--Arminta Thomas was admitted to the Augusta Mental Hospital with a diagnosis of Melancholia.

Many modern day psychologists believe melancholia may have been an early diagnostic term for postpartum depression, a condition that many new mothers experience shortly after giving birth. Sometimes called "the baby blues," about 10-15% of modern-day mothers are diagnosed with this condition (Annoyke). Another term for postpartum depression in the 1800's was "hysteria," or an affliction of the womb. It is important to note that treatment for women with melancholia or hysteria remained primitive for centuries. According to one paper on the subject, "During the Victorian Age (1837-1901) most women carried a bottle of smelling salts in their handbag: they were inclined to swoon when their emotions were aroused, and it was believed, that, as postulated by Hipocrates, the wandering womb disliked the pungent odor and would return to its place, allowing the woman to recover her consciousness" ( Tasca, et al. ).

Figure 11: This painting is by the Dutch Painter Jozef Israels. It is called the Day Before Departing. You can see the despair in the mother and have to wonder if this is how Arminta might have felt.

The concept of Postpartum Depression may have been the subject of the famous short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper, which was published in 1892. In this tale, Gilman describes a woman being treated for melancholy symptoms by her doctor husband. Mother to a young child of about 2 or 3, the main character (who is never named), tells the story from her perspective as a seeming prisoner in a country house where she is not allowed to read, write, or entertain visitors. She scrapes the story together in stolen moments with bits of paper and pencil she sneaks away.

This complete lack of entertainment was part of a medical treatment called Rest Cure. Famed physician of the 19th century, Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell created it. However, for the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper, Mitchell's Rest Cure along with her depression caused her to go slowly crazy. By the end of the story, she has become completely obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in her bedroom. The yellow wallpaper is the only thing she could find to occupy her mind while dealing with depressive symptoms. Charlotte Perkins Gilman claims to have written this story based on her own experiences following the birth of a child. The story came out suspiciously close to the time period of our nonfiction story. Substitute the main character's doctor-husband for a well-off farmer-husband and give her two children instead of one, and this story could easily be Arminta Thomas's own.

You can read the full text of this story below:

Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell was born in Philadelphia in 1829 and became a respected, well-known physician until his death in 1914. In 1884, Mitchell published his book, Fat and Blood, and it became a worldwide sensation ( Mitchell ). The books title is a description of what Mitchell believed to be a common connection between depressed, postpartum women: that they were thin and anemic. His treatment for this depressive disorder? A "rest" from all forms of excitement where the woman laid in bed, drank a lot of milk, and did nothing to stimulate her mind (Perrault).

Figure 12: To the right is a portrait of Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell.

While modern-day therapists and psychologists believe depression is best treated with strategies like distress tolerance or cognitive behavior therapy, Mitchell's Rest Cure remained a popular treatment for many years. So popular that it is reasonable to believe it might have been the key treatment for Arminta Thomas during her stay between May 2, 1891 and July 11, 1892 at the Augusta Mental Hospital under the direction of lead physician, Dr. Bigelow Sanborn. Dr. Sanborn ran the Augusta Mental Hospital after graduating from Bowdoin College in 1866 until his death in 1910. In 1880, Dr. Sanborn presented a paper on Melancholia--the very same diagnosis given to Arminta Thomas--to the Kennebec Valley Medical Association. As an expert on what was then clinical Depression, it seems likely he would have read anything on the subject that would be published. It is reasonable to imagine he read Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell's prominent work, and perhaps it even informed his treatments. We cannot say for certain.

Dr. Sanborn's granddaughter preserved and donated his diaries, so we have a lot of information about what was happening around the hospital during Arminta's stay there ( Sanborn ). Additionally, the notes about Arminta's stay documented by her attending physicians are preserved at the Maine State Archives and give us a glimpse into her experiences at the mental health institute.

