The original item was published from January 7, 2019 8:29 AM to January 7, 2019 8:57 AM
Sometimes your local history can be a mystery. Did your town have an orphanage, a hospital or a home for developmentally disable children? Was there a society that took care of the needs of the poor or distraught?
There's a helpful tool that might be of help in such research. A Kansas state agency oversaw the operations of private and public institutions and societies in Kansas many years ago. Known first as the Kansas State Board of Control and later, the Kansas State Board of Administration (not related to the current Kansas Department of Administration), this Board not only oversaw the operations of state hospitals and other state social welfare institutions in Kansas. It also kept track of the operations of private institutions and organizations, making sure they kept up to standards and laws instituted by the government, and spent any money awarded to them by the state in a proper manner.
These two Boards issued reports listing the private institutions/organizations within the state, their location, the number of people cared for, administrator(s), religious affiliation if any, budgets, etc. Although they do not list residents they can be a valuable tool to historical and genealogical researchers in locating institutions and organizations in Kansas.
As an assist to researchers State Library staff are including the names of the institutions and organizations in records we create for these reports. You can search the records to see what might have been located in a town in Kansas. Our KGI Online Library holdings for the reports are incomplete: 1912, 1914, 1916, 1920, 1921/22, 1923/24, 1925/26, 1927/28, 1929/30, 1931/32 and 1935/36. We have the individual indexes for reports from 1912 to 1926/27. Just scroll down within each record for the listing.
You can use the records for the indexed reports to look for an organization or institution clicking on the year in the icons within the containing window.
ALL OF THE REPORTS:
1912 Classification and Reports of Private Associations and Institutions Made to the Kansas State Board of Control
1914 Classification and Reports of Private Associations and Institutions Made to the Kansas State Board of Control
1916 Classification and Reports of Private Associations and Institutions Made to the Kansas State Board of Control
1920 Classification and Reports of Private Associations and Institutions Made to the Kansas Board of Administration
1921, 1922 Classification and Reports of Private Associations and Institutions Made to the Kansas Board of Administration
1923, 1924 Classification and Reports of Private Associations and Institutions Made to the Kansas Board of Administration
1925, 1926 Classification and Reports of Private Associations and Institutions Made to the Kansas Board of Administration
The reports for 1927/28-1935/36 are also available for viewing merely by clicking on the icons in the window for each record.