Political events are moving too fast to keep up with, and I’m suffering from overload. The impeachment hearings before the House Judiciary Committee are underway, and I haven’t yet had a chance to read the Intelligence Committee’s report on its investigation into the Ukraine matters. Sitting on my desktop waiting to be read is that 170-page federal court opinion rejecting the idea that Congressional subpoenas can just be ignored. So my head in spinning trying to process news of the country and the world.

But instead of dealing with all of that, I’m sitting here trying to make sense of new findings in my own family history, looking inward and backwards instead of outward and into the future. Over the past couple of weeks, I stumbled onto a deep family secret. My grandfather’s sister—Madeline Yonge—was mentally ill and spent much of her adult life institutionalized right here in Hawaii. But no one in the family ever mentioned her. Thinking back, the silence is stunning to me.

What brought it home is the discovery that she lived here in Hawaii beginning somewhere around 1917, and was a Hawaii resident until her death in 1974 at age 98. Just yesterday, I was able to locate a probate court document confirming her status as a longtime ward of the Hawaii State Hospital in Kaneohe, the state’s inpatient psychiatric care facility, and its predecessor, the Territorial Hospital.

What shocks me is that I no idea this was happening. Madeline, later known as Madge, was never, ever, mentioned by anyone in my family. Not when I was growing up, not when I was a young adult, married and attending graduate school in Honolulu. Not even when Madeline died in 1974. Despite my mother’s intense interest in genealogy and family history, she never told me her aunt—her father’s sister—lived most of her life here on Oahu. It appears this was one of those uncomfortable family secrets that the family buried and never spoke of.

Here’s what I’ve pieced together of her life.

Records differ on when Madeline was born. An entry in the Social Security Death Index lists her date of birth as July 2, 1879. I’m not sure what that is based on, and it appears to be incorrect.

However, most other available records say she was born in February 1876. Based on the preponderance of the evidence, I have to go with the 1876 date.

The 1880 census found Madeline, age 4, living in San Francisco with her father, James F.M. Yonge, her mother, Helene, and her younger brother, John Duke Yonge, who grew up to be my grandfather.

In June 1900, when the census was taken, Madeline was a novice in Our Lady of the Sacred Hearts convent in Oakland, California. According to the census entry, she was 24 years old, having been born in February 1876.

Four years later, in August 1904, Madeline’s father successfully petitioned to have her committed to a California mental institution. Her father described her as both suicidal and homicidal.

According to the petition: “Talks irrationally, says she is certainly going to hell because she has committed so many wrongs. Has threatened to kill her mother. Noisy and violent at times.”

At the time of the 1910 census, Madeline was an inmate in the Western Washington Hospital for the Insane in Steilacoom.

I didn’t find another mention of Madeline until her name appeared in the Honolulu City Directory for 1921, which probably means she had been here the year before. She was listed as a teacher living on Miller Street.

Then a brief item in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported she married Edgar H. Wilkins on Christmas Day, 1921 in Honolulu. The marriage was witnessed by her brother (my grandfather), Duke Yonge, and Adelaide Moore.

She next appears in the Honolulu Advertiser on July 17, 1926, which reported E.H. Wilkins and Madge Wilkins were among the guests registered at the Kilauea Volcano House during the week ending July 10. It was the first time that I found Madeline using the name “Madge.” But it wasn’t the last such reference, which I’ll explain below. The next name on the Volcano House list was “Helen Jouge” of Waipahu. That appears to be a misspelling of my mother’s name, “Helen Yonge.” Helen, Madeline’s niece, lived with her family in Waipahu. At that time, she would have been 13 years old.

The hotel registry listed the Wilkins’ as being from Kauai. This is consistent with several newspaper clippings in the mid-1920s which reported Edgar Wilkins among the teachers at Kauai’s Waimea Junior High School, and listed his wife as attending several social gatherings on the island.

But by the time of the next census, taken in April 1930, Madeline (identified as “Mrs. Edgar Wilkins”) was a patient at the newly opened Territorial Hospital for the Insane in Kaneohe.

Ten years later, the next census showed Madeline (still listed as “Mrs. Edgar H. Wilkins”) was still resident in the Kaneohe hospital.

After that, I was unable to find any newspaper mentions or documents via Ancestry.com and other genealogical sites, until a death notice appeared in Honolulu newspapers for a “Madge Wilkins,” who reportedly died in Honolulu on November 9, 1974 at age 98. Her age at her death would be consistent with an 1876 birth.

But this week, a search of Honolulu court records turned up a petition by the territorial Department of Public Welfare in 1953 seeking court approval to appoint a guardian for “Madge Wilkins,” identified as “an incompetant person…under the jurisdiction of the Territorial Hospital, located at Kaneohe….”

Madge Wilkins only living relative was identified as “Duke Yong” of Waipahu. Clearly a reference to my grandfather, Duke Yonge, of Waipahu. So that settles the question. Madge is Madeline.

According to the petition, Wilkins had initially been admitted to the Territorial Hospital in October 1917, and was given a “conditional release” in November 1949. Since that time, she had been living in the Berg Nursing Home, 3144 Monsarrat Avenue, near the corner of Campbell Avenue. The cost was $102.50 per month.

If the date of the initial admission to the Territory of Hawaii’s psychiatric system was 1917, then it is likely Madeline/Madge Wilkins was in and out of the territorial hospital, at least in those earlier years. That would account for her marriage in 1921, and a few years living on Kauai with her husband before winding up committed again by 1930.

The guardianship petition filed with probate court in the First Circuit said Wilkins had no personal property and no real property. She suffered from “mental illness,” but no further diagnosis was stated. Each month she received $52.50 in public welfare for room and board, as well as $2.50 a small amount of public assistance for “personal incidentals.” In addition, she was receiving $47.50 monthly from the estate of Teresa Florence Hughes, who died in 1937 and placed the bulk of her $441,152 estate in a charitable trust to be “employed in relief of poverty, physical suffering and distress.”

Teresa Hughes was the wife of John A. Hughes, originally from Ireland who became a naturalized American citizen in 1900. Hughes was a manager for Oahu Railway and Land Co., as well as a Republican politician who served on the Honolulu Board of Supervisors (predecessor of the City Council) as well as in the territorial legislature.

Wilkins’ monthly payment was received from Hawaiian Trust Co., which apparently was the trustee. I haven’t seen any information about whether this was a specific bequest from Hughes to Wilkins, or whether she had somehow been selected to receive the monthly support by Hawaiian Trust. However, my grandfather—Madge Wilkins’ brother—had served as Waipahu station manager for the railroad, and it’s plausible that he might have sought out assistance for his sister from the Teresa Hughes trust.

Wilkins remained a resident of the Berg Nursing Home for at least a decade. In March 1963, the funds from the Hughes Trust ran out. The guardianship was terminated. And it is likely Wilkins was returned to the Kaneohe hospital, although her residence until her death isn’t known.

She led a long but sad life. And I’m at a loss to understand how knowledge of her situation was buried so effectively within our family, even in my young adult years when I was living in Hawaii and she was still alive. No mention at the time of her death. Probably not a unique family situation. Some things were unpleasant enough that they were buried. Period.

I haven’t found any further information on Edgar H. Wilkins, Madge’s husband. That’s an avenue to explore further. And perhaps her death certificate will show her last known address. Another bit of research to add to my list.