The records document the administrative, financial, and patient history of the Dunn County Health Care Center operating under its various earlier names from 1891 to 1972. The records are arranged into three groups: ADMINISTRATIVE AND FINANCIAL RECORDS, PATIENT RECORDS, and MISCELLANEOUS RECORDS. The records as a whole are heavily weighted towards the financial aspects of the institution's history and offer limited insight into the lives of patients or policy management of the institution. A few records contain patient names and are therefore restricted.
The chief administrative documentation of the Dunn County Hospital and Home consists of printed annual reports. A run of these reports that is relatively complete from the two institutions' founding to 1960 is held by the SHSW Library Government Documents Section, and the UW-Stout Area Research Center has additional copies from 1929 through 1970. These reports contain narrative information of varying detail in the reports of the institutions' superintendents and physicians, as well as financial information and statistical information about general operations. In the absence of the standard administrative sources (e.g correspondence of the superintendent), these reports are invaluable.
Dunn Series 166 includes unprinted annual reports submitted to the State Board of Control that contain summary financial information and statistical data about the resident population. The asylum reports contain information on the use of restraint and isolation. The poor house reports contain data on the causes of pauperism. After 1926 the state reports are strictly financial.
The financial records make up the largest part of the records series. Unlike the reports to the State Board of Control, which document the early history of the institution, the financial records mainly document the decades between the 1930s and the 1960s. These files consist of yearly audit reports of both the asylum and poor home and state and county bills. The annual audit reports were prepared by the Wisconsin Tax Commission (later the Wisconsin Department of State Audit) and provide statistical and narrative analyses of the institution's financial condition between 1932 and 1964. Topics covered include assets and liabilities, insurance, investments, and revenues from barn, farm, and garden sales. The audits of the county home resemble those of the asylum, but they also include lists of patients arranged by town of origin and then alphabetically by last name. These lists provide information about length of stay, cost for care, and other expenses.
The state and county bills, also known as certified statements, provide yearly documentation of the amount owed for patient care both by the state and by individual counties for patients in the Dunn County facility. These records date from 1943 to 1960 and are arranged chronologically and then alphabetically by county. The state and county bills are particularly valuable because, aside from the financial information contained therein, they are the only records in the series that identify residents during the 1940s and 1950s. These bills document individuals by name, identify patients admitted or discharged during the year, the length of stay for which the county or state is being billed, costs of clothing and other miscellaneous necessities, and the total amount due. Earlier bills, 1917-1931, consist only of copies of invoices sent to private individuals who were financially responsible for a resident's care. The financial records also include a journal, 1938-1952. While it contains information available elsewhere in some form, it also contains useful details and accounting justification.
The series also includes one volume of original minutes of the Dunn County Asylum Building Commission. The building commission, consisting of J. H. Stout, William Miller, and A. R. Hall, was appointed by the Dunn County Board in 1889 with the task of preparing plans and specifications for the erection of a county asylum building.
PATIENT RECORDS consist of an admission list dating from 1892, two lists of residents from the 1930s and 1940s, and a patient population book. These records provide the names of patients, their counties of origin, and their lengths of stay in the institutions, but little documentation of patient life or activities. The original admission list is a hand-written log documenting the first group of patients to be admitted to the asylum in 1892. The list is arranged chronologically by month and day. Attached to it is a breakdown of these original patients by county of origin and gender. Also included is an undated list of asylum patients that appears to date from the mid- to late-1940s; and an undated list of County Home residents that appears to date from the 1930s. The asylum list includes some dates of commitment and/or release. It is arranged by county and then alphabetically by name of patient. The patient population book documents the movement of residents in and out of the institution between 1955 and 1970. Arranged chronologically, the book lists patients entering or leaving the institution, together with a short note explaining the entry.
The MISCELLANEOUS RECORDS, which are arranged alphabetically by record type, consist of architectural plans and photographs, employee rules, property inventories, a patient diary, inventories, a journal of crops, rules, lists of employees, and leases. The architectural drawings and plans consist of elevations and floor plans primarily for the barn and the farm outbuildings, although there is a 1953 plot plan and floor plans for the hospital and an elevation and floor plan for the poor house. The photographs, the originals of which are housed in the Visual Materials Archive in Madison, consist of black and white prints and color transparencies of the hospital building. One aerial view is included.
The diary, perhaps the most unusual item in the series was kept by a male patient in 1915 and 1916. It includes a record of daily life, including his various cleaning and farming duties, his excursions to fairs and circuses, his observations about visitors, and the deaths of other patients. The leases and deeds include a 1917 lease for a dairy farm, a 1921 lease for a farm, and a 1927 quit claim deed for the same dairy farm. These three items provide some information about the attempts of the institution to expand farming operations during its early decades. The inventories contain a detailed listing of the institution's property and possessions. The inventories usually begin with a summary, which lists the total values for different categories of property, such as land and improvements, structures, machinery, furniture, livestock, office supplies, and medical supplies. A more detailed listing then follows. Aside from the 1930 inventory, which is accessed through an index, each inventory is arranged by structure and then by room. The monthly time books are small volumes dating from 1931 to 1960 that document the hours worked by individual hospital employees. They are arranged chronologically and then alphabetically by name. The journal of crops raised and consumed provides chronologically arranged information about farm, barn and garden items produced and consumed by the institution between 1943 and 1978, when farming ceased.
