With special thanks to former Fernald Reuse Committee member Marie Daly, please see her extensive analysis of burials at the 190 Trapelo Road property. Marie has extensive knowledge of the property, having lived across the street since 1950. 

Question: Is there any evidence of burials on the Fernald campus?

Personal knowledge (Marie Daly)

     I grew up across the street from the Fernald School, starting when my family moved to Porter Road in 1950. I still live there. The father of my best friend was the business administrator of the Fernald, and he and his family lived in what is now called Cardinal Cottage. I spent many childhood days playing with my friend in her house and on the grounds of the Fernald. Because her father was an employee, we had free reign over the campus. We spent many days roaming the agricultural fields, woods, and wetlands. We went to the movies in Howe Hall, attended church on holy days at the chapel, swam in the pool in the Greene Building, skated on the pond, and visited the candy machine in the Administration Building. My brothers and their friends likewise roamed the grounds, and they played baseball with the “State Boys.” My sister babysat for Dr. Farrell.

     In all our explorations, we never came across any graves, or even disturbed areas that might have been secret burial grounds. If there were burials, wouldn’t former employees know? As far as I am aware, no employee has said there were burials. Most of the land where the recreational park is being planned was used for agriculture. (See the 1952 aerial photo showing the location of the fields). The fields were tilled for corn, potatoes, alfalfa, rhubarb, tomatoes, beans. We ran through and played hide-and-seek in the corn fields. We picnicked near the wetlands, and my friend’s mother would take us on nature walks through the grounds. It would be highly unlikely that any persons or babies would be buried in agricultural fields, where the ground was tilled every spring. We also wandered around an open meadow area in back of the Greene Building, where Malone Park was later built. The meadow was grassy and intact, again with no signs of disturbance. The kids had dug a hole under the fence there, which we used to enter the Girl Scout Cedar Hill campgrounds.

      There was an area on the western boundary where the Fernald had an incinerator and a dump. The dump was located between the cottages and the Greene Building. You can still see file cabinets and other debris sticking out of the ground there. It was a very rough area that was almost impossible to traverse. The Fernald burned their trash at the incinerator. The Fernald also had a leaf & grass clipping dump along the western border just to the north of the dump. It is possible that cadaver organ specimens from the laboratory were incinerated there.

Records

Metfern Cemetery established in 1947

The Metfern Cemetery is located on the grounds of the former Metropolitan State Hospital, at the north base of Mackerel Hill. This is now under the care and control of the DCR as part of Beaver Brook North Reservation. It was established in 1947 for the burials of Met State patients and Fernald residents who had no families or hometowns where they could have been buried. So from 1947 on, some deceased people from the Fernald were there.

One possible site was surveyed

A colleague and I investigated a lot of the buildings at the Fernald, and we both wondered where the residents were buried before 1947. We did not find any records stating there were burials, but there was an area of interest, below and south of the Belmont House. Belmont House used to be the original power plant of the institution. Below this building was a flat concrete square with a wrought iron fence around it. My colleague thought it might be a cemetery. So, an archaeological survey was done, and it was determined that there were no human remains there.

Death records show burials occurred elsewhere

In September 2018, I gave a lecture about the 1918 flu epidemic at the Lyman Estate for the Waltham Historical Society and Historic New England. It was the 100th anniversary of this devastating epidemic (but before COVID). I have attached a pdf copy of the lecture. In preparing my lecture, I looked at death records for all deaths due to the flu or pneumonia in Waltham in the September through December 1918 period. I created a database that included fields for age and residence. I discovered that there were 87 deaths at the Fernald. So, I looked at 87 death records of deceased residents of the Fernald. Death records of that time period included the burial place. The records showed that Fernald residents were buried in the hometowns of their families, or at Mount Feake and Calvary Cemeteries. None were buried anywhere on the grounds of the Fernald. Considering the magnitude of the epidemic and the fact that the Fernald had been overwhelmed, one might think there could be a mass burial site somewhere in the 190 acres. Yet there was not. All were buried elsewhere. Death records before 1926 are publicly available online at familysearch.org. I challenge anyone asserting that there were burials at the Fernald to find any records to show this.

Annual reports list deaths but no burials

The annual reports of the Fernald are detailed and available online at the Massachusetts State Library website.

The reports shows that the institution took the occurrence of residents’ deaths quite seriously and documented the causes of death. In a significant percentage of the deaths, autopsies were performed. In none of the reports that I reviewed from the 1920s to the 1950s were any burials mentioned. Records showed that some of the sick residents were cared for at the Metropolitan State Hospital. There were no expenses for upkeep of burial grounds or purchases of coffins.

Burial claims based on purported, but undocumented residents’ allegations

Despite the lack of evidence that there were any burials on the grounds of the Fernald, some people have persisted in claiming there are undocumented burials there. Some have said their beliefs were based upon some allegations by a few former residents, without citing any specifics as to who said this, or where on the site the purported burials occurred. However, author Michael D’Antonio made no mention of undocumented burials in his 2005 book, The State Boys Rebellion, despite having interviewed former residents and employees.

Pregnant females were sent to Tewksbury State Hospital

There was known sexual abuse of female residents, and that some had become pregnant as a result. The claims alleged that their infants were buried on the Fernald site. However, the annual reports did make mention of female residents who had become pregnant, and when that happened, they were transferred to Tewksbury State Hospital for the duration of the pregnancy and birth of their children. See 1941 Fernald annual report below.

Note: paroled meant residents who had been placed in living and work situations outside the institution. Very often, girls were trained as domestic servants.

Surveying the entire site would be difficult

So, despite the lack of evidence, other than rumor and conjecture, claims have been made that there have been burials on the site, and the grounds should be surveyed with ground- penetrating radar. This would be a very time-consuming and expensive proposition to survey the entire 190 acres. If any survey is planned, a review of likely sites should narrow down the area to be examined.

·        The soil was stripped away, and the hillside gouged out

Much of the soil was stripped away when the cottage complexes were built in the early 1980s. The hillside was gouged out, wetlands were filled in, and the stream was culverted to make the area flat for the road & cottages. Likewise, the Shriver Center, built in 1970, removed a lot of soil for its buildings and parking lot. Therefore, these areas can be ruled out.  

·        No claims of undocumented burials at the Met State or by Fernald Re-use Committee

There were no claims of undocumented burials at the Met State, which was established in 1930, well before the Metfern Cemetery was laid out. The claims of undocumented burials at Fernald have arisen only recently, even though the reuse planning process goes back as far as 2010. The original Fernald Re-use Committee included DCAM Commissioner David Perini and Marylou Sudders, former superintendent of the Met State, and Massachusetts Secretary of Health and Human Services. No mention was made during this process about any burials on the site.

(1941 Fernald Annual report below)