In 1907, a man died of tuberculosis. His obituary told that he had been in the Multnomah County Poor Farm before he died.

I obtained a copy of his admission record from the Multnomah County Archives and found that he had been admitted to the sanitarium associated with the Poor Farm. After two days, he voluntarily discharged himself. This was hardly long enough to be treated for any illness. I wondered about the shortness of his stay and the presence of a sanitarium.

The Poor Farm was not a place where people wanted to go. A 1907 newspaper article tells about another man who was going to the Farm. "His hair touched with silvery gray, his form bowed with the weight of four-score years and seven, but the light of a kindly spirit still shining in the dim gray eyes, James Barton Ward, half-brother of the great writer, General Lew Wallace, author of 'Ben Hur,' slept last night at the Multnomah County Poor farm. 'My life is all behind me,' said the aged writer, wiping the tears from his eyes. 'The sadness of it all bows me down with humiliation, but greater men than I have died in the poorhouse.'"

The Multnomah County Record Managers have read many of the admission records, and they've noted patterns. A significant number of the people who were admitted were elderly people with no family. In the middle of winter, many single men would check in for a few days, perhaps until they had a chance to get a few meals under their belt, a shower, and warmth. Sick people, many with consumption (tuberculosis), were admitted to the sanitarium. The Poor Farm was a combination nursing home, hospital, and social service agency in the early 1900s.

The residents were often frail and sick, and medical care was minimal. Deaths at the Poor Farm were common. Burials were often in unmarked plots.

Have you lost an ancestor? Could they be buried in an unmarked grave in a Poor Farm cemetery?

An Internet site, "The Poorhouse Story," online at http://www.poorhousestory.com, provides links to poorhouses in each state. You can find postcards showing poorhouses in many states. There are links to sites where people have compiled lists of burials.

On the Washington web page, there are even links to two articles that appeared in the Columbian about the Clark County Poor Farm.

© 2002

Connie Lenzen, CG^SM

CG, Certified Genealogist, is a service mark of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by board certified genealogists after periodic evaluation, and the board name is registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office.