Caldwell County MO Archives History .....CALDWELL COUNTY POOR FARM 
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/mo/mofiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 1, 2008, 4:38 pm

CALDWELL COUNTY POOR FARM
	Narrator:  Mrs. Ada Dunn of Hamilton, Missouri

     Mrs. Dunn is daughter of Sherman Minor Bassett and Elinor Fort.  The 
Bassetts came to Caldwell County in the late seventies from Coshocton county 
Ohio and at their arrival at Kingston they landed in the "poor farm" as they 
like to say.  At any rate, they stayed for some weeks with Eldert Fort and 
wife who for several years managed the county poor farm.  Mr. Bassett's new 
farm which he bought "sight unseen" through Mr. Fort is the present Seth 
Hootman farm near Mirabile.  Mrs. Dunn was about thirteen when she came west 
to Missouri and expected to see a very wild and wooly country - despite the 
nice things the Forts had written back.  Missouri had a bad reputation in the 
East.
     Having lived in the Poor Farm, Mrs. Dunn knew something of its history.  
A family by the name of Nixon owned the place which is now the poor farm.  He 
died and the administrator of the estate, Mr. Orr sold it to the County 1873.  
At first there was a small house on the place which is the back of the present 
large building.  They had a custom those days of keeping mildly insane cases 
there as well as the aged poor.  The above Mr. Orr's daughter said that hardly 
had the Poor Farm started when they had two hard cases - Billy Blood who was 
crazy and Ann McCollum who was so afflicted that she could not sit in a chair 
and she sat hutched up on the floor.  Both these old folks are buried in the 
graveyard that is on the farm for the old folks who have no friends to claim 
their bodies.
     Interviewed  July 1934.


File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/mo/caldwell/history/other/caldwell101gms.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/mofiles/

File size: 2.1 Kb