As noted previously, Arminta Thomas began her stay on May 2, 1891 and did not return home until July 11, 1892, staying in residence at the asylum for just over 14 months before Frank collected her home to Maysville again. The first entry in her record at the Maine State Archive describes her as being "more or less disturbed" since giving birth to Verna in May of 1891. It says she was "very delusional and suffer[ed] from hallucinations of sight."

Figure 13: To the right is a image of the August State Mental Hospital in the late 19th century. It was later named the Augusta State Mental Institute.

On June 13, 1891 after a month of her stay at the hospital, the notes say she has a "weakened mind" and "has too little nervous strength to . . . engage in any occupation [syc]." She is also described as often found "laughing to herself," though her physical health is noted as being generall well. She has a good appetite, regular movements, and sleeps well. By October 20th of the same year, she is described as "not having regained her former state of mind and symptoms are appearing as unfavorable for recovery." Just like the main character of The Yellow Wallpaper, Arminta too begins to "show little attention to her dress," becoming sloppy and less concerned with her appearance.

There are no entries between October 1891 and July of 1892 when she is released. The last entry in July describes her as having "little in any respect of interest in her health," but despite doctor's suggestions that she should stay in the asylum, she is released to her husband's care on July 11, 1892. She returns home to Maysville to her children, now ages 5 (Eva) and 2 (Verna).

The entries for Arminta's 14-month stay span no more than a page and a half of a legal-sized, bound book of notes from the hospital. Dr. Sanborn's diaries have more to share about what happened during this time. There was an ongoing epidemic of typhoid since the winter months earlier in 1891. That summer, he escorted the female patients--Arminta included--on a trip to the Isle of Springs in Augusta (Sanborn). By the following winter, a new epidemic of La Grippe (essentially influenza) had seized the hospital, which was also undergoing some important renovations. During this time, Dr. Sanborn also hired a prominent female physician, Dr. Emma Baker, a recent graduate of the New England Women's College. Dr. Baker, as a female resident, would likely have been the attending physician on the women's side of the asylum. Dr. Baker may also be the author of the notes in Arminta's hospital file, which are dated but unsigned by any specific person.

Arminta Thomas would be home with her family for a mere three months when tragedy would strike, sending her back to the hospital for another five years of her life.

On October 13, 1892, just three months after Arminta Thomas returned home from her 14-month stay at the Augusta Mental Hospital, her youngest daughter, Verna, died of dysentery at the tender age of 2 years and 5 months old. Imagine the grief that this moment must have presented Arminta, Frank, and little Eva. This tragedy must have broken their hearts, but add to it the strain of Arminta's recent return from an 18 month absence due to mental illness. It makes perfect sense, then, that Arminta would return to the Augusta Mental Hospital less then two months later on December 3, 1892. She would remain there for five more years, warranting less than half a page of notes from her physicians in her hospital records.

The tragedy of Verna's death begins the part of our story where a possible murder mystery emerges. Or perhaps it is the sad conclusion of a young woman's life due to poor or inappropriate treatment for severe depression? And what of Frank's own apparent depression?

Figure 14: To the right, is the death certificate of Verna Thomas. It says that she died of dysentery.

Now, it was not uncommon for children to die of dysentery in this point in history. According to  WebMD , dysentery presents with severe belly cramps, vomiting and diarrhea, and sometimes blood or mucous in the stool. Dysentery can be caused by drinking dirty water contaminated with bacteria. Local papers of the period, The Aroostook Democrat, Northern Leader, and The Star Herald posted water notices during the time period encouraging residents of Maysville and surrounding towns to boil their water before drinking or cooking with it.

The symptoms of dysentery, though, are not unique to that disease alone. Abdominal cramping, diarrhea, and vomiting are likewise symptoms of arsenic poisoning ( Healthline ). Arsenic was fairly easy to buy at this time. Throughout New England, chemists regularly "sold tea, biscuits, sugar, flour, rice, and arsenic" ( Meyer ). It was also common enough to appear in commercial cleaning supplies and as a farm supply for ridding a barn of rats. It even appeared as a prime ingredient in ladies complexion soaps.

