American University Library

REFUGE FROM WANT?: VIRGINIA’S ALMSHOUSES, 1870-1930

Mary Ellen Henry

Submitted to the

Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences

of American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree

of Doctor of Philosophy

History

Chair:

Dr. AlanM. Kraut

Dean ol the College Dr. William A. Link

D in e

2006

American University

Washington, D. C. 20016 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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Mary Ellen Henry

2006

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. REFUGE FROM WANT?: VIRGINIA’S ALMSHOUSES, 1870-1930

MARY ELLEN HENRY

ABSTRACT

The rural county poorhouse as it appeared in a southern setting focuses this study

analyzing the institution’s role during a period of enormous change in poor policy

administration. Almshouses, commonly called poorhouses, existed in almost every

county and city in Virginia by 1870. Despite their ubiquitous presence and remarkable

longevity, these facilities have remained relatively invisible in the historical landscape.

Progressive Era reformers seeking their demise effectively used a pejorative rhetoric that

pictured filthy, wretched places inhabited by the “dregs of humanity.” An unsavory

reputation associated with large urban institutions served to further cloud their role in

sparsely populated country communities.

In order to determine what, if any, useful purpose the poorhouse served, this study

examines the institution and how it functioned in six Virginia localities representing the

five geographical regions of the state: Alexandria, Caroline County, Highland County,

Mecklenburg County, Rockbridge County, and Shenandoah County. Census data, county

records, and annual reports to the General Auditor from the Overseers of the Poor, among

other sources provide a look inside the facility, what was actually a poor farm, to

determine its relative value to the community it served.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In the late nineteenth century, almshouses functioned variously as hospitals,

homeless shelters, and long-term care facilities for the aged and feeble-minded. In

addition they provided temporary haven and relief for families and single mothers, both

widowed and unwed. Essentially a paternalistic institution run by the superintendent and

his wife, these farms, meant to be self-sufficient, developed their own sense of

community. In the complicated southern racial picture, these rural poorhouses uniquely

created a space open to both blacks and whites.

Progressive reformers in the early twentieth century sought to close the

poorhouses in favor of consolidated institutions for the aged as well as new state

institutions for the epileptic, feeble-minded, and tubercular. Counties persuaded by their

arguments, closed their almshouses beginning in 1926. However, these state measures

served to harden racial lines with strict segregation, denied the feeble-minded basic

rights, and left many poor in rural counties to shift for themselves.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful thanks go first and foremost to my dissertation advisor, Professor Alan

M. Kraut, whose ever constant support and unwavering belief in this project’s merit have

buoyed me over the course of research and writing. His cheerful presence and thoughtful

commentary both encouraged and sustained my efforts.

The Department of History further supported this study through the gracious

award of a College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship. That grant provided

both material aid and an intellectual imprimatur for which I remain indebted. In addition,

both faculty members and fellow graduate students created a challenging and supportive

environment that helped move me forward.

Many thanks go as well to my Dissertation Committee members, Dr. Pete Daniel

and Dr. William Link. Reading their clear-eyed works on the South continues to inspire

my own studies. They never fail to illuminate the complicated history of this distinctive

region in meaningful ways. Their probing questions have deepened my own

understanding immeasurably.

For mentoring and support of women graduate students, my gratitude extends to

Dr. Sarah Larson and Dr. Melissa Kirkpatrick, graduates of the history program who

generously offered their friendship and time. Ever willing to wrestle with an idea or

provide a forum for surviving the process, they have given unselfishly of both their time

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and considerable talents. When serious illness waylaid my research, they physically

made it possible for me to get to the archives and finish gathering the necessary primary

documents. Many heartfelt thanks go out to them both.

Finally, my family has supported my graduate study in many ways large and

small. My sister, Susan Casey, has cheerfully accompanied me on trips to Virginia

archives. Babysitting while I researched, employing her considerable photographic

talents, and simply joining me in the pursuit, she has aided and enriched my journey.

James, Chris, and Will have all experienced moments of mom’s divided attention, but

have never failed to offer their support and encouragement. Belief in me underscored by

love has been their gift, but especially that of my husband Doug. With his patience and

faith, he enabled my work making the dissertation a reality.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... iv

Chapter

I. INTRODUCTION...... 1

II. ALEXANDRIA: VIRGINIA POOR POLICY IN TRANSITION...... 23

III. POOR HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY...... 65

IV. ALMSHOUSE FOR THE ILL AND DYING...... 119

V. THE GOOD STEWARD...... 154

VI. REMAINS OF THE POOR HOUSE...... 194

VII. CONCLUSION...... 228

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 240

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INTRODUCTION

Winter in 1870 Alexandria, Virginia was a hard one. As if to underscore the

prevailing desperation, two horses were stolen from the local almshouse. The thieves

were caught and given harsh sentences in part for the subsequent killing and skinning of

one of the animals, but also for robbing an institution that the judge characterized as a

city owned place for “the relief of the aged, infirm and destitute.”1 Not only had the theft

deprived the poor farm of valuable stock worth approximately $800.00, but deprived the

inmates of transportation for themselves and the fetching of supplies. The victims were a

slaughtered horse, the poor farm staff and residents, and the tax paying citizenry who

furnished the horses and who, after all, provided for the institution in the first place.

While the incident highlights the local community’s strongly felt stewardship for the

poor, it is harder to discern how far that sense of responsibility translated beyond the

fiduciary. What sort of balance existed between meeting the needs of the poor and the

subsequent financial obligation incurred?

Virginia communities had weighed the costs and benefits of poor relief since the

colony’s seventeenth century beginnings. While poor relief policy in Virginia devolved

from the English poor law, its fullest expression came in the nineteenth century in the

many and various city and county institutions officially known as “The Place of General

1 Alexandria Gazette and Virginia Advertiser, January 7, 1870, page 1.

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2 Reception.” The alternate term “Almshouse” seemingly acknowledged the charitable

origins of these structures. The more common parlance local residents employed was

simply Poor House or Poor Farm. These various terms for the local facility are

interchangeable in poor policy documents until the twentieth-century seachange of

Progressive reform transformed the poorhouse into the County Home.3 First appearing in

eighteenth-century Virginia, the almshouse came to communities in fits and starts.

However, by the 1870s, almost every city and county government in the Old Dominion

supported such an institution.

Curiously, despite its pervasive presence, the poorhouse has remained almost

invisible in the historical record. Since the poor are an ever-present fact of life,

belaboring their condition was a statement of the obvious. The institution of the

poorhouse was such a part of a given community’s fabric as to be transparent. At the

same time discussing the fate of the poor was not a topic for polite conversation. Local

county historians of the twentieth century delving into their county’s origins or tracing

the fortunes of its founding families rarely discussed the institution.4 Such failure to talk

or write about this publicly supported institution effectively contributed to the shunning

of the place. While everyoneknew about the poorhouse and its unsavory reputation, few

ventured inside.

2 This designation appears on the reports of the Overseers of the Poor to the General Auditor. 3 This dissertation also uses almshouse, poorhouse, and poor farm as interchangeable terms for the same, institution. 4 See, for example, Oren F. Morton’s A History o f Rockbridge County, Virginia (Staunton, VA: The McClure Co., Inc., 1920) or his A History o f Highland County, Virginia (1911; reprint Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1969).

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However, the ubiquitous presence of the poorhouse in a rural southern setting as

well as its remarkable longevity of some 150 years require closer examination and

interpretation—however counterintuitive that may initially seem. Perhaps the rural

poorhouse, more specifically a poor farm, performed some very real service and accrued

value within its given community. The poor farm, however, suffers from singularly bad

press. Much of the pejorative rhetoric came from Progressive Era reformers who painted

a Dickensian picture of a holding pen for “the dependent, delinquent, and defective.”5

From many accounts, this image was not inaccurate, especially in the larger urban

centers.6 However, the concerns that dedicated social workers reported were invariably

filtered through the lens of early twentieth- century reform. That rhetoric prevents us

from seeing clearly how the almshouse may have functioned within its community and

whether or not the institution provided its inmates with a refuge from want, however

transitory.

The study of rural poor farms is distinguished by its paucity. The work of most

modern historians of social welfare in the United States has made only limited forays into

the role of the poorhouse in the larger story of poor relief in the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries. Most examinations focus on large urban institutions rather than the typical

county poorhouse. While Michael Katz clearly demonstrated the value of such studies in

his insightful Poverty and Policy in American History (1983) and subsequent In the

5 Arthur W. James, The Disappearance o f the County Almshouse in Virginia: Back from “Over the H ill” (Richmond: State Board of Public Welfare, 1926). 6 See The Almshouse Experience: Collected Reports. Poverty USA: The Historical Record. (New York: The Arno Press & The New York Times, 1971).

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Shadow o f the Poorhouse (1986), few scholars have taken his lead.7 For Katz, the

poorhouse becomes a central image because it symbolizes the stigma placed on the poor,

represents welfare policy at its worst, and casts its “shadow” even today in the attitudes o of many policy makers.

This reputation of the poorhouse stems from its image as a nineteenth-century

“dumping ground” for paupers who were variously defined as indigents, drunkards, the

insane, the sick, orphans, widows, unmarried pregnant women, the feeble-minded, and—

7 Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History o f Welfare in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Poverty and Policy in American History (New York: Academic Press, 1983). See particularly Katz’s case study of the Erie County poorhouse in his second chapter, “Poorhouses, Paupers and Tramps,” 55-89 in Poverty and Policy. 8 More general studies of private and public welfare in response to poverty in the United States include: Robert H. Bremmer, American Philanthropy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960, 1988) and From the Depths: The Discovery of Poverty in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 1956) which provide an overview of both the public and private response to poverty in the nineteenth century; James Leiby, A History of social Welfare and Social Work in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978); June Axinn and Herman Levin, Social Welfare: A History o f the American Response to Need (New York: Longman, 1992); and William I. Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History o f Social Welfare in America (New York: The Free Press, 1979). The extensive work of Michael B. Katz addresses the government policy on local, state, and national levels. In addition toIn the Shadow of the Poorhouse and Poverty and Policy in American History, see Improving Poor People (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). Frank R. Bruel and Steven Diner, Compassion and Responsibility: Readings in the History o f Social Welfare Policy in the United States(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) expands the discussion in a series of thoughtful essays. Elizabeth Wisner, Social Welfare in the South: From Colonial Times to World War (Baton I Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970) remains the only general treatment of welfare policy across the South. Roy M. Brown,Public Poor Relief in North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1928) gives valuable insight on the development of public policy on a local and state level parallel to that of Virginia. For studies of poor policy in southern cities, see the work of Barbara Bellows and Elna Green. Bellows looks at Charleston, South Carolina in “Tempering the Wind: the Southern Response to Urban Poverty, 1850- 1865”, Ph.D. dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1983 and Benevolence Among Slaveholders: Assisting the Poor in Charleston, 1670-1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993). More recently, Elna C. Green focused on Richmond, Virginia in This Business of Relief Confronting Poverty in a Southern City, 1740-1940 (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 2003). See also Before the New Deal: Social Welfare in the South, 1830-1930 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999), her collection of essays that look at poor policy across the South emphasizing the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For issues pertinent to women, see Mimi Abramovitz, Regulating the Lives o f Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present (Boston: South End Press, 1988) and Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States

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most galling of all—the able-bodied poor. While these people did not belong in jail, nor

were jails institutions of long term incarceration in the early 1800s, they were also not

welcomed on the streets. Couple the motley nature of the inmates with minimal funds for

operation and indifferent caretakers and the poorhouse, while offering some form of

shelter, is a place of last resort in the popular mind.9 Katz specifically suggests that the

citizenry were supposed to fear the poorhouse so that they would have incentive to

maintain their jobs and thus “sustain the nineteenth century work ethic.”10 Dispensers of

charity worried that their largesse would ‘pauperize’ the poor making them dependent on

handouts to get by. The goal was to restore the poor person enough to be a contributing

member of society.

While these arguments are particularly persuasive, much of Katz’s work and his

conclusions are based on studies of the urban North. Poverty and the attendant problems

of the poor are documented in primary sources for the nineteenth century in cities like

New York and Philadelphia where the numbers are compelling.11 The corresponding

county poorhouses in these Northern and Mid-Atlantic communities became common on

the local level as the tide of benevolent reform swelled creating institutions with a variety

of purposes in the 1830s. 1 9 The poorhouse was only one among the many types of

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992). Both of these latter look at predominantly northern and urban conditions rather than that prevailing for women in the rural south. 9 Michael Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse, 26-28. 10 Ibid., 25. 11 See for example, The Almshouse Experience: Collected Reports on Poverty USA, The Historical Record (New York: Arno Press & the New York Times, 1971). 12 David Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston: Little Brown, 1990). Besides the insane asylum, female orphan asylums taught girls domestic skills so they could be self-supporting. Likewise penitentiaries were places of incarceration where an inmate would have

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asylums meant not only to relieve suffering, but also effect a change or cure within its

inmate populace. Eventually, as David Rothman has noted, the benevolent impulse gave

way in the face of intractable conditions. Custodial care replaced rehabilitation in many

of the institutions created during this period.

A similar transformation occurred in the poorhouse, leading to the eventual

demise of the institution. As Michael Katz explains the process, by the turn of the

twentieth century, poorhouses were almost a thing of the past. Specialization in medicine

during the late nineteenth century led to the development of institutions designed to

address certain physical conditions such as state run colonies for the epileptic or schools

for the deaf and blind. These facilities began to draw off the poorhouse population. The

aged and infirm dominated the remaining inmate census. Progressive reformers decrying

poorhouse conditions finished the task until the almshouse was transformed into the

seemingly more benign old age home. For those large institutions above the Mason-

Dixon Line, Katz’s conclusions seem well founded.

The trajectory of the poorhouse in rural Virginia, however, offers other

possibilities. The end result for the institution is similar in the South—poorhouses did in

many cases become homes for the aged and disabled poor. The complexities of that

process in a southern context, however, delayed the time line until mid-twentieth century

and later. In addition, county poorhouses in Virginia appeared in the late eighteenth and

early nineteenth centuries rather than in response to the later tide of benevolent reform.

