Vermont history summer speakers series highlights Vermont State Hospital graves

August 7, 2026  |  By Waterbury Roundabout

The Vermont State Archives and Records Administration’s ongoing free summer speaker series to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary continues on Monday, Aug. 10, with a presentation about burials at the Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury.

VT State Rep. Anne Donahue, I-Northfield. Courtesy photo

Vermont State. Rep. Anne Donahue, I-Northfield, will give Monday’s talk, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., in Room 11 at the Vermont State House in Montpelier. Donahue’s presentation, “Lost Graves: Burials on the Grounds of the Vermont State Hospital, 1891-1913,” will explore how the hospital treated the remains of people with mental illness at the turn of the 20th century. Donahue will share analysis of historical records on this topic in her talk.

This is one of several such talks in the ongoing series titled “Those Who Came Before: 250 Years of Vermont History.” The speakers and their topics aim to explore the quest for liberty, equality, justice, and acceptance in Vermont. The presenters draw information from the state’s and other archival records.

The Archives and Records Administration, a division of the Secretary of State’s office, holds and preserves Vermont state records from pre-statehood to the present day. They include documents documenting citizen rights, government decisions, and many aspects of state history.

The Vermont State Office Complex occupies buildings and grounds that were once the Vermont State Hospital. File photo by Lisa Scagliotti

A state lawmaker for the past 24 years, Donahue has had a keen focus on state mental health policy and a deep interest and dedication to the history and legacy of the Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury.

After Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, Donahue learned that patients in an old cemetery from the hospital were unidentified and that patient records had been destroyed in the flood. That launched her research efforts to learn about who had been buried there. 

A granite marker placed in 1991 marks a site on Perry Hill in Waterbury believed to be a Vermont State Hospital cemetery. More recent research raises questions about that history. Photo courtesy of Waterbury Historical Society

Along the way, she discovered that a site marked as a burial ground likely was not the site of multiple graves from former hospital patients.

She will share highlights of this project in her Monday presentation. (Read about some of her research in this 2024 Waterbury Roundabout report.)

The next talk in the series will be held Sept. 17, also 1:30-3:30 p.m., in Room 11 at the State House. “Integrating Archives and Archaeology: Recent Studies at the Fort Vengeance Monument Site in Pittsford, VT,” will be presented by Kate Kenny, historian and research supervisor in the University of Vermont’s Consulting Archaeology Program.

Kenny will explain how archival records are used alongside archaeological excavations to create a better picture of the past. Her focus will be work she did in an archaeological survey at the Fort Vengeance Monument Site in Pittsford for the Vermont Agency of Transportation.

The first presentation in the series in July was titled, “We Are Finishing the Work of the Revolution: Redefining the American Revolution's Legacy in the Civil War.” That talk was by Tyler Alexander, a public school history teacher at Champlain Valley Union High School. Alexander recently wrote a book, “If I Can Get Home This Fall: A Story of Love, Loss, and a Cause in the Civil War,” based on the real-life story through the letters of an ancestor who was a soldier in the Union Army in the Civil War.

He particularly examined how Vermonters in the Civil War era – men and women, soldiers and civilians – viewed the legacy of the American Revolution as it related to the struggle to restore the Union and abolish slavery. See the recording of Alexander’s presentation on ORCA Media here.

ORCA will attend the Monday and September presentations to provide a livestream and recording. Watch online at orcamedia.net/series/live-stream-events.

More information about the speaker series is online on the Vermont State Archives webpage here. See the Legislature’s webpage for information on how to enter the Vermont State House and the location of Room 11.