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1848–1979 · the state hospital routes of this county's committed
Three state hospitals received this county's committed, in succession, and the routes are dated. First Indianapolis: the state hospital opened in November 1848 as the Indiana Hospital for the Insane (later Central State Hospital), and for forty years it took patients from the whole state — the county poorhouse kept only the chronic and the harmless, and sent its acute cases down to the capital. Second Logansport: on March 7, 1883 the General Assembly funded three additional hospitals to relieve Central's overcrowding, and the northern house, the Northern Indiana Hospital for the Insane at Logansport — "Longcliff," renamed Logansport State Hospital in 1927 — opened July 1, 1888. The poorhouse ledgers register the route change within three years: Smith's study notes that in the 1887–1891 admissions "fewer admissions were recorded for mental disorders because new state hospitals for the insane were constructed or completed during this time and increasing numbers of the chronically insane were sent to Indianapolis or Logansport, where they received closer attention." After 1890 Central State served only Marion and surrounding counties, and the northern district — this county with it — ran to Logansport. Third Westville: the Dr. Norman M. Beatty Memorial Hospital at Westville, in adjoining LaPorte County, was dedicated in 1949, and its civil division began admitting patients from seventeen counties in northern Indiana in 1951. The traffic between Westville and this county ran both ways and is documented at the county home itself: overcrowding at the infirmary (see the next article) pushed residents "diagnosed with severe mental illnesses or impairments" out to Beatty, and by 1966 the county home's correspondence shows a standing two-way flow — the home pressing to have residents "admitted/committed to Westville," Beatty pressing the home to accept its patients back, and Beatty reporting Portage Manor "runaways" who had wound up at the hospital. The Westville route closed in 1979, when Beatty was converted into the Westville Correctional Facility and its civil patients were transferred to other state mental hospitals; the Logansport route never closed — the county home's 1980 admission criteria were relaxed to take in "mental patients from Logansport," and Logansport State Hospital is still operating, Indiana's oldest psychiatric hospital, as of November 2026. In total the state archives hold the traffic's measure: 18,799 patients admitted to Beatty between 1951 and 1979, and 38,498 admitted to Logansport by June 2008 — this county's committed among them, their individual names and papers in the admission indexes and commitment files at the Indiana State Archives, which is where any township-level count of the Granger share would have to be settled.
Sources: Indiana Archives and Records Administration, "Indiana State Hospital Records" (the Central, Logansport and Beatty entries: the 1848 opening, the post-1890 restriction of Central's district, Longcliff's opening and patient totals, Beatty dedicated 1949, civil admissions from seventeen northern counties from 1951, 18,799 admissions 1951–1979, the 1979 conversion); Smith, Indiana Magazine of History (1990) (the 1887–1891 ledger evidence for the Indianapolis/Logansport traffic); St. Joseph County Home timeline (the 1966 two-way Beatty traffic; the 1980 Logansport admissions); Ted Shideler, "Indiana's St. Joseph County Home" (2026), citing Asylum Projects (the infirmary-to-Beatty transfers).