Rather than decry southern welfare policy as backward for maintaining such

time to reflect on his transgressions, learn to be penitent, and return to the world a wiser and reformed

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anachronistic institutions, looking at the rural poorhouse within its community setting

offers other explanations for such longevity.

Cultural values across the nineteenth-century South provide the context.

Southerners living in an agricultural society placed a premium on kin and community

coupled with an often fierce independence. Ethnographic studies of the region such as

George Hicks’s Appalachian Valley bear out the importance of extended kinship

networks within the white community. Across the racial divide, kinship networks among

blacks kept families afloat in the tough times after the Civil War.13 Loyalty to

community and place, while severely challenged by the disruptions of war, remained an

important part of everyday life. Migration out of a county came only when no other

opportunity for survival offered itself.14 These values held for black and white alike.15

Southern cultural values during this period of transition invariably come to the

legacy of slavery and the imposition of racial discrimination in the implementation of Jim

Crow laws across the southern landscape. C. Vann Woodward’s The Strange Career of

Jim Crow as well as the work of sociologist Charles S. Johnson establish the complexity

of racial relationships in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before the lines

person. Ij George L. Hicks, Appalachian Valley: Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1976. On black kinship ties during Reconstruction see Crandall Shifflett’s Patronage and Poverty in the Tobacco South: Louisa County, Virginia, 1860-1900 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982), Chapter 6, “Households and Families,”pp.84-98. 14 The premise of Charles Frazier’s popular novel,Cold Mountain (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997), is the call of the home place which leads the hero to desert the Confederate army and walk the untold miles towards home. 15 Theodore Rosengarten says of his subject Nate Shaw in the preface toAll God’s Dangers that he could name over four hundred kinsmen, “...his family chronicles express both the bonds among people and a man’s attachment to the land”(xxiii). Shaw never left Alabama when many of his black neighbors migrated

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of segregation hardened. The imprint of Jim Crow and the legacy of those laws starkly

emerges in later ethnographic studies. Hortense Powdermaker’s After Freedom (1939)

and John Dollard’s Caste and Class in a Southern Town (1937) describe the power

relationships they saw at work between the races in the Deep South communities they

studied.16 The “Negro Problem” as Gunnar Myrdal characterized racial relationships in

America has to be reckoned with in any southern study of the era.17

Virginia came late to the imposition of Jim Crow laws not codifying them until

1900 with the mandatory segregation of the railroads.18 That is not to say that racial

discrimination and segregation did not exist prior to these laws. Virginia society was one

steeped in a sense of hierarchical order and power. The counties in this study provide

ample examples of that fact even as they varied in black population. Highland and

Shenandoah had relatively few African Americans while they represented fully half the

populace in Alexandria, Caroline, and Mecklenberg. All the counties had practiced

slavery. However, complexity and variation reign in the cultural values practiced in

Virginia. For example, blacks both free and slave had been included in the poorhouse

populace from the inception of the institution. Within this complex web of relationships,

north. Theodore Rosengarten, All G od’s Dangers: The Life o f Nate Shaw (New York: Vintage Books, 1974, 1984). 16 The follow-on study by Allison Davis, Burleigh B. Gardner and Mary Gardner,Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study o f Caste and Class (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988) reveals the persistence of racial discrimination while describing both the black community and white community from the inside out. 17 Gunnar Myrdal. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy Twentieth Anniversary Edition (New York: Harper and Row, 1962, 1942). 18 Charles E. Wynes. “The Evolution of Jim Crow Laws in Twentieth Century Virginia.”Phylon 28 (Winter 1967): 416-25. Wynes concludes the decision was one of race politics in Richmond rather than in response to the Populism of the 1890s or demand from constituents.

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of black and white, of kin and community, of neighbors helping neighbors, sat the

poorhouse.

By the late nineteenth century, southern progressives saw the institution as ripe

for their reforming hands. What these southern reformers shared with their northern

colleagues was their own ‘search for order’ in response to the needs of the poor. As

Robert Wiebe explained in his study of the Progressive Era reforming impulse, these men

imbued with new developments in science and industry looked to bring practices of

efficiency and management to bear on social institutions. Government would be the

aegis. In Virginia, the end result of their activist efforts for the poor was the creation of a

social welfare system coordinated by the state.19

The population of a typical Virginia county almshouse presented disorder to the

eyes of these discerning social welfare reformers. In the nineteenth-century poorhouse,

poverty alone characterized the motley collection of needy folk. However, Progressive

Era social workers sorted and classified the poorhouse population according to their

condition, physical and mental, rather than the fact of their poverty. The idea behind

their approach espoused a causal relationship. If it were not for this person’s handicap or

that one’s feeble-minded state, these poor would be able to work rather than be dependent

on the community. Thus the county almshouse gave way to a variety of state institutions

19 Robert H. Wiebe’s classic study of the late nineteenth-century origins of the Progressive Movement, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967) in the Making of America series lays the groundwork for the reformist impulse that swept America during this period. On the development of the Progressive movement in the South the basic text is Dewey Grantham Southern Progressivism: The Reconciliation o f Progress and Tradition (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984). William Link diverges from Grantham in his two studies, A Hard Country and a Lonely Place: Schooling, Society, and Reform in Rural Virginia, 1870-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986) and The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880-1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987).

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aimed at eliminating poverty or providing relief by addressing a specific cause for

poverty seated in a condition such as insanity, blindness, epilepsy, feeble-mindedness, or

tuberculosis. While the general arc of this siphoning process parallels northern

developments, differences in the size, function, and extraordinary persistence of a

seemingly dreaded institution suggest that the southern response toward the poverty-

stricken offers perspectives unique to the region.

Two studies that address a southern view are Benevolence Among Slaveholders,

Assisting the Poor in Charleston, 1670-1860 (1993) by Barbara Bellows and the more

recent The Business o f Relief: Confronting Poverty in a Southern City, 1740-1940 (2003)

by Elna C. Green who focuses on Richmond. Bellows’ seminal work tells a story that

sees strong similarities between the dilemmas of that city’s poor and those of large urban

centers in the North, particularly Boston and New York. For example, a significant

influx of poor Irish immigrants in the 1840s completely displaced the native poor in the

almshouse rolls. 20 The southern twist in dispensing charity, however, comes when the

needs of the poor engage with the equally pressing need to uphold the social order of a

slaveholding city. Poor whites merited separate treatment from slaves and free blacks.

However unequal that treatment may have been, all were included in the giving of alms.21

In addition, the paternalistic duties of the ruling class were strongly felt. In the 1850s,

Charleston’s elite underwrote the development of an extensive welfare system including

20 Barbara Bellows, Benevolence Among Slaveholders, 105. A similar phenomenon occurred in Richmond during the 1850s and 1860s as poor Irish immigrants came to the port city. Elna C. Green, This Business of Relief, 42. 21 Bellows does a particularly fine job of linking the economic vicissitudes of Charleston to the oversight of the poorhouse and the attitudes of the community’s working poor. See particularlyBenevolence Among Slaveholders, “Chapter III: The Progress of Poverty,” 67-97.

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a new poorhouse, renovation of the old building for its black population, and ongoing

support for the Orphan Asylum serving the poor white children of the city. Bellows

concludes that this benevolent strain remained as one element of constancy to survive the

ravages of Civil War even when the fortunes of the elite did not. 22

Poor relief in Virginia’s major urban centers such as Richmond, Norfolk and

Petersburg runs a parallel course with that of Charleston in terms of the structure of the

poorhouse and hospital complex, if not the distinguishing generosity of that South

Carolina city. Elna C. Green’sThis Business of Relief: Confronting Poverty in a

Southern City, 1740-1940 (2003) traces the development of poor policy in Richmond,

Virginia from its earliest days through to the impact of federal legislation in the 1930s.

Chapters Six through Eight pay particular attention to the changes occurring after

Reconstruction and before the advent of New Deal measures as she looks closely at the

records of the Richmond Almshouse and those who frequented the institution.

Two distinguishing characteristics emerge from her work pertinent to this

dissertation. The first is the treatment accorded the black population. Prior to the Civil

War, African Americans were a decreasingly small portion of almshouse inmates in the

city, down from 21 percent in the 1830s to 12 percent in 1860. Since the numbers were

relatively few, all were housed in one large facility. After the war, when blacks came to

the city in greater numbers, the poorhouse saw a corresponding influx of needy black

inmates. As in 1850s Charleston, segregation became a pressing issue for whites as the

numbers of blacks increased. Richmond solved the dilemma by converting its smallpox

22 Ibid., 192.

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hospital in 1867 to serve the African American poor.23 As Green notes, the quality of that

care reflected decidedly unequal treatment between the two facilities. The building’s

subsequent poor maintenance would hound the city council for years to come.

Secondly, she concludes that the poor, contrary to common belief, used the

Richmond facility to serve their various ends, rather than dreaded the place as

administrators might wish.24 Whether as temporary shelter, lying-in hospital, or hospice

for the aged infirm, the poor sought entrance and many were repeat customers.25 One

might conclude from her work that the middle- and lower middle-classes were much

more likely to fear consignment to the institution in times of economic distress. The poor

on the margins had come to depend upon it.

The conclusions of both Bellows and Green illuminate how poor policy worked—

or did not—in these southern urban centers. However, what remains constant in the

practical application of poor policy in the nineteenth century is that the large urban

institutions in Charleston and Richmond were the exception in a predominantly rural

agriculturally based Southern society. If it is true as Bellows suggests that “urban

23 Green, This Business o f Relief, 95. See also Howard N. Rabinowitz, “From Exclusion to Segregation: Health and Welfare Services for Southern Blacks, 1865-1890” in Social Service Review 48 (Sept.74): 327- 54. He argues that blacks were generally excluded from all welfare measures in the antebellum period. However, almshouse rolls for Virginia indicate that blacks, including slaves, were always a presence. 24 Green, This Business o f Relief. See particularly 160-176 for the development of this argument. Michael Katz demonstrated this propensity of the poor to use the poorhouse to serve their own ends in his study of the Erie County, Pennsylvania Poorhouse inPoverty and Policy in American History, 57-89. Displaced workers would come to the institution in winter when seasonal work dried up and harsh weather impelled them to find shelter. 25 Green, This Business of Relief 153-176.

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poverty [is] different from the quiet, hidden poverty of the countryside or the

26 sentimentalized poverty of the widow and orphan,” just how different was it?

One study that tackles the countryside is Crandall Shifflett’s insightfulPatronage

and Poverty in the Tobacco South. He presents a portrait of Louisa County, Virginia

focusing on the political and cultural roots of poverty at work in that place from 1870 to

the century’s closing.27 Poverty ensued from the ruling elite’s resistance to cultural

change and embedded class values even as they were forced to accept the changes

emancipation wrought on the labor market. Included in his discussion of county

government is a brief account of the county’s system of poor relief and its poorhouse.

Despite his observation that Louisa County spent one quarter of its budget on the poor,

Shifflett finds these efforts wanting in the face of the obvious need.28

His analysis is couched within a larger discussion of “patronage politics” serving

as an example of how the local county government functioned during the Redeemer

period. From his angle of vision, the needs of the poor, particularly tenant farmers of

both races, were barely alleviated by Louisa County officials. Therefore, his analysis

speaks to his point that “the political system also became a vehicle of exploitation.”29

Shifflett recognizes that allocating a quarter of the available tax revenue for the use of the

poor seems generous in admittedly hard times. In addition, that level of expenditure

continued to the end of the nineteenth century even as outdoor relief was tightened and

eventually eliminated. However, he argues that much of the money went to

26 Bellows, Benevolence Among Slaveholders, 22. 27 Crandall Shifflett, Patronage and Poverty in the Tobacco South. 28 Ibid., 75-80.

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“storekeepers, the sheriff, members of the Board of supervisors, and other intermediaries,

o A who presented claims for supplying poor families.”

Caveats do exist in his approach when attempting to better understand how the

poorhouse functioned. Shifflett is the first to admit that from looking at the available

records “[it] is impossible to tell how much each pauper actually received or how many

were aided.” 3 1 He seems to be implying here that the cash amount is the more important

commodity than the actual goods or service received. That assessment seems out of

place in a time characterized by limited specie to begin with and a view of charity that

aimed not to pauperize the recipient, but fill a particular need. Groceries and firewood

would be delivered to stay the wolf from the door, rather than a cash allotment doled out.

Indigents should not come to depend on the county, but once given a leg up through the

alleviation of their current distress return to the independent working ranks. At the

poorhouse itself, nursing care and medicines would be provided in addition to the

necessities of shelter, food, and clothing.

Shifflett also criticizes the Superintendent of the Almshouse from 1875-1890 as

one of the administrators who profited at the expense of the poor. Because he was able to

keep costs down at the poorhouse farm, his salary was raised by $50 in 1879 and bumped

to $200 in 1888 almost ten years later. The Board of Supervisors apparently admired the

man’s values of “economy, faithfulness, and ability” rewarding him not inappropriately.32

It does not necessarily follow from the assumption that the superintendent had a political

29 Ibid., 67. 30 Ibid., 75. 31 Ibid., 75.

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plum of a job that the poor under his care were given short shrift. In a society that

favored patronage and held paternalistic values, the superintendent would likely take his

responsibilities toward his charges quite seriously. However, the treatment of paupers is

unclear since Shifflett’s look inside the poorhouse stops with the roster of “an average

twenty-four persons per year in residence.. .none of them could work.”33

When the angle of vision shifts from outside to inside, other possibilities emerge.

The superintendent’s long tenure at the institution could indeed mean that the poorhouse

was a well managed farm that provided food, shelter, and medical services in adequate

supply. His economy at the farm does not mean that he was a penurious provider or

heartless man. If the paupers indeed could not work, his job meant custodial care for

what must have been a variety of conditions from aged to physically and mentally

debilitated persons. Since the picture stops at the poorhouse door, Shifflett focuses on the

budget numbers to get a handle on the quality of that care. Numbers unfortunately can

tell only part of the story.