While it is a very rare condition, a form of postpartum depression called postpartum psychosis can lead women to commit crimes against their children. Such depressed women have been known to commit the act of infanticide, though Verna was a little old for this. Also, given that Arminta was so deeply depressed after the event that she would spend the next five years in the Augusta Mental Hospital, it is also just as likely that Verna died of an unfortunate, ill-timed tragedy. It was a time when women were expected to behave perfectly and manage their families without a single misstep, so it is entirely possible that the community around Arminta may have blamed her for Verna's death. It is also just as likely that her small town community rallied around her. It is impossible to know.

What we do know for sure is that Arminta Thomas did not return from the Augusta Mental Hospital until 1896. During that time, Eva, her oldest daughter, grew into a young woman of 11. Her father, Frank, would pay for the expense of a regular piano teacher for Eva, and we know there was a piano in the home thanks to Frank's estate probate documents.

Other than this small detail, little is known about how the family may have survived that long stretch when Arminta was hospitalized away from home. Were Frank's family members, who lived nearby, helping out with Eva or the household at all? And what of Arminta's own parents, Nehemiah and Deborah Clark just a few miles north--were they involved with the family at all, or were they slowly becoming more and more estranged while Arminta was locked away at the Augusta Mental Hospital?

What would happen on March 22, 1896 would raise another red flag in this mystery, and perhaps point guilty fingers at another member of the family: Frank Thomas.

On March 22, 1896, Frank Thomas's father, Leonard Jarvis Thomas died. His death certificate listed the cause of death as "apoplexy" more commonly known as a stroke. The symptoms of apoplexy include a few that will be familiar to you by now: nausea and vomiting, headache, and cramp. Apoplexy can be caused by many naturally occurring circumstances, and it can also be caused by arsenic poisoning.

Figure 16: To the right is a bottle of Arsenic and Digitalin. Digitalin or Digitalis is derived from the Foxglove plant which many people have in their flowers gardens today. Notice it says poison on the label.

Whatever the case, Frank Thomas did not wait long to travel downstate to fetch his wife, Arminta, home from the asylum to help out with the household. On April 5, 1896, just two short weeks after Leonard's death, Frank would once more remove Arminta from the care of the Augusta Mental Hospital against the recommendations of the hospital staff and return home to Maysville with her. By July 10 of that same year--three months after Arminta's return home and almost four years to the day of her daughter Verna's death--Arminta would be dead herself. But how, exactly, did this woman whose documented hospital records describe her physical health as strong die so young?

There is some discrepancy around the cause of Arminta's death. As you can see from the above death certificate, Arminta died of acute gastritis. Arminta's obituary in one of the local newspapers, however, lists her cause of death as Cholera. The symptoms of acute gastritis include nausea, vomiting, stomach bloat, diarrhea, and cramp ( WebMD ). Cholera lists similar symptoms of vomiting, watery diarrhea, and dehydration ( Mayo Clinic ). Like Verna's own death, these symptoms can also be caused by drinking dirty water or from ingesting arsenic, as well. While it is a common poison, arsenic is also a common element in well water in  Maine. 

Could Arminta have died from poisoned well water? Could she have been poisoned by arsenic purposely? Might she have taken her own life on the evening of the anniversary of her young daughter's death by purposefully swallowing arsenic after years of depression and hospitalization? While we cannot know for certain, what happens next may help you decide.

In an article in The Star Herald on July 16, 1896 entitled "A Tragic Occurrence," it is revealed that Frank Thomas killed himself earlier that day by causing a self-inflicted shotgun wound to his head. Why would Frank do such a thing, leaving behind his only living daughter, barely 9-years-old young Eva? The shocking answer may surprise you.

To read the Star Herald article about Frank Thomas's death, click the link below. Caution: the details of his death are very gruesome and could be traumatic for those who have known someone who has committed suicide.

