Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Did, or does your county?

Have a poor farm? County home for folks with nowhere else to live.
Ours did, until the supervisors sold it in 1970.

I remember going with my Mother to coffee club.

It used to be about 4 miles from our house. They shut it down 20 or 30 years ago.

We are a half mile north of the old county home. My mom joked not far to move.

Seventy-six years old and don't remember one in my county. Of course there were lots of poor folks back in my youth. miles

I remember a number of them. They all seemed to go out of existence about the same time.

Centralization of government, the township trusties used to buy coal for poor folks.

We got a poor house farm rd here always wondered why it was named that

Poor House Road in Morgan County Alabama also. I’ve driven on it but no evidence of such a house exists today.

There's one about 7 miles from my house, but it has been out of commission for 5-10 years now. The windows are all boarded up, and a plethora of abandoned vehicles are all over the property around the main house.

Not in my lifetime

When my folks were coming up, the farm they
lived on and every other farm for miles around
was a "poor farm "
The people with money lived in town

They were brought up during the depression
and WWII and didn't have much of anything
besides what they were wearing. They could
have put all their personal possessions in a
walmart sack with room to spare
I can't see any person in 2023 that could cope
and live like that. Be a lot of people offing themselves

We have nursing homes paid for by Medicaide.

^^^^
There’s still farm “houses” standing here in East Texas and it’s pretty enlightening to see how our parents, grandparents and great grandparents lived. About 20 years ago I was checking out a farm house with an older local, he said “these people had money, they had batten boards”. However these people w “money” used cardboard for insulation. Obviously before the poor “deserves” entitlements (handouts)

I guess the federal and state welfare programs have replaced the old "County Home" locations. The " County Home" a local Florida term, was basically a farm location with crops and livestockl. Folks lived there grew the crops and livestock for food, plus went to school and got a 4h style education. Today all that has been replaced by the welfare state, teaching nothing except how to game the system. There is a very marked difference in the people raised in the two systems.

In Iowa they decided it was cheaper to send the residents to local nursing homes than for the State and county to provide a home for the indigents. The end results is the county I am from sent the residents to local nursing homes and sold the property after tearing down the buildings. My mother was a cook at the home for about 10 years. She moved to Ames and was a cook at the county senior citizen center for a few years and then moved on to a fraternity at ISU.

Kwg