One fact holds true. Louisa County continued to maintain a poorhouse even as

the fortunes of the county deteriorated. Officials in rural counties acknowledged their

obligation towards the poor by doing so. Many smaller cities also bore the responsibility

for providing relief within these sparsely populated jurisdictions by supporting a

poorhouse. Even Alexandria, as a case in point, did not receive the designation of city

32 Ibid., 77. 33 Ibid., 77.

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until 1870 when its population reached beyond 10,000 to 13,5 70.34 Its Poor House,

established in the late eighteenth century, was typically a small farm occupying fourteen

acres just beyond the city’s northern line in what was then Alexandria County. Thus, the

template for the common poorhouse in the South reflected the predominantly rural

character o f the region.

These differences in size and in the community itself in the South suggest that the

poorhouse as an institution varied remarkably depending upon its location and the

population it served. In the more densely populated cities where poorhouses held

upwards of three hundred inmates, Katz’s point about social control as the dominant

feature of the institution seems well made. A community such as Alexandria, however,

where the inmate population fluctuated between twenty-five and thirty persons with the

average on the lower end, offers the possibility that different ends as well as conditions

may have prevailed. Might there have been more compassionate views of the poor

practiced here than ideas of social control acknowledge? As June Axinn and Herman

Levin, professors of social work, intimate, “Only the legislation of the Southern and

Western states tempered this view [that relief should be unnecessary] with any concern

for the ‘comfort of the poor’ or with legislation less restrictive than New England.”3 5 No

doubt these more rural southern communities had the luxury of size that enabled them to

determine the poor as worthy because they were personally known or recommended. But

34 William Francis Smith and T. Michael Miller, A Seaport Saga: Portrait of Old Alexandria, Virginia. Norfolk/Virginia Beach: The Donning Company, 1989, 101. The new state constitution that brought Virginia back into the Union decreed this population designator. Charleston, in contrast, had 42,000 inhabitants in the 1850s (Bellows, Benevolence Among Slaveholders, 162). 33 June Axinn and Herman Levin. Social Welfare, 48.

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where did the framework for these rural southern institutions come from in the first

place?

Virginia and its poor relief policy established the roots of poor relief legislation in

the United States. The problem of what to do about the poor came over on the first boat

from England in the precedent of the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601 which created the

pattern of a workhouse complemented by “outdoor relief’ or assistance provided to those

not living in the poorhouse confines. The Virginia Assembly passed its first act for the

establishment of a workhouse in 1646, although the edifice never actually appeared. By

1661, “an act was passed which authorized each vestry to raise the necessary funds for

the care of the poor by means of proportionate levies and assessments.” The vestry of a

given parish in the Anglican Church, a body of twelve prominent citizens, dispensed alms

and apprenticed orphans within the community. The Anglican Church in Virginia

maintained its responsibilities towards the poor until the Revolution when its powers 77 were transferred to municipal governments.

Prior to independence, some counties without a parish and vestry to turn to had

appointed overseers of the poor to perform the duties of the vestry, thus establishing a

working model for other communities. In 1785, by Act of the General Assembly,

Virginia made the transition complete in mandating the popular election of overseers of

36 Bellows, Benevolence Among Slaveholders, 19. See also Marcus Wilson Jemegan, “The Development of Poor Relief in Colonial Virginia” in Compassion and Responsibility, 36-53. 37 Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1982). This text provides a particularly useful context for understanding the devolving role of the Anglican church in Virginia. The challenges from within the church as well as from other sects during the colonial period set the stage for its waning influence and led to Jefferson’s Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom. See particularly Chapters 7-12, 143-295.

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-) o the poor. In addition, the overseers had the power to select the Superintendent of the

Poor, that individual who was responsible for the day to day running of the almshouse.

This system remained in place until appointment procedures were modified in the

twentieth century and subsequently abolished as the state worked to consolidate and close

the almshouses throughout the commonwealth.

This investigation takes 1870 as its start since Virginia officially returned to the

Union that year having been officially “reconstructed.” The physical destruction of the

Civil War remained to be reckoned with along with latent resentments against the federal

government, but the 1870s saw major improvements across the Commonwealth in

transportation with the rebuilding of roads and railroads.39 The groundwork was laid for

the relative prosperity that unfolded in the last two decades of the nineteenth century.

That infrastructure enabled counties to survive the national financial crises of the 1880s

and the Panic of 1893. By the first two decades of the twentieth century, the farmers of

Virginia fared better than they had in years as commodity prices held.

j8 Robert Hudson Kirkwood, 'Fit Surroundings District Homes Replace Almshouses in Virginia (Richmond, VA: Department of Public Welfare, 1948): 6. Kirkwood suggests that the direct election of overseers of the poor, i.e. placing “the entire system of poor relief into the realm of partisan politics” (25) as a cause for the poor administration of the poorhouses. His argument points to the inability of untrained officialdom to meet the needs of the poor, sick and elderly in any meaningful way. However, training did not replace community status as a criteria for dispensing poor relief until the Progressive Era and the professionalization of welfare workers. 39 See the classic study of C. Vann Woodward,The Origins o f the New South, 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951) and the complementary work of Edward L. Ayers,The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). The former analyzes the political climate of this period while the latter looks at the personal responses of contemporary Southerners to the events and economic developments of the times using the railroad itself as trope. Other works such as Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974) and Bertram Wyatt-Brown’sSouthern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982) amplify the emotional climate and traditions of the South that shaped this period of flux and development.

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The study concludes in 1930. Virginia by that time had developed a Public

Welfare System that would be in place—albeit shakily—when the demands of a federal

welfare policy emerged. The Virginia program, still in its infancy, counted the first

closings of almshouses in 1926 and 1928 in favor of District Homes among its forward

thinking innovations. While the dispensing of charity remained in the hands of local

communities, by 1930 the influence of the state in shaping local policy was clear.

Using the Alexandria case as a touchstone, this study will look at five additional

rural Virginia counties to gather a fuller understanding of how the poorhouse functioned

within these sparsely populated communities. Caroline County in the Tidewater,

Mecklenburg County in Southside, Rockbridge and Shenandoah Counties in the Great

Valley, and Highland County in the Appalachians each tells its own story of poor relief

on the local level. Did smaller numbers of inmates, coming from relatively close-knit

farming areas, have a significant impact on poor policy and thus the operation of the

institution itself? How does race, or gender, affect the services an institution provides?

By what means were the needs of children accommodated? Were communities able to

maintain a balance between the needs of their poor and the community’s

willingness/ability to meet those needs? Did limited means translate into abuse of

inmates or was some measure of solace worked out?

What specific role did the Poor House play in these rural southern communities

that would help to explain its comparative longevity? County institutions in the North

came in response to reform legislation in the 1820s and 1830s and many were gone or

transformed by the tide of progressivism in the early twentieth century. However,

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Virginia’s poorhouses were often established earlier and lasted longer. The first round

closed in 1926, under pressure from the state, in favor of a consolidating institution, the

District Home, which reformers presented as the model of responsible social welfare in

the twentieth century. Local communities, however, clung to their institutions. In 1948,

Virginia still maintained thirteen county and nine city almshouses.40 Shenandoah

County’s almshouse remarkably persisted as an institution for the indigent poor from

1783 until the last resident was removed to a nursing home in 1996.41

In the end, how did these varying communities respond to state intervention and

the development of social welfare policy administered by a central state office in

Richmond? In some instances the tradition of a local institution prevailed. In others, the

financial benefits of consolidation and pooling of county resources had stronger appeal.

In either case, what were the consequences for the poor themselves? Certainly, there

were gains and losses in the choices communities made about the fate of their

poorhouses.

This dissertation aims to put the poorhouse back in the rural southern landscape

and historical narrative of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, generally. By

examining the role of Virginia’s rural poorhouses from 1870-1930, we can gain a fuller

understanding of poor relief and its administration in a time of significant change.

Southerners recovering from the economic deprivations of war did not abandon the poor

40 Robert H. Kirkwood, ‘Fit Surroundings', 6. 41 Mona Casteel, “Living outside the almshouse,” The Free Press, W oodstock, VA, Vol. 14, Issue N o. 16, Wednesday, November 25, 1998.

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in their midst. The rural poor farm continued operation throughout the war years. The

tax levy for the poor fluctuated, but the poorhouse remained.

Come the new century, Progressive Era reformers rejoiced in the disappearance of

the almshouse. Their victory, however, also obscured the poorhouse from the view of

later generations since it was partially achieved with a pejorative rhetoric. Poorhouses in

many instances were unhappy and unclean places, especially in large overcrowded urban

settings. However, in smaller rural institutions in the South, their inmates were

recognized as human beings and not simply “dregs.” Evidence from the Alexandria city

institution and its county counterparts suggests that the poor were not always dismally

treated. Nor were the inmates always the shunned of a given community, but rather the

needy. The rural poorhouse deserves a clearer historical record and interpretation in its

local context.

Finally, current poor policy can benefit from understanding the role that

Virginia’s poorhouses played in the development of a statewide system of welfare. The

removal of outdoor relief in recent federal legislation has the potential to increase the

need for indoor relief in the form of shelters, our modern version of the poorhouse.

Orphanages are being given a second look as institutions with the potential to provide

carefully and well for children when foster care breaks down. That sector of the poor

population remains the most vulnerable. Strikingly, in 2002, a study by Save the

Children indicated that “of the 200 consistently poorest counties in America, 195 are

rural” because “[ijsolated rural areas lack the money and trained personnel to support

schools, libraries and health clinics, and many have no public transportation.” While

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many of those pockets of poverty may be found in the far west along the Mexican border

and on Indian Reservations, the South’s Mississippi River delta and Appalachia remain

entrenched on the list.42

Are we still asking the same questions to determine who is worthy and who is

not? Are we still providing the same solutions for relief despite the passing of 100 or

more years? In all our attempts to be humane, will we be judged as uncaring, more prone

to graft than good deeds? The story of Virginia’s rural poorhouses requires us to

appreciate complexity and the absence of the easy fix, thus enabling us to better discern

the roots o f poverty in our midst.

42 “Rural Poverty Persists,” Parade Magazine, August 11, 2002: 7.

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ALEXANDRIA: VIRGINIA POOR POLICY IN TRANSITION

The City of Alexandria provides a southern lens for understanding the

overarching character of poor relief during this time of transition from the late eighteenth

century to the closing days of the institutions in the twentieth. The city, located on the

western bank of the Potomac River just south of present day Washington, DC, had its

origins in the 1730s as a tobacco inspection station.43 The natural deep-water port was

one of the last good landings on the river before the Falls made the upper Potomac

inaccessible. Attracted to the site, enterprising Scottish merchants developed the landing

and eventually established homes along the river. By 1748, Lawrence Washington and

Lord Fairfax petitioned the Virginia Assembly to establish a town. Alexandria received

its charter in May 1749. Originally sixty acres platted in Vz84 acre lots, the city was laid

out in a typical grid pattern with King Street forming the central east-west axis up from

43 Histories of the City of Alexandria abound and range from the scholarly to the anecdotal.A Seaport Saga: Portrait of Old Alexandria, Virginia by William Francis Smith and T. Michael Miller (The Donning Company Publishers, 1989) and recently revised presents an informative and lively overview.Alexandria: A Towne in Transition, 1800-1900, ed. John D. McColl (Alexandria, VA: Alexandria Bicentennial Commission, Alexandria Historical Society, 1977) compiles a series of essays on local life and institutions. M ary G. Powell’sThe History o f Old Alexandria, Virginia: from July 13, 1749 to May 24, 1861 (Richmond, VA: The William Byrd Press, Inc., 1928) is more anecdotal, but a seminal source from its time. In addition the many publications of local historical societies, the Office of Historic Alexandria, and other organizations offer a wealth of information on specific topics. The many publications of T. Michael Miller that tabulate vital statistics, decipher gravestones, and chronicle much of the city’s life are invaluable. Most can be found in the Special Collections of the Alexandria Public Library, Kate Waller Barrett Branch.

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the river.44 The deep-water port enjoyed continuing prosperity during colonial times as

its wharves and warehouses multiplied. By 1775 roads extending into the Shenandoah

Valley brought wheat and grain to the docks, an export not regulated by the Navigation

Acts, guaranteeing ample profits. Local flour mills processed the wheat with such

alacrity that the staple soon surpassed tobacco as the city’s commodity of choice.

With the Act of Incorporation, October 4, 1779, the structure of the town’s

government became ostensibly democratic. A Board of Aldermen & Common Council

of twelve elected men replaced the former oligarchic trusteeship of the British. These

men in turn appointed the mayor until 1843 when he was determined by direct election as

well. Local historians cite this period of the new republic from 1781 to 1800 as

Alexandria’s “Golden Epoch” when the city was a “vibrant seaport town and mercantile

center,”45a city full of promise. Despite the general flush of prosperity, Alexandria’s city

fathers recognized that not all community members shared the good fortune. The needs

of the poor demanded their responsible attention even in the best of times.

Since Virginia transferred the power of dispensing poor relief from the Anglican

vestries to municipal governments, Alexandrians were now responsible for the

maintenance of the poor. City Council wasted little time in acting on the Virginia

Assembly’s 1785 decision mandating elected overseers of the poor. Each of the four

wards was represented by an overseer who looked to the needs of the poor in his district.

The next step for Alexandrians was to establish the kind of institution the busy seaport

44 On the early history of Alexandria, see Thomas Priesser, “ 18th Century Alexandria Before the Revolution, 1749-1776.” (Ph.D. Dissertation, College of William and Mary, 1977) and James Munson, “A New Look at the Founding of Alexandria, VA” in Fairfax Chronicles, May-June 1985.