The Star Herald's reported on the same day of Franks Thomas's death that Arminta's father, Nehemiah Clark, suspected foul play in the death of his daughter. "Certain circumstances in connection with the woman’s death led her father Mr. Nehemiah Clark, to make complaint of his suspicions that her death was caused by poisoning." He managed to convince a coroner to quietly exhume the body to test it for signs of murder just two days earlier, July 14, 1896 (four days after his daughter's death). The County Attorney directed three medical examiners to open an investigation. Arminta's "remains were...disinterred [and]….the contents of the stomach removed and forwarded under seal" to the State Chemist for analysis, according to The Star Herald.

In 1836, an English chemist named James Marsh, invented a test to check for arsenic poisoning. A Swedish chemist named Jons Jacob Berzelius improved upon it. The test became known as the Marsh-Berzelius test. The medical examiners may have used this test to look for the presence of arsenic in Arminta's stomach contents.

The Marsh-Berzelius test was still considered “crude” in 1883, just a decade before the case, but it had been used routinely to convict poisoners over the years. Many versions of arsenic tests date back as far as 1817 when the first known arsenic poisoning conviction took place in France. Arsenic survives 10 hours in blood, and it goes through biomethylation in liver. Additionally, about 70% of arsenic comes out in the urine. This means that it is very unlikely to be found in a stomach several days after ingestion ( Sanger ).

Though we cannot know exactly what happened, the Star Herald article describes how some people supported Frank while others assumed Frank's guilt. According to the article, "his neighbors and acquaintances [described him] as a good neighbor, square in his business dealings and a quiet and peaceable man [with no] unpleasant social habits.” The article goes on, however, to question if perhaps Frank "sought refuge in suicide to escape the consequences of the investigation that has been set on foot?"

This result makes things that much more tragic when on August 6, 1896, two weeks after Frank's suicide and Arminta's untimely death, the medical examiner's office reported that it found no evidence of poisoning. The Star Herald from August 6, 1896, stated that these results prove "something of a rebuke to that portion of the press and public who were quick to assume his guilt, and to hostilely charge him with alleged acts and habits of character that blackened his memory.” Had Frank waited just a few short weeks, he would have been found innocent and he could have watched his daughter Eva grow up to be the lovely woman she would become. Unfortunately, he and Arminta met tragic ends.

The town seems to have seen Nehemiah's mere suspicion of Frank as evidence of Frank’s guilt, but when the toxicology report does not show evidence of arsenic poisoning, the newspaper quickly writes a story acknowledging its part in wrongfully vilifying a melancholic (depressed) man who had just lost a child, father, and wife in the span of a few short years. And yet, it is suspicious that all the people around Frank who are closest seem to die with conditions that could also be symptomatic of arsenic poisoning. It is suspicious that Arminta’s own father suspected Frank--what would have caused him to be suspicious enough to dig up his own daughter’s remains? And what drove Frank to suicide--was it his own guilt at his involvement in as many as three murders? Or was it the act of a depressed man who was desperate for relief? 

Young Eva, the surviving daughter, grew up to succeed in life despite such early tragedy. Losing her parents both so young did not seem to impede her. A 1900 census report states that Eva lived in the home of George and Fanny Pomeroy. Eva is listed as a 13 year-old boarder, which is unusual considering Nehemiah and Deborah, Eva's own grandparents, lived for another decade. On September 9, 1909, Eva married Jerome Daley, a bookkeeper from Bangor, Maine, and the pair moved out of state. They lived to be elderly at the time of their death.

We cannot know for sure whether Arminta was the victim of a natural death or perhaps even suicide or murder. We cannot know for sure whether Frank suffered from depression or melancholia, though suicide is a well-known symptom of depression in the modern age. We cannot know for sure how Verna or Leonard died, either. What we do know, though, is that these people were managing complex emotions at a time in history when mental health was still emerging as a field of medicine and therapy.

To learn more about the small town of Maysville, Maine, check out this original StoryMap from UMPI graduate, historical researcher, Evan Zarkadas:

To learn more about 19th century mental institutions,  click here.  Please note that some of the information may be disturbing. The Maine State Mental Institute in Augusta was not as bad as the examples in this video.