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needed. Whereas the almshouse institutional movement in the North did not coalesce

until the 1821 Quincy Report in Massachusetts, Virginia had a number of colonial local

facilities in place built and maintained by parish vestries.46 Alexandria, however, had no

almshouse before the Revolution. To correct that lack, as early as 1786, the overseers of

the poor, Messrs. James Wren, Robert Hooe, and William Brown

Provided a house and plantation for the reception of such poor and disabled persons as are legally entitled to aid and support from the county.. .to take up and compel those found loitering and begging and place them at the poorhouse where they would be put to work.47

The reference to those “legally entitled” speaks to the Virginia requirement of residency

for one year as proof of settlement.48 Poor persons recently arrived from rural counties

would be returned to their local almshouse or families. Loiterers and beggars “would be

put to work.” Presumably, these latter would learn the value of honest labor and mend

their idle ways. Certainly, the poor were not all treated equally. The deserving were

offered charity; the able-bodied wastrel, work. Nor were the overseers interested in

providing for persons not of their community. The records indicate a steady stream of

transients being returned to their home counties.49

45 French and Miller, Seaport Saga, 27. 46 This document was a linchpin in the argument for providing institutional care citing the problems of immigration, alcohol, and urban growth as leading causes of poverty. Rehabilitation would be more easily effected by providing “indoor relief’ that would wean the poor of debilitating habits. In addition, as Katz points out, outdoor relief was seen as a contributor to idleness. The condition of pauperism was actually created by giving the poor just enough to get by on so that they would not have to work thus “eroding the independence of the working class”(17, In the Shadow o f the Poorhouse). 47 Columbia Mirror and Alexandria Gazette, July 27, 1786. 48 Elizabeth Wisner, Social Welfare in the South, 32. 49 See the work of James D. Watkinson, particularly “Rogues, Vagabonds, and Fit Objects: The Treatment of the Poor in Antebellum Virginia,” Virginia Cavalcade, Vol.49, Winter 2000, N o.l, 16-29.

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Notable from the outset, however, is that the Alexandria overseers conceived the

poorhouse as a multi-purpose institution. Herein may lie the origin of the “dumping

ground” image that prevailed at the century’s end. On the one hand, the almshouse was

to provide shelter for “the poor and disabled” while at the same time provide useful

employment for the homeless. The populations were separate and distinct. In fact, the

institution seems to have much in common with its catchall urban cousin, the early

charity hospital.50 It served many different functions: as hospital, as hospice, as long

term caregiver for the insane or feebleminded, and as a workhouse to which the able-

bodied poor were remanded to be usefully employed, contributors to the community life.

The Alexandria Almshouse further addressed these multiple purposes when the

Corporation Council passed an act establishing a “Poor and Workhouse” on February 5,

1800. The Keeper of the Poor was to

Receive and take charge of all poor persons sent to the poorhouse by order of the Mayor or trustees...; to take charge of and keep employed, all persons committed to the workhouse by direction of the said trustees, or any justice of the peace in the town of Alexandria, and of all slaves sent by their masters or mistresses.51

The first group seems to refer to all those with debilitated health who had no one else to

care for them, whereas the second category was that of the able-bodied, loiterers and

vagrants who needed to learn the value of honest labor. The third category of slaves is

open to conjecture. Whether local slaveowners sent their blind or tubercular slaves

50 W alter I. Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State, 5. “Medieval hospitals did not merely provide medical assistance to the ill; rather, they housed and cared for weary travelers, for orphans, the aged, and the destitute, and in general provided a variety of services for all those in need.” 51 Lloyd House Manuscript Collection, Alexandria City Library, “Alexandria City Records,” Box 19 NN #13, 129. This collection will be hereafter referenced as LH.

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whom they found burdensome, or whether they sent obstreperous slaves to be disciplined

is unclear. However, that the almshouse was meant to serve a wide range of needs and

that blacks were included from the onset is clear. The vision of the overseers was not that

of a “dumping ground.” Rather the institution had a dual mission by design, geared to

offering succor for the ailing indigent and compulsory employment for citizenry found

not contributing to the overall good of the community.

The turn of the nineteenth century ushered in an era of change and challenge for

the city. From 1801 until 1847, Alexandria came under the jurisdiction of the District of

Columbia rather than the Commonwealth of Virginia. Local governance, however,

continued to shoulder on. At the same time that the Overseers of the Poor created the

institutional tenets of the Almshouse, they decided to build a structure to accommodate

their vision. Perhaps the somewhat trying times of that first decade of the nineteenth

century brought the needs of the poor even more to the fore. An 1803 epidemic of yellow

fever alerted the city to its particular vulnerability as a seaport community. A quarantine

station was established at Jones Point to screen incoming vessels before they were

allowed to dock at city piers. The vicissitudes of trade, manifested in Thomas Jefferson’s

1807 Embargo, sent the port’s economy as well as that of the nation spiraling downward.

Despite these calamities, or in response to them, the plan for the Almshouse apparently

went forward.

City Aldermen must have been proud of their handiwork when the Almshouse

was constructed in that first decade of the nineteenth century. The Historic Architectural

Buildings Survey conducted by the Works Progress Administration examined the

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Alexandria Almshouse in 1937. Their drawings depict a well-proportioned brick edifice

patterned in Flemish bond with a large Palladian window above its arched and sidelighted

main entry.52 Windows abounded providing plenty of light for interior spaces. The

basement windows were barred indicating space reserved for the unmanageable insane or

forcibly detained workhouse inmate. On the interior, all floors had a central hallway with

the rooms arrayed against exterior walls. Four interior chimneys would provide heat, but

notably not to all the rooms. The basement had nine rooms in all, each with at least one

window. The first floor had three large rooms along one side and five smaller rooms

opposite. The second floor had a total of fourteen rooms, four of which were conjoined

as suites presumably for use by families or gender segregated groups. The attic had a

large open space divided into three units. The variety in rooms again underscores the

multipurpose mission of the institution. What is not apparent from the floor plan is any

specific evidence of segregation by race. Inmates could have been mingled racially,

although gender and racial segregation was more likely.53

This state of the art structure was located at the north end of the town along a road

known typically for its destination as Poorhouse Road. The institution was actually a

Poor Farm, sited on a fourteen-acre parcel and meant to sustain itself. As an operating

farm, the Poor House was meant to be self-sufficient. Crops and stock were to sustain the

inmates with any leftovers sold for the support of the institution. This happy prospect

52 Works Progress Administration, Historic Architectural Buildings Survey (HABS), O.P. 265-6907, Survey No. VA 134, River Road and Monroe Avenue, 1937, 8 sheets located in the Alexandria City Public Library, LH and Special Collections. 53 The Special Collections at the Kate Waller Barrett Branch of the Alexandria City Public Library includes all the HABS drawings made of Alexandria structures, those extant or like the Almshouse torn down.

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rarely worked in practice largely because inmates were often incapable of helping to

bring in the crops.

Since poor relief as a local matter was locally funded, tax dollars were the chief

means of support for the poorhouse. However, there were other sources of revenue as

well. The Alexandria Keeper was directed

To demand and receive from all free persons confined in the workhouse, one dollar for commitment and release, and thirty-four cents for each day’s confinement, and the same fees and rates for all slaves, to be paid by their respective masters or mistresses, before their dismissal.54

Presumably, these fees provided inmates with added incentive to leave the institution

with all good speed. In addition to the workhouse fees, the Keeper listed as income the

proceeds from the sale of “Oakum & Rope” produced by the inmates. Surplus produce

from the farm as well as inmate labor hired out was yet another source of revenue.

Finally, the Hospital brought in a steady income averaging in the years 1838 to 1843

$473.58 per annum, the major source of funds in any given year.55

Section Four of the 1800 original act targets yet another group for specifically

punitive purposes:

that it shall be lawful for the mayor of Alexandria, or any justice of the peace of the County of Alexandria, to commit to the workhouse of the Corporation any person or persons who shall have been required.. .to give security for keeping the peace, or to be of good behavior—there to remain until such security shall be given, or until he, she, or they shall be otherwise discharged by due course of the law.56

54 LH, “Alexandria City Records, Box 19, NN #13, 130. 55 LH, Box 19TT, #22, “Expenditures at the Poor & Work House.” 56 Ibid., 133.

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In other words, the drunk and disorderly or other miscreants who were unable to pay their

fines had to work off the fees in the workhouse. The typical sentence lasted thirty days,

but some extended as long as six months. 57 The city fathers distinguished ably among the

many kinds of poor individuals, but chose a common solution for rehabilitation through

labor.58

This idea of work as a means of reform extended itself in Alexandria beyond the

institution of the workhouse. Section Five of the same act called for the creation of a

“house of industry” to provide work under the aegis of outdoor relief.59 This institution

was to be centrally located, presumably for accessibility, and was to provide “[t]he

necessary implements for spinning and weaving, and for employment of taylors and

shoemakers... .”60 Within the building, the overseers were to establish a soup kitchen to

offer wholesome food for those who sought to learn a trade there. As is indicated by

large Xs marked through the three sections of the act devoted to the house of industry, the

experiment was a dismal failure by 1817. The soup kitchen, however, remained as a

lasting element of outdoor relief until the end of the century reappearing every fall as the

winter weather set in.

The city’s prospects as a major East Coast port were stymied in the next decade.

A devastating waterfront fire in 1810 set the tone. Then war with Britain brought further

57 According to records from the 1860s. See Ruth M. Ward, “The Alexandria Alms House and Work House,” Arlington Historical Magazine V.6, No.4, 66, October 1980. 58 The rehabilitative value of labor as a force in the history of benevolence and the rise of the institution during the antebellum period is treated particularly in David Rothman The Discovery o f the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston: Little Brown, 1990). 59 Ibid., 133-135. 60 Ibid., 134.

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disaster. When the warehouses were full to bursting in August of 1814, Alexandria’s

militia was sent across the river in what proved to be a futile attempt to back up the forces

manning Ft. Washington. The British were already on the ground marching towards

Washington while a fleet consisting of 122 guns sailed up the Potomac towards the

defenseless town. As the fires of Washington lit the sky, city fathers negotiated a

surrender of the town that cost them heavily materially, but spared the lives of the

citizenry and their homes. For five days, the British helped themselves to the stores of

wheat and grain, loading twenty-one ships “almost to the sinking point.”61 At least

Alexandria was spared the extensive burning that had been the fate of Washington, DC,

but the damage to the town’s economy was almost insurmountable. Nor did Alexandria’s

surrender sit well with the rest of the nation. Vilified in the press from Boston to

Richmond and points south, Alexandria suffered the loss of her honor in addition to the

severe financial blow. The Richmond Enquirer took the town to task in an August 3 1st

editorial concluding, “Thanks be to the Almighty God: that this degraded town no longer

forms a part of the state of Virginia!”62

While such opprobrium abated with the winning of the war, Alexandria never

regained her stature as a major port. Even in the general national euphoria, economic

recovery only inched forward. For city merchants, financial gains were exacerbated by

panic in 1816 “that sounded the death knell for Alexandria as a major seaport.” During

these seeming dark times, Alexandria did not abandon its obligations to the poor. While

61 “The day Old Town Died,”The Alexandrian Vol. 2, No.7, July 1976, 14. 62 As quoted in Joseph F. Skivora, “The Surrender of Alexandria in the War of 1812 and the Power of the PressE Northern Virginia Heritage Vol. 10, N o.2, June 1988, 11. 63 French and Miller, Seaport Saga, 52.

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plans for the House of Industry were abandoned, the Alms House and Work House, the

Soup Kitchen, and outdoor relief continued unabated.64

Not that the city didn’t continue to explore its options as a port, but Alexandria

would never catch up to the larger ports of Baltimore and Philadelphia. During the 1820s

and 1830s, the many flour mills in town supported by grain from the Great Valley began

to close. The Port of Baltimore gradually siphoned off the Shenandoah grain trade

courtesy of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad which Virginia allowed developers to build

through Winchester effectively bypassing Alexandria. The city adapted. Investment in

the shad and herring fishing industry, albeit seasonal, kept the wharves humming. In the

year 1828, Franklin & Armfield “Slave Dealers” opened at 1315 Duke Street. When the

nation as a whole abolished the external slave trade in 1807, the internal market picked

up.65 Virginia became a major broker for supplying slaves to the cotton-belt and other

points south and west as its own tobacco plantations played out. Alexandria was one

center for that reallocation of human property.66

64 LH, Alexandria City Records, Box 19 NN #13. City Council members revisited acts for the support of the poor December 31, 1817. 65 Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves, March 2, 1807 (U.S. Statutes at Large, Vol. II, p.426 ff.) as included in Henry Steele Commonger,Documents of American History, Volume I: To 1898,7lh ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1963). 66 The brick building at 1315 Duke Street, a site on the National Register of Historic Places, still bears the faded name of the company that auctioned slaves and kept them incarcerated in the building. According to Pam Cressy, “By 1835, Franklin and Armfield controlled nearly half of the slave trade by sea between New Orleans and the Virginia and Maryland area.” “Director’s Chair”Alexandria Archaeology Volunteer News Vol. XII No.4, April 1994. A follow on article in No.5 May 1994 continued the discussion of Alexandria’s role in the slave trade.

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Despite these efforts at business expansion, the city seemed almost frozen in time.

The population stabilized in 1820 at 8200 growing by only 250 souls in 1840.67

Alexandria merchants, ever seeking opportunities to increase trade, looked to the

potential for capturing inland trade through canal building. The Chesapeake and Ohio

Canal was slowly working its way west to tap into the coal fields in western Maryland.

Fearing that Georgetown would reap all the benefits when the canal was completed,

Alexandrian investors launched a canal project in 1831 that would extend seven miles

from the Aqueduct Bridge in Georgetown to a large catch basin on the river in

Alexandria.68 Finally completed in 1845, the canal did bring revitalization to the port,

but on a scale that merely kept it in competition with Georgetown and Washington, rather

than the burgeoning Baltimore. Rather than bring the city out of its economic slump, the

canal project left the city and investors heavily in debt.69

Transportation as the key to trade further accelerated when the railroad finally

connected Alexandria with points west in the 1840s. Three lines came to town. The

most prominent, the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, linked the city to Gordonsville in

Orange County. Another headed in from Leesburg and yet another from Manassas Gap.

Population was finally on the rise with prosperous times. One measure of that well being

was the development of a waterworks in 1852 to bring healthy, clean water to the city

67 Population statistics cited in Robert L. Scribner, “In and Out of Virginia,” Virginia Cavalcade Vol. XV No.2 Autumn 1965. 68 On the development of public-private transportation ventures see Alan Tractenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture & Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982) particularly his discussion of the origins of corporation pages 5-7. 69 John Hammond Moore, “Alexandria and Arlington Come Home: Retrocession 1846,” Northern Virginia H eritage, October 1981. This article is an insightful expansion of an earlier piece on the subject, “The

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proper from a reservoir on Sutter’s Hill. Not everyone was hooked directly up to the

system, of course. Many in the poorer sections of town, retrieved water from public

pumps. But the notion of such a city sponsored project spoke to the new interest in health

and sanitation measures to benefit the community as a whole.

Politically, Alexandria was retroceded to Virginia in 1848. A number of

arguments for doing so finally prevailed, most prominently that the District of Columbia

had done little for the town that remained across the Potomac River in a largely

undeveloped western portion of the capitol. However, timing was key. The city and

wealthy merchants were looking for debt relief after sinking almost $250,000 into a canal

that would not pay for itself anytime soon. Farmers residing in Alexandria County, the

rural portion of the tract on the western side of the river, were against the process, but

were outnumbered by city dwellers who voted to return to Virginia. Free blacks in the

community were caught. They dreaded going back under restrictive Virginia laws, but

were unable to mount any significant opposition to the rolling tide.70 In addition, yet

another element was at work. Agitation to outlaw the slave markets in the seat of

national government was mounting. Congress was getting ready to ban the slave trade

within the District confines. Retrocession brought the city back into the fold of the Old

Retrocession Act of 1846: Alexandria and Arlington Return to the Fold,” Virginia Cavalcade Winter 1976, 126-135. 70 Moore includes a particularly poignant letter in his 1981 article that speaks to this dread. Lucius Porter concurs that free blacks in Alexandria moved to the District of Columbia when retrocession occurred because they found the Virginia laws “obnoxious.” See Free Negro Labor and Property Holding in Virginia, 1830-1860 (New York: Appleton-Century Company, 1942), 155.

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Dominion, but also allowed locals loath to give up the lucrative slave trade to keep the

business intact.71

The nation at war in 1861 brought a peculiar mix of prosperity and humiliation to

Alexandria. Federal troops moved swiftly to set up a ring of fortifications around

Washington to protect the nation’s capitol from seizure. Alexandria bears the dubious

distinction of having been the only southern community to be continuously occupied by

the North for the duration of the war. Overt resistance was minimal. Most loyal

Virginians left town to sign on with Confederate regiments forming farther south and

west. In addition to a line of defense, the city became a supply depot and a recovery site

for the wounded. Many houses and buildings were commandeered and served as

hospitals. As the war progressed, the city also became home to an increasingly large

‘contraband1 community. Slaves seeking freedom behind Union lines headed for

Alexandria. Camping in tent communities, these blacks often found freedom short-lived.

Disease and death pervaded the crowded refugee camps filling what was to become ‘the

contraband cemetery’ on the south end of town.

In the midst of such monumental changes for Alexandria, the Alms House and

Workhouse was a point of consistency just as many rural poor farms were for their

respective counties across the state. These institutions faced diminishing resources in the

trying times of war, but they did not shut down in response to adversity.72 In Alexandria,

71 Agitation came to a head in the Compromise of 1850 when Congress passed an Act Abolishing the Slave Trade in the District of Columbia, September 20, 1850 as a part of that measure. Prescient Alexandrians had seen the handwriting on the wall. 72 On the contrary, Highland County chose to make a major investment of funds in its County Poor House in December 1861 purchasing all new bedsteads, and rehabbing the building.

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a new Keeper, Robert Hodgkin, took over from James Stephenson in December 1861.

He and his large family of eight, kept the place going although farm production

apparently suffered since most foodstuffs, including meats, breads, and vegetables were

purchased. 73 As was customary when a change in Keeper occurred, the new man made a

full survey of the property. His inventory of farming implements suggests neglect and

little use. The farm apparently had not functioned as such under the former keeper.

Along with items in the house, Mr. Hodgkin duly recorded the paupers in his

charge as of January 1862, a roster of thirty-eight inmates.74 A year previous, the 1860

Census had indicated fifty-one paupers and an additional ten inmates consigned to the

Work House. Thirty-one women and thirty men split the roster evenly on gender.

However, racially, most were white with only eight blacks and four mulattos, three of

which were males. Typically, many inmates were elderly folks. Fully one-third of the

population was over fifty with the eldest, a black man, holding pride of place at 109.

Eleven were children fourteen and under listed with their respective mothers. The

remaining twenty-eight were in the twenty to forty demographic and included all the

Work House inmates. Two were listed as “Idiotic” and one man as “Blind.”

73 All of the Hodgkin ledger entries are derived from an article by Ruth M. Ward, “The Alexandria Alms House and Work House,” Arlington Historical Magazine, V.6, No.4, October 1980, 64-67. She had access to the document that she indicated, “We have in our archives....” However, exactly which archive she meant is unclear. I have so far not been able to find the ledger. However, I have no reason to doubt that she cited the document accurately. 74 It should be noted that these records as well as the census data provide only snapshots of a given moment in time. The fluidity of the poorhouse population remains obscured by these rosters. While it is true that many poorhouse inmates came to the institution and remained until their deaths, the more common characterization of the population was its transitory nature. Shelter and food were dispensed temporarily until the poor were back on their feet and summarily discharged. Keepers indicated the length of stay through dates of admission and discharge in their record books or noted time at the institution on annual reports to the General Auditor.

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The census enumerator did not shed further light on the conditions that brought

these poor to the Alms House; however, he did list the occupation of thirteen of the male

inmates. A fifty-one-year-old silversmith born in Germany, a sixty-five-year-old sailor

born in Scotland, a thirty-year-old machinist also born in Scotland, a sixty-year-old

mulatto harness maker, all were among the worthy poor entitled to receive charity from

the city. Even the five men he listed under the more general term “Laborer” were

distinguished by their willingness, if not their present ability, to work. None of these

were idlers, vagrants, or loiterers in need of rehabilitation.

Mr. Hodgkin’s somewhat reduced census for the following year would have

shown a similar range of sex, age, and race in the pauper community with one notable

exception on disability. One inmate required isolation. “[T]he Smallpox man” arrived

nc Christmas Eve 1861. Hodgkin placed him in one of the Work House barred cells and

carefully listed the furnishings provided him:

Axe, saw and horse, bottel caster oil & 21b Epsom salts, pint whiskey, 2 lb ground coffee, pint & 14 pint mollasses, 8 lbs fresh pork, l#lard. Sundrie article furnished by Jones McKenzey—matras blankets cups saucers plates & load wood.76

Apparently, the man was literally to take care of himself until the disease ran its course.

He had food, bedding, palliatives—the oil, salts, whiskey—and wood for warmth and

cooking. Whether he died or recovered is unclear. The last mention of the man is an

entry a month later that was an inventory of the items he brought with him including

75 Accepting the man was an apparent reversal in policy from that of the previous Keeper, James Stephenson, who had refused to accept any more smallpox victims at the institution. See Chapter III. 76 As quoted in Ward, “The Alexandria Alms House and Work House,”64.

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eating utensils, a “tea kettle, 1 skillet, 1 oven” and a candlestick. Perhaps the items were

an accounting of what needed to be returned when he left or disposed of when he died.

His presence, however, speaks to the common role of the poorhouse as a place to isolate

those with infectious diseases.

Presumably, this practice arose as a natural extension of the hospital function of

the institution, but was also enhanced by the often out-of-the-way location of the poor

farm. What better way to protect the general citizenry of a community from contagion

than by quarantining the carrier away from the town center? Quarantining was the

predominant means by which nineteenth-century health officials were able to prevent the

spread of contagion. Just as the city isolated ships to halt the spread of yellow fever,

when a person had smallpox, isolation was the main means of protecting the rest of the

populace. Once the causes of tuberculosis were discovered at the end of the century,

isolation of those persons was strongly recommended as well. Cases of smallpox,

somewhat rarely, and tuberculosis, quite commonly, as well as other infectious diseases

appeared on the poorhouse rolls well into the twentieth century. As if to underscore the

inherent relationship between disease and poverty, the poorhouse was commonly used as

a quarantine facility.

For Alexandrians, the business of tending to the poor carried on as usual despite

the war. However, for a time, Hodgkin attempted to supplement the income of the place

by taking in some Union soldiers. Supper and a bed on the parlor floor may have been

modest accommodation at best, but the Keeper found his boarders less than appreciative.

In February of 1862, he noted, “By Cash Received of Col Suiter of the 34 Redgement

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New York his amt as presented was $18 and ought to have been in Justice $36 but pd

with $1.00 Shin plater.”77 To add insult to injury, not long after fifteen men, including

officers from the Henry Ward Beecher Long Island Regiment enjoyed Almshouse

hospitality at a cost of about $.40 each for supper and a total of $6 for bedding in the

parlor. Hodgkin tersely noted, “an of next morning Yankey hikes without pay.”78 Such

rude treatment and the Keeper’s comment reflect the ongoing tension between the local

citizenry and the occupying forces. By the end of March, Hodgkin had had enough. No

further entries extend board and room to transient soldiers.

Unsurprisingly, many Alexandrians were glad to see the bulk of the army leave at

the war’s bitter end. However, the town’s economy was in tatters with their going. As

with modern day outcries in communities where military installations shut down, the

initial leaving creates an economic vacuum seemingly insurmountable at first.

Alexandria was no exception. In addition, the increase in the African American

population by contraband blacks, now freedmen, increased tensions. "A riot between

African Americans and former Confederate soldiers [broke out] on Christmas Day,

1865.”79 Nor was life under a Reconstuction regimen an easy one. Municipal positions

were filled by government troops “from a list of ‘loyal’ citizens supplied by the

Republican Party.”80 The years 1868 and 1869 were remarkable ones for Alexandrian

political life because they passed with a complete absence of elections.

77 Ibid., 65. 78 Ibid., 65. 79 T. Michael Miller and Tim Dennee, “Discovering the Decades” Series No. 16, June 1999, Alexandria Archaeology Vol. XVII, No.6, page 7. 80 Ibid.,7.

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The city recovered economically, but slowly. The canal that had been closed

during the war was finally reopened in 1867 increasing port activity. But roads and

railroads, all those transportation channels that had funneled goods to market were in

disarray. Until these lines were back in operation, Alexandria’s commerce suffered. The

new Virginia Constitution ratified in 1869 brought Virginia back into the national fold in

1870 and Alexandria turned a corner of sorts. The prospect of a new decade carried with

it possibilities and opportunities for the city’s boosters. Buoyed by the 1870 census

report that topped Alexandria out at 13,570 making it a full-fledged city, these promoters

accented the positive.

However, demographic realities had fundamentally changed the city. Almost half

the population was now African American having increased with the arrival of so many

former slaves during the war and after. Leadership within this new constituency emerged

from the free black community of long standing in Alexandria and, in conjunction with

local Republicans, African Americans made political progress. Municipal elections held

in May 1870 saw the first black member elected to City Council, the Rev. George Parker,

pastor of the Third Baptist Church. But the old Conservative Party was able to edge out

the Republicans in the mayoral contest effectively holding off the challenge to the status

quo if only barely. While these events energized the citizenry about Alexandria’s

prospects, outsiders saw a rather tired southern town instead. One wag even remarked

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that if Rip Van Winkle had chosen Alexandria over the Catskills, “he might have been

sleeping yet.”81

By 1870 one might expect the mission of the Alms House in Alexandria to have

modified or changed itself drastically from the early tenets established at the beginning of

the century. However, the opposite appears to be the case. The house was home to a

small but diverse population. The 1870 census lists a total of twenty-eight inmates

ranging in age from two to eighty. Of the fifteen males, three were middle-aged blacks.

Of the thirteen women, three were single black women in their fifties. There were two

families, consisting of a mother with two small children each. Three of the males, all in

their forties were listed as blind, two whites and one black. These younger disabled

resided with the elderly infirm. The Poor House provided care for the aged coupled with

care for a younger adult population living marginally.

One cohort often in evidence was made up of single mothers who found themselves in

extremis. Mary Gowers is a case in point. She was listed at the head of a family group

residing at the Poor House in 1870.82 A white thirty-year-old female, Mary was followed

on the list by three-year old Charles, probably her son, and then twenty-six year old

Sarah, possibly her sister. Across town at the Female Orphan Asylum resided another

child, Virginia Gowers, age seven. She could be either Mary’s or Sarah’s child, but

certainly in the same family group. While Virginia had no laws mandating the removal

of children from the almshouse, the records clearly indicate that children under five years

81 As quoted in T. Michael Miller, “Discovering the Decades” Series No. 17, September 1999, A lexandria Archaeology Vol. XVII, No.9, page 4. 82 Ninth Census of the United States, Virginia, Jefferson Township, 28 July 1870.

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were generally allowed to stay with their mothers or parents while older children were

boarded out in the community, or put up for adoption.

Most contemporary observers agreed that the environs of the almshouse with its

aged and often ill population was no fit place for a child. When Pool Goins delivered a

baby at the Alexandria Alms House in the winter of 1863, Mr. Hodgkin acerbically

noted, “$3.00 paid for delivering Pool Goins of her child who ought not to be here nor

on hardly any where else according to my opinion.” Hodgkin’s sense of moral outrage

extends from Pool herself to the no doubt illegitimate status of the child. The fate of such

children was not a bright one. But he too is mindful that the institution is not an

appropriate place for the very young.

On the one hand, separating young Virginia Gowers from the rest of her family

may seem an unnecessarily harsh action. On the other, Mary may have readily

acquiesced to Virginia’s placement as the best option for the girl. Witness the sentiment

expressed by this young mother in Rockbridge County March 4th, 1871:

To the honorable Judge of Rockbridge County Va

The undersigned respectfully sets forth that she is the mother of a female child aged 13 mos. and being in straitened circumstances and unable to properly care for the same and having the opportunity of apprenticing the child, with a view to its adoption, I would respectfully ask the consent of the court to have the child bound out according to law to R. C. Walton Yours Rebecca J. Strickler X her mark 84

83 Ward, “The Alexandria Alms House and Work House,” 65. 84 LV, Rockbridge County Records, Register of the Rockbridge County Poor House, 1881-1924, loose papers in register.

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The illiterate Rebecca had few options for her daughter. Adoption was one means for

providing the child with a better opportunity in life.

The Female Orphan Asylum in Alexandria worked on that principle as well and

had been doing so since possibly 1807. The institution was finally incorporated by the

General Assembly in March 1847. This benevolent enterprise owed its being to a

consortium of women from the local churches. They organized the orphan asylum and

served rotating terms as managers, hiring the matron who ran the day to day operations.

They also passed judgment on the applicants who were received from needy or unworthy parents, or as genuine orphans, from early infancy until they were dismissed with an outfit of clothing at the age of eighteen, and after some position was secured them for supporting themselves.85

The lady managers were in the business of offering otherwise destitute white girls the

means to take care of themselves in the long run. Some education and a skill, probably in

domestic service, would enable these young women to fend for themselves keeping them

off the poorhouse rolls of the future. By some lights, Virginia was a lucky little girl. She

was one of thirteen girls ranging in age from twenty to four. Most were between seven

and ten so she would have had a lively group with which to grow up. While not ideal, the

Female Orphan Asylum offered opportunity in the face of an otherwise grim future. The

lady managers liked being the dispensers of charity as their desire to choose the girls

suggests, however there is no reason to believe that the institution was not also grounded

in a truly benevolent impulse to assist the needy of their own sex.

85 Mary G. Powell, The History of Old Alexandria, Virginia, 327.

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The same holds true for the Alms House. Despite the dreadful reputation of the

poorhouse in general, it is possible that the institution was able to achieve some measure

of support and meaningful care for the city’s indigent. Getting at the quality of that care

the city provided is more difficult. One explanation favoring real benevolence lies in the

persistence of the institution over time. The Poor and Workhouse remained in place on its

fourteen acres until the encroachment of the railroad ate away its surrounding fields, in

existence for some 126 years. The city acquiesced in its demise in 1926 when the

surrounding counties joined forces in building a district home in Manassas to serve a

dwindling population. This longevity speaks to remarkable stability for an institution

with such an unsavory reputation. What needs was it able to fulfill in the community for

a century and a half?

Endurance can certainly be due to a kind of bureaucratic inertia that seems to

overtake institutions of such long standing. Another possibility, however, lies in the

comparatively few numbers served.86 Institutions in the urban centers of the North

maintained factory images and were very large indeed. Figures for the State of New

York in 1900 amount to 85,567 inmates. 87 In the Commonwealth of Virginia, the figure

between 1900 and 1910 was closer to 4,000.88 In Alexandria in the late 1830s through

1844, the keeper recorded the average number of inmates per year from a low of 41 to a

high of 55. It was not only possible, but also highly likely that the Keeper, one Jacob

Curtis, knew all of the Poor and Workhouse occupants and the variety of their needs.

8S The work of Mary Douglas provides insight on the development and maintenance of institutions. See How Institutions Think (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986) andEssays in the Sociology of Perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982). 87 M ichael B. Katz, Poverty and Policy in American History, 58.

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The numbers were manageable, not overwhelming, for a city whose populace was under

10,000.

And Alexandria was to remain a relatively small city on the Potomac. Even after

achieving city status with a population over 10,000 in 1870, Alexandria did not grow by

leaps and bounds. In fact, the city hardly grew at all until the twentieth century. The

Panic of 1873 had created severe unemployment putting even more stress on the working

poor in the years immediately following. During the particularly nasty winter of 1874-

1875, “the mayor received unprecedented numbers of requests for food and fuel.” And

the city was usually generous in its response to these petitions. Again, persons seeking

aid were either known to their respective overseers or recommended personally for

charity. The following are typical vouchers:

Eliza Davis I know to be a worthy woman & very greatly in need of help. I have known her 6 or 7 years & know that she asks for help now only because she is greatly in need. Respectfully, Mrs. Charles Whittesy Jan 24th 1873 I know Lucinda Jackson to be a worthy colored woman. Although married she has had no help from her husband for 3 years he has been off South. I consider her a proper person for a little charity. O.P. Graves89

Eliza Davis and Lucinda Jackson were both “worthy women” able to take care of

themselves within the community in ordinary times. A little charity in extraordinary

times would presumably stay the wolf from the door and keep them from the poorhouse.

88 Kirkwood, ‘Fit Surroundings’, 30 and 40. 89 LH, Box 19 JJ #7 and Box 19 TT #20 respectively.

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By the 1880s, Alexandria was turning the economic corner from the hard years o f

depression that sent Eliza Davis and Lucinda Jackson to seek relief from the city. As if to

herald this prosperity, even the Alms House is singled out as worthy of note. In the year

1883, we find this response of a visitor to the Poorhouse printed in The Alexandria

Gazette:

Nothing, too, seems more consoling to such [the native Alexandrian] than to meet an old acquaintance and shake the hand of one whose interests, aims and aspirations were at one time identical with their own.90

The sense of familiarity as well as ‘there but for fortune, go I’ permeates this little article

which praises the institution and Mrs. Cornwell who presides over such a pleasing place.

She herself was the widow of the former keeper and fortunate to have the position. This

account written in the fullness of May also presents an idyllic picture of the building and

surrounding acreage which

Is all under cultivation and every foot of it careful, energetic tillage.. .The building itself is kept in the best order and paint and whitewash being freely and frequently applied, the floors kept scoured and through indefatigable exertions of the management vermin of any kind is unknown. The food furnished is wholesome and nutritious, the bulk of which is grown upon the place.91

The image here is more suggestive of comfort and well being rather than spartan making

do. A decade previous, in the winter of 1870-71, the grocery and meat bills amounted to

$882.53 for the six months from 25 October to 25 April.92 Is it possible that the

institution can at last provide for itself? What is to be made of this picture? Certainly,

90 The Alexandria Gazette, May 28, 1883. 91 Ibid.

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familiarity seems to have worked in the inmates’ favor to create an atmosphere of

cleanliness and kindliness. One clue is in the emphasis on sanitation in the article. One

need that the Alexandria Alms House had traditionally filled in the community was that

of a charity hospital.

The 1880 census elucidates that function. The census enumerator listed twenty-

seven inmates that year, three of whom were “prisoners” consigned to the workhouse. Of

the remaining twenty-four, fifteen had a debilitating condition that required some level of

nursing care. Most inmates were over fifty, a decidedly older population with no children

or single mothers present. Those under fifty had conditions that explained their presence.

For instance, Willis Henry, a forty-year-old black widower was “sick from exposure.”

Another black, Lewis Hawkins, only thirty, was “Parylized” and deemed insane. Maggie

Lucas, just twenty-five, had an “incurable disease” not specified, while forty-three-year

old Sarah Goings was “crippled from being burnt.” Two men were blind, one “entirely”

and the other “under treatment.” Another black widower, John Smith, suffered from

“Heart Disease,” while sixty-six-year-old Edward Harris, also black and a widower, had

syphilis. Altogether, six of the fifteen had some degree of paralysis or crippling that

prevented them from taking care of themselves. Another black widower, Moses Love, at

ninety, was simply “worn out.” Mary Ingalls, white and forty-one, was “Idiotic.” No

indication was given about the severity of her retardation and whether or not she could

fend for herself, but I did not include her with the fifteen physically ill paupers. Two

black men may have been there only temporarily until they recovered physically. Willis

92 Alexandria City Council Minute Books, No. 17, 1870-1871, 556-581.

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Henry, mentioned above, and George Brooks, yet another black widower, aged sixty-five,

who was placed “on sick list.” Both men were laborers and presumably when back on

their feet would return to that occupation, however marginal and poorly paid.93

The hospital function of the Alexandria Alms House was long standing in the

community having been incorporated into the original design and mission of the

institution. By 1880, the few hospitals that existed in the country were primarily urban

and charity institutions still. When illness or accident struck, the upper and middle

classes called a physician to attend them in their homes. Only those who could not afford

a doctor’s services went to a hospital when they were ill. Interestingly, Alexandria

despite its small size, had established another charity hospital in conjunction with that at

the Alms House in 1871.

A group of women gathered by the Bishop of Virginia’s daughter, Miss Julia

Johns, and representing a number of Alexandria churches determined to raise money to

set up an infirmary for the working poor. The success of their endeavor resulted in a

charter received the following December 23, 1872. The ladies had secured a building and

hired a matron for $200 per annum. Dr. Robert C. Powell offered to act gratis as surgeon

while two colleagues, Drs. Lewis and Gibson gave their time as consultants. Both Powell

and Gibson had served terms as Physician to the Poor so they were familiar with the

clientele and the need in the community. This institution served the white working poor

93 Tenth Census of the United States, Virginia, Alexandria City, Jefferson Township.

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making the Alms House the only option for blacks, such as the six men on the 1880 rolls,

in need of medical attention and nursing.94

Despite the burgeoning African American population and the political gains they

achieved in the 1870s, the 1880s brought a steady erosion of those gains. Even as the

image of the Alms House spoke of kindness that included benevolence to blacks, the

climate within the community was undergoing change. Democrats, as elsewhere in the

state, reasserted control politically electing John B. Smoot mayor in 1885. Perhaps the

most telling event of the changing power structure came at the end of the decade.

Prominent citizens unveiled the Confederate Monument at the intersection of Prince and

Washington Streets on May 24, 1889. Such monuments were becoming common civic

landmarks in many American communities, large and small, North and South.95 The

passing of twenty or more years seemed to require remembrance of the sacrifices of the

fallen whether the cause was lost or won. Many of these monuments consisted of a statue

of a single soldier mounted atop a plinth into which were carved the names of those who

had died in the conflict.

The placement of the Alexandria monument was important. This soldier does not

face North in proud defiance, but rather faces South smack in the middle of the wide road

94 On the development of the hospital as an institution in the nineteenth century see, Charles Rosenburg, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America's Hospital System (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1987) and David Rosner, A Once Charitable Enterprise: Hospitals and Health Care in Brooklyn and New York, 1885- 1915. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). On the history of the Alexandria institution see Wyndam B. Blanton,Medicine in Virginia in the Nineteenth Century, (Richmond: Garret & Massie, Incorporated, 1933), Bettie MacNamara Fretz, “Alexandria Hospital 1871-1976” The Alexandria Magazine Vol. 2, No.9 September 1976, 10-11, and Ruth Lincoln Kaye, “The History of Alexandria Hospital,”The Alexandria Chronicle Alexandria Historical Society, Inc. Vol. 3, No.3, Fall 1995, 1-4.

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that leads to George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon. He also stands between the

city proper and two controversial cemeteries created by the war. Within a mile south

along that road lies the National Cemetery. Under Reconstruction many of the bodies of

Confederate dead were removed and reinterred “at Christ Church and other Southern

cemeteries” so that the Union dead predominated. In addition, the visitor was greeted

with the words of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The cemetery was a constant reminder

to Alexandrians of who won the war, and like Arlington National Cemetery, meant to

highlight that fact.96 Within another half mile or so from the national Cemetery was the

contraband cemetery. Here lay the remains of the many blacks who had sought freedom

behind Union lines. Over time this graveyard would fall into such disrepair that the

property would eventually be sold and in mid-twentieth century a gas station built upon

the site. This stone soldier monument was to stand as a reminder that Alexandria, despite

Northern occupation, despite a large active African American community, was a

Southern city whose loyal Virginia sons had fought proudly for the Confederacy.

His gaze, however, is not piercingly outward. Rather, the soldier’s head is bowed

and his stance as described by one modern observer was not one of “bitterness or

defiance, but only profound grief.”97 His grief may indeed be for lost lives and a lost

cause as well. But his presence prominently placed in the middle of the road carries the

notion of immovable obstacle and could not be missed. Celebrations of Lee-Jackson Day

rallied round him and cars, eventually, have navigated around him ever since. For the

95 The one in my small Maine town is the central feature of the town common. Each Memorial Day, an eighth grader stands in front of the union soldier and recites the Gettysburg Address as a part of ceremonies honoring American war dead. 96 T. Michael Miller and Tim Denee, “Decades” Series No. 16 “The 1860s” June 1999.

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citizens who erected the statue, he represented the resurgence of a status quo that

included Democratic political power and the imposition of Jim Crow laws to keep the

black community in check. Within ten years, he would be witness to even worse

oppressive measures.

Alexandria did not escape the lynching frenzy that gripped America from the end

of the nineteenth century to well into the twentieth. “There was an average of at least one

lynching a year of black Alexandrians in 1897-1899. In each case, mobs overpowered or

intimidated the local authorities and executed African American males accused of sexual

assault.”98 In both instances, a black male was accused of rape or attempted rape of a

white girl under ten years of age. Both men were forcibly taken from the city jail and

hung from a lamp post. Similarities in the cases end there. Certainly white mob rule

prevailed. With the death of Joseph McCoy in April 1897, the Governor of Virginia,

Charles O’Ferrall, demanded an investigation. He had come to office in 1894 with a

campaign promise to put an end to lynching. While the investigation accused the city

officials of not having done enough to protect the victim, no legal action was taken after

97 T. Michael Miller, “Decades” Series No. 18 “The 1880s” December 1999. 98 T. Michael Miller, Murder & Mayhem: Criminal Conduct in Old Alexandria, Virginia, 1749-1900, as quoted in “Decades” Series No. 19 “The 1890s” January 2000. On the general culture of lynching in Virginia and the rest of the South see in particular W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press,1993); Stewart E. Tolnay and E.M. Beck, A Festival o f Violence: An Analysis o f Southern Lynching, 1882-1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), and Arthur F. Raper,The Tragedy o f Lynching (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1933; facsimile, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc, 2003). Edward L. Ayers provides a particularly pertinent analysis of lynching in the SouthVengeance in and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the 19'h Century American South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). He attributes the volatile conditions of the 1890s in part to a division among whites not seen in the previous decades. See pages 223-265 especially.

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the fact." The second lynching occurred in August of 1899. Local newspaper accounts

described his arrest and detailed the lynching itself in animated prose. The author then

went on to blame the behavior of members of the black community who had “swarmed

about and in some instances had become menacing” the night before the lynching.

In, fact it is believed by many that had they remained indoors Monday night and refrained from threats and defiance there would have been no overt act on the part of the whites. But the fact that some blacks on that occasion had endeavored to bring on race troubles and had been arrested with razors and pistols in their pockets, exasperated the multitude to such a degree that the event of last night was but the natural consequence.100

The article and comment stand as a warning to Alexandria’s African American members

to toe the line that the white community had drawn for them. Violence was merely a

“natural” response when whites themselves felt threatened. Subsequently, opportunities

for black Alexandrians steadily regressed as the African American community turned

inward for support and survival stratagems against an increasingly oppressive white

society.

Given these events, Alexandria’s concern for the well being of the poor within the

community, both white and black, may seem an anomaly, more an exception to a harsher

nineteenth-century rule. Most accounts from large urban centers emphasize that the poor

received the minimum of care for the least amount of money.101 However, the city

certainly seems to have devoted considerable energy as well as funds to poor relief while

99 For an interesting account of O’Ferrall’s dedication to anti-lynching see Suzanne Lebsock, A M urder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial (New York and London: W.W.Norton & Company, 2003): 196-205. 100 Alexandria Gazette, August 9, 1899, p. 3 as quoted in T. Michael Miller, Murder & Mayhem, 45.

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in the throes of Civil War recovery. In addition to the almshouse, the forms of outdoor

relief were many. Groceries were sent to specified petitioners in each of the four city

wards, likewise fuel of wood and later coal. Sometimes clothing or cash was dispensed

under the auspices of the standing committee on the poor within the City Council. Fees

for physicians’ services and medicines appear in the records on a monthly basis. Each of

the city’s wards had an appointed “Physician to the Poor” named annually by the City

Council. One explanation is that these outlays seem to have been of long-standing. The

largest line item for the city budget for the year 1856 after salaries was $3000 for “Poor

House and Out Door Poor” twice the amount allocated for other municipal services such

as the fire department.102

This pattern of expenditure continued until the end of the century. In addition,

throughout the 1870s, 1880s, and well into the 1890s, typical City Council meetings

addressed from three to five issues related to the poor. Most were to cover expenditures

for fuel, burials, medicines, and the like. Council members carried on a closely

monitored relationship with city expenditures in general. Petitions for the poor were a

regular aspect of city business in addition to the annual allocations for the maintenance of

the Alms House and Work House and outdoor poor relief. However, just as the 1890s

witnessed a single-minded political control, that process signaled a change in the

administration of charity as well.

101 Michael B. Katz concludes from his extensive study of welfare in the North that governments were miserly at best in their allotments for the relief of the poor in this period. See particularly,Poverty and Policy in American History, 55-90, and In the Shadow o f the Poorhouse, 3-112. 102 LH, “Alexandria City Records,” Box 19 II, #35.

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Following a growing national trend, the city began to turn over responsibility for

the distribution of poor relief to private charitable organizations. Rather than continue to

address individual petitions from the poor, Council began making contributions to

organizations such as the Salvation Army and let them make the appropriate distribution.

Churchwomen in the community, like those who had organized the Orphan Asylum and

the Alexandria Hospital, were also becoming more prominent in city benevolence.

The year 1903 proved a watershed in that process of devolving poor policy. In

November, the City Council sold off a portion of the almshouse property to the

Washington Southern Railway reducing its size to approximately nine acres from the

original fourteen. The sale brought money to city coffers, but also acknowledged the

inability of the farm to be self-sufficient. Significantly, the railroad created a new barrier

between the almshouse tract and the city to the south, further isolating the institution

from the community.

Then in December several significant acts changed the character of poor relief in

the city. First, the Council designated $1000 for the relief of the outdoor poor to be

administered by the Co-Operative Charities Association. Council argued that the sum

“for use among the out-door poor” would be “more judiciously disbursed” by that

organization “than by a single individual,” meaning the Overseer of the Poor for each

ward.103 The next move was to abolish the office of the Overseer of the Poor itself. The

City fathers deferred to the Co-Operative Charities of Alexandria in much the same

manner as northern cities let the various Societies for Charity assume the role of

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benevolent providers. By dint of their work in the community, these nascent social

workers had become the experts on determining where the needs were and who deserved

beneficence.104 At the same time, the municipal expenditures for charity were fixed.

Rather than have funds leak with each petition or request approved over the course of a

year, the total amount was set and then distributed by charity workers themselves.

The Alms House and Work House, however, remained. The diminished size and

isolation of the poorhouse property mirrored the changes in distribution of outdoor relief

that established another bureaucratic layer separating the governing body from the

formerly routine petitions of the poor that had occupied their council meetings.

Ostensibly not much else had changed at the institution. The rolls record the usual

twenty-eight inmates. However, the 1900 census clearly demonstrates the process of

aging in the institution giving one clue to what may have prompted the changes at

work.105

Even the Keeper and his wife were senior citizens. William Smith, sixty-eight,

presided with his wife Harriet, sixty-five. No prisoners were listed. Nor were any

physical disabilities, but no doubt they remained the principle reason for middle-aged

poor to come to the almshouse. Ethnic diversity continued. Of the fifteen females, six

were black. Of the thirteen males, seven were black. The ages ranged from a thirteen-

103 LH, “Acts and Joint Resolutions of the City Council of Alexandria, from March 12,1902, to May 27, 1904.” Box 19 MM #35. 104 On the development of charity societies and links to social work see Frank Dekker Watson, The Charity Organization Movement in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1902) for a contemporary account. Roy Lubove, The Professional Altruist: the Emergence of Social Work as a Career, 1880-1930 (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 1965) and Nathan Irvin Huggins Protestants Against Poverty: Boston’s Charities, 1870-1900 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corp., 1971) explore in depth the connections between Protestant charity groups and the development of social work as a profession.

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year-old black girl to a ninety-five year old black man with fifteen inmates aged fifty-five

and over. However, as the population aged and died off, the City Council may have seen

the institution itself as dying. However, no other options for the care of these indigent

citizens had yet appeared.

Certainly, the most significant change in numbers took place in the first ten years

of the new century. In 1910, the Almshouse recorded only eighteen inmates, three of

whom were prisoners: two white males and one black female. Three of the residents

were carryovers from the previous census, three women and one white man.

Conspicuously absent were black males who had been prominent in 1900. Of the seven

males, all were white. Of the eight women, only two were black. Joshua and Mary

Sherwood, a couple again in their sixties, were the Keeper and his wife. The rigors of the

job must surely have been few by this time. One explanation for these reduced numbers

was increased job opportunity within the community. The twentieth century saw a spurt

of manufacturing growth in Alexandria. Between 1899 and 1915, the city was “leading

every city in Virginia except Lynchburg in the increased production of goods.”106

Everything from glass and leather to a thriving brewery operation spelled boom times for

the city. In addition the railroads in town consolidated with the building of Union Station

in 1905 followed by the development of the Potomac Yard in 1906. The latter was a

huge rail complex of 450 acres just across the main road from the Alms House.

By 1920, the Sherwoods then in their seventies, were still presiding over

diminished but familiar numbers, fourteen in all, including one female mulatto prisoner.

1(b Twelfth Census o f the United States, Virginia, Alexandria, Jefferson District, Sheet No. 15, June 1, 1900.

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Two women and one man remained from the previous census, signaling their need for

custodial care. Six white males, four white females, and three mulatto women ranged in

age from forty-four to seventy-eight with most in their fifties. They were either single or

widows and widowers, that segment of the population without familial ties to support

them. The almshouse provided food and shelter, nursing when needed, and the potential

for some measure of companionship.

However, in an age characterized by the vigor of Progressive reform, the

Alexandria institution was increasingly marginalized within the community. Its

population stood in inverse relationship to the increasing size of the city. In addition to

rising population, Alexandria expanded its boundaries in 1915 and again in 1929,

annexing consecutive portions of Arlington County. 1 07 Over time, the concern for the

city’s poor had moved from a central position to a peripheral one.

Contributing to the aging population of the poorhouse was the development of

other institutions that would serve specific needs of some poor. Progressive reformers in

Virginia had been working to establish a variety of institutions that would speak to the

problems of certain groups within the poorhouse populace. Such specialization came as a

direct result of the Progressive Era desire to get at the causes of poverty in order to

eliminate it. State officials worked tirelessly to establish a colony for the feeble-minded,

for example, achieving that end in 1914. The welfare of children topped the list of

pressing concerns.

106 T. Michael Miller, “Decades” Series No. 20 “The ‘Nineteen-Oughts’” February 2000, 5. 107 A History of the Boundaries of Arlington County, Virginia, Office of the County Manager, Arlington, Virginia, 1967, 16-23.

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In Alexandria the Orphan Asylum for young white females had closed in 1885

when the infirmary took over the buildings on the corner of Wolfe and Pitt Streets. Its

demise signaled the move away from orphanages to foster care and the rise of other

organizations to address the welfare needs of children. The State Board of Charities and

Corrections worked in concert with a variety of private organizations to provide for

destitute children. The Children’s Home Society founded in 1900 and based in

Richmond worked throughout the state in the placement and adoption of eligible white

children. Likewise, T. C. Walker of Gloucester, Virginia worked across the state to

remove black children from almshouses and place them in foster care or arrange

adoptions.108

Unwed mothers comprised another needy group served by the local almshouse.

Kate Waller Barrett addressed the plight of young single mothers in the area with the

establishment of Ivakota Farms near Clifton. Barrett had long been involved in the rescue

of unmarried mothers. As a young minister’s wife in the Butchertown section of

Richmond, she had a transforming experience with one such mother and child in 1877.

At the couple’s next posting in Henderson, Kentucky, Barrett persuaded her husband to

open a mission dedicated to these girls who had strayed. When the minister and his wife

moved to Atlanta in 1889, the indefatigable Barrett set about earning her medical degree

at the Women’s Medical College of Atlanta and establishing another home for unwed

mothers. Despite her own responsibilities as a minister’s wife and mother, she achieved

108 Arthur W. James, The Public Welfare Function of Government in Virginia, 25th Anniversary Bulletin Issued by the State Department of Public Welfare (Richmond: Division of Purchasing and Printing, 1934): 6-7.

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her objectives gaining her M.D. in 1892 and opening the home in 1893. The latter came

only over the objections of many in Atlanta who found such a rescue mission for girls an

unseemly project. However, Barrett was fortunate in that her efforts came to the attention

of Charles N. Crittenton who had turned his own considerable energies and money

toward the rescue of prostitutes for the previous ten years. When his four-year-old

daughter died of scarlet fever, the businessman turned into a philanthropist establishing

his first rescue mission in New York in 1883 and naming it after his daughter Florence.

He gave Kate Waller Barrett $5000 for her Atlanta project with the only stipulation that

the home be named for his daughter. This newfound relationship developed into a

partnership where Barrett’s managerial skills merged with Crittenton’s vision and

financial backing.

When her husband was sent to Washington, DC to head up the Missions of the

Episcopal Church in 1894, Kate Waller Barrett took on the job of General Superintendent

for what had become the National Florence Crittenton Missions. When her husband died

two years later, Barrett, only thirty-nine, moved with her six children to a home in Old

Town Alexandria on Duke Street. Then in 1909 upon the death of Charles Crittenton,

Barrett became the President of the Florence Crittenton Missions.

With the gift of a 264-acre farm in the spring of 1915, Barrett was able to

establish Ivakota Farms in Clifton, Virginia, an institution especially dedicated to provide

medical care for “venereal-diseased women.”109 Home to about thirty girls when it

109 Kathi Ann Brown, “House of Another Chance: Kate Waller Barrett”s Ivakota,” Northern Virginia H eritage Vol. 10, No.3, October 1988, pp.3-6 ff. For the history of the Florence Crittenton Missions, see

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opened, Ivakota developed in the World War I years to a much larger institution with a

corresponding farm component to provide food for the war effort. By the mid-twenties,

the year round facility maintained up to fifty women and treated as many as 9000 a year

in its clinic. The farm evolved into an industrial school where the rescued women were

to learn to support themselves by dint of honest labor. Classes were offered in everything

from canning to shoe repair and carpentry as well as the rudiments of farming. All on the

place were involved with the actual running of the farm. Unlike the old and infirm at the

Alms House and Work House, these young women were generally healthy and able to

contribute their labor in the fields and dairy operations. The city of Alexandria supported

all these endeavors with an annual stipend.

By 1926, the city was making appropriations to six local charitable organizations

besides Ivakota rather than distributing poor relief directly. In addition to the original

United Charities, Alexandria contributed to the local hospital, a home for the aged, the

city mission, the Children’s Home Society, a placement agency for foster children, and

the Salvation Army. Total contributions to these organizations amounted to $2570 in

outdoor relief, considerably fewer taxpayer dollars than had been allotted in a given year

of the 1880s and 1890s in response to petitions for firewood in winter and the like.

Reformers would say these public monies were more appropriately and efficiently spent

to effect substantive relief for the poor. All of these organizations drew off the traditional

poorhouse population so that when that institution closed that year, only nine inmates

transferred to the new District Home in Manassas.

Otto Wilson, Fifty Years Work With Girls, 1883-1933: A Story o f the Florence Crittenton Homes

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Add to these changes on the local level the development of a number of state

institutions that would draw off the most dependent inmates of almshouses across the

commonwealth. Between 1900 and 1920, the state created a colony for the feeble

minded and insane, a sanitarium for the tubercular, a school for the blind, a hospital for

invalids, and a more cohesive system of foster care for child welfare. These public

institutions coupled with private facilities like the Florence Crittenton homes formed the

basis for the growing network of social welfare institutions that were to shape the early

public welfare efforts in Virginia.110

As the inmate population of the Alms House and Work House diminished in size

and increased in age, Alexandria city governance, while not entirely ignoring the

institution, placed it on the margins. At the same time, the interests of the state in welfare

issues increased. In 1908, the Commonwealth formed its Board of Charities and

Corrections to investigate the administration of penitentiaries and poorhouses, thus

beginning the statewide oversight of what were to become social services institutions

rather than simply a local community’s response to the needs of its poor. These

Progressive reformers came armed with new ideas about the causes of poverty and were

determined to educate local communities about the latest modern developments. Their

proposals did not always fall on deaf ears.

Alexandria welcomed the state’s plans to develop District Homes when the matter

came up in 1926. The issue had become focused on the best use of taxpayer dollars.

(Alexandria VA: The National Florence Crittenton Mission, 1933). j8 James, Disappearance of the County Almshouse, 78.

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Alexandria would partner with neighboring counties to share expenses. The Alexandria

Gazette dutifully reported the City Council’s deliberations:

The mayor set forth among other things that the proposed home and farm would have maximum capital of $50,000 which would include a working capital of $5,000 and his motion .. .to prepare an ordinance for legal sale of the present almshouse and equipment... was adopted.111

The city’s portion would amount to $10,000 which the sale of the remaining poorhouse

property would help to defray. The institution had become more valuable for the worth

of its property than its mission to the poor. To be fair, these progressives were concerned

with providing what they saw as better care in a fiscally responsible manner to a

diminished population. Alexandrians, unable to maintain the balance between benevolent

care and the interests of the community in a rapidly urbanizing environment, decreed the

institution’s usefulness at an end.

The District Home concept was modern and efficient, an institution to suit the times.

The City of Alexandria and the counties of Fairfax, Prince William, Fauquier and

Culpepper were cooperating regionally to create a state of the art institution putting the

emphasis on home rather than alms despite the charitable nature of the facility. The

following describes the vision:

It is proposed to have the building erected in three units, one a hospital, one for whites and one for colored, and there will also be a big farm. It is believed that the plan will prove not only far more economical but that the inmates also will get far better service than they now secure at there respective almshouses. Not any of the present almshouses will be used.112

111 The Alexandria Gazette, January 22, 1926, frontpage. 112 Ibid.

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Whatever the conditions of the existing institutions, the image here is of a bucolic retreat

albeit one complying with the prevailing segregationist standards of the day. The District

Home was certainly touted as a humane means of providing for the poor in their

declining years. However, with something gained there is always something lost. Ellen

Glasgow put her finger on that nub in her novel, Barren Ground. She contemplated the

fate of the seven aging inhabitants of the poorhouse in a county somewhere west of

Richmond:

Like other relics of an abruptly changing era, the county poorhouse possessed both the advantages and disadvantages of desuetude. The seven aged paupers... who now accepted its charity were neglected, it is true, but they were neglected in freedom. Where there was no system, there was less room for interference...if these.. .inmates.. .could have chosen between liberty and fraternity, they would probably have preferred the scant food and rough 113 clothes to the neat livery of dependence.

Historians of social welfare and social services would not find her observation odd

because it speaks to the compassion for the individual, to an understanding of

psychological needs as well as physical ones.

This attitude also offers a plausible explanation for the persistence of the

institution in Virginia. In many rural environments, the balance struck favored a certain

worthiness expressed in the level of autonomy inmates maintained in their daily lives. It

is most often when concern for the poor moves from the center to the periphery that

compassion takes a backseat to expediency. As other institutions in the community and

area took over the hospital function and the placement of children, the poorhouse did

seem a relic. A modern city like Alexandria could supplant this old-fashioned facility

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with a follow-on institution that moved the aged poor even farther from the city center

and daily concerns of local governance.

However, for much of its long life and particularly for those years from 1870 into

the early twentieth century, the Alexandria Alms House and Work House by virtue of its

size and relationship to communal life was able to dispense a substantive measure of

refuge for its indigent poor. Those two factors also determined the relative worth of the

poorhouse in its more rural county setting. As long as the poor farm provided a valued

service for the county poor and the numbers remained manageable, the institution

persisted as a refuge from want.

" J Ellen Glasgow, Barren Ground (New York: Modern Library, Random House, 1933): 499.

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POOR HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY

“The paupers are well cared for & well fed and humanely treated.” 114

Highland County’s Superintendent of the Poor regularly concluded his annual

reports in the late 1890s with this mantra emphasizing the humane treatment inmates of

that county’s Poor House received. While he was in charge of seeing that care dispensed,

he was not personally responsible for its daily administration. That task fell to the farmer

who rented the property from the county with an agreement to provide for those paupers

consigned to the Poor House. If the Superintendent made only quarterly visits to the

institution, his scanty oversight opened the door for everything from neglect to

maltreatment. Yet he insisted that the mandate of the Poor House to provide “relief of

the aged, infirm, and destitute” surpassed its charge by humanely supplying that care.115

Counter to negative early twentieth-century images of the institution, this picture

of the Poor House offering more than the minimum required raises skeptical eyebrows.116

Small rural Poor Farms run by overworked farmers conjure a hardscrabble life where

114 LV, Annual Reports to the General Auditor, Overseers of the Poor, Highland County, Ledger 1897, June 30, 1897. Annual Reports will designate future references to these documents. 115 Alexandria Gazette 1870 116 A typical assessment of the poorhouse comes from Arthur W. James, “...the county poorhouse has continued throughout the years an institution symbolic of the uttermost despair of mankind, a word to connote poverty, neglect, disease, filth, loneliness and death itself. It has continued as a perfect testimonial of man’s inhumanity to man, as well as a conspicuous example of inefficient and reactionary government.” “Forw ard” to The Disappearance of the County Almshouse, no pagination. James’s rhetoric fit in with a national campaign to discredit poorhouses as institutions. For example, one fraternal organization sponsored the publication of Harry C. Evans’ The American Poorfarm and Its Inmates (Des Moines, Iowa:

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care of indigents falls to the bottom of the daily chores list. Isolated farms appalled

Progressive reformers for their lack of oversight as well as lack of modern sanitary

conveniences. In addition, farmers, however well disposed towards their charges, were

not qualified caregivers or social workers. On a visit to one particularly picturesque

institution in 1926, the inspector additionally faulted the county Board of Supervisors for

not providing better financial aid to assist the farmer and his wife with both care and

sanitation issues. Lack of screens, unpleasant odors pervading inmate rooms, and wash

house sudsy water “poured under the house” formed part of his litany of offenses that

could have been mended with proper monetary assistance from the county. He

concluded, “I think it is perfectly remarkable that they keep the place in as good

condition as they do with the poor assistance which they have.”1 1 7

What seemed remarkable to this young inspector were the simple—and accepted—

facts of rural farm life. The Superintendent and his wife took justifiable pride in the

place working hard to maintain the farm and care for the thirty-one inmates under their

charge. Poor Farms were isolated just as farms were in general. Dirt roads and chamber

pots meant dust and “unpleasant odors” especially in summer’s heat. However, all those

who lived on the farm pitched in to make a go of the place, swatting the flies as they

went. The Poor Farm was no exception. Paupers were required to participate with

whatever level of labor they could supply. Work in the fields, barns, wash house,

kitchens, dairy, gardens, and house established the daily rhythm of farm life. As one

The Loyal Order of Moose, 1926). Evans painted a particularly dismal picture of life on a county poor farm aimed at making the public aware of the institution as a failed means of providing relief to the poor. 117 James, Disappearance of the County Almshouse, 24.

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twentieth-century Southern woman recalled of her girlhood on the farm, “Mama learned

us to work.” 118

The wife of the Superintendent or Keeper of the Poor House was often key to the

quality of life on the farm for all. As the farmer headed off to the fields or tended to the

stock, she was responsible for the domestic side of farm life, the washing and preparation

of meals. She probably also kept chickens and supplemented the farm income with her

egg money and the bartering of a fresh hen for piece goods.119 The 1894 inventory of the

Shenandoah County poor farm indicates “16 Guineas & 54 chickens.”120 These fowl

would have come under the purview of the farmer’s wife, one more duty among many in

running the farm.

Dorothea Dix commented on this inestimable woman’s role when she toured the

many poorhouses in antebellum North Carolina to make her case for the insane:

The [Iredell] County poor-house, a few miles from Statesville is situated in a singularly secluded spot, remote from supervision and often observation, and is a model of neatness, comfort, and good order; having a most efficient master and mistress, especially the latter, upon whose cares in these institutions by far the most is dependent. All in all, this was in much the best condition of any poor-house I have seen in North Carolina, neat, plain and decent, it would do credit to any state; but it is no fit place 121 for the insane.

118 Lu Ann Jones, Mama Learned Us to Work: Farm Women in the New South (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2002) 119 Ibid. Lu Ann Jones argues for the importance of farmwomen’s bartering and trade in rural commerce. Eggs, chickens, butter, berries and greens were often accepted in trade for goods not readily available on the farm. See especially Chapters 2 and 3, pp.49-105 on the relationship between household economy and the larger regional economy. 120 LV, Shenandoah County, Board of Supervisor’s Records, 181. 121 As quoted in Roy M. Brown,Public Poor Relief in North Carolina, 60-61.

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The ability of the farmer’s wife to organize the daily chores as well as tend to the needs

of the various inmates, including the insane, determined the level of cleanliness as well as

comfort to be had on the farm.

In several cases, her capabilities were acknowledged by default. When a Keeper

died on the job, counties would elevate her to his position, usually temporarily until a

search for a new Keeper of the Poor could be completed. For example, the census

enumerator in 1870 reported that Charlotte Keller “has taken over as Stewart [sic] of

Poorhouse” of Shenandoah County.122 Just as Mrs. Cornwell presided over the

Alexandria institution when her husband died in the early 1880s, Charlotte Keller did not

precipitously lose her home and livelihood when her husband passed on.

Among the many duties of the farmer’s wife, her prowess as a cook and meal

planner added mightily to that notion of comfort as well. For those able to come to table,

1 9T meals were taken communally on most farms and at set times during the day. Farms

with residents of twenty or more required her to have help with meal preparation if she

turned her hand to the actual cooking at all. Records indicate that quite often, female

inmates of long-standing served as cooks for their fellow paupers.124 In those instances,

the farmer’s wife would have planned meals and supervised their preparation. On

122 Ninth Census of the United States, Shenandoah County, Virginia, June, 1870. 123 LV, Shenandoah County, Board of Supervisor’s Records, 179-182. Among the many items listed in an inventory of the Shenandoah County farm made when R. D. Funkhouser took over from Charles Fansler as Superintendent of the Poor in 1892 were three dining tables and six benches in a dining room separate from that of the Superintendent’s family dining room. 124 For example, Rebecca Burner cooked at the Shenandoah institution until old age prevented her. Likewise, during the 1880s, Delila Ramsey cooked for the Rockbridge Superintendent while Ginny Johnson prepared meals for the paupers.

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smaller farms with resident populations under twenty, she would have more likely taken a

hands-on role in the kitchen.

She was also the linchpin in the quality of the care received by the chronically ill.

Inmates of rural Poor Farms in Virginia unable to work due to illness or physical

disability found themselves cared for by fellow inmates, sometimes a daughter, or the

farmer’s family members. She would have assigned the more able to care for the

bedridden. They in turn would have relied on her to dispense medicines or to provide

whatever other emoluments were needed. Relying on each other was a tenet of isolated

farm life out of necessity.

Housework on such farms included more than cooking, washing, and cleaning.

Sewing and knitting consumed a fair portion of any given day for the women. Not only

did they make clothing for the inmate population, but bedding as well. All who were able

participated in this enterprise. C. J. Brawley of Rockbridge County carefully noted the

sewing and knitting labors of the women who were too feeble to help in the dairy,

cookhouse, or laundry. Their labors with needle and thread and turning out socks for

1 ~) S their fellows were not unappreciated. While Brawley yearly reported these efforts, it

would have been his wife who daily supplied the women with the yarn and the bleached

cotton they needed to fulfill their tasks.

Besides these daily occupations, the wife would have directed the seasonal putting

by of the farm’s produce. Produce would be turned into jars of pickles and tins of

tomatoes, just as apples under her hands reemerged as jams, jellies, apple butter, dried

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fruit, and even apple brandy. Come fall and slaughtering season, pigs provided the pork

chops and roasts consumed at the dinner table as well as the bacon and sausage eaten at

breakfast. While the men cut the slabs of bacon and prepared the roasts for curing, the

women operated the sausage grinder and stuffer seasoning the links with their particular

blend of herbs.126

Farms, in their efforts at self-sufficiency, bought only those supplies they could

not manufacture on the place. The economic trials of the 1890s prompted Shenandoah

County’s new superintendent to include these remarks in his annual report.

Many new paupers have come in this year are scarce of clothes & never any shoes the entire number, one supplied with new winter outfits including bedclothes partially supplied. We have plenty to eat, we try to give them enough & in good order as possible for I would subm it... we have all kinds of people to contend with here...127

Superintendent Funkhouser’s mention of the shoes was by way of explaining an unusual

expense incurred that year. Shoes were one commodity that had to be bought. Unlike the

bedclothes and socks made at the farm, these leather goods were comparatively

expensive items. Funkhouser would have to make a cash outlay unless he could effect

some astute bartering with the supplier.

Farm life had a rhythm all its own based on daily chores and the seasonal labors

of planting and harvesting. Work was a constant and required the efforts of all. To that

125 LV, Annual Reports, Rockbridge County. Brawley’s reports from the late 1870s to 1881 when he retired regularly included the sewing and knitting occupations of female inmates. Boxes 1944, 1946, 1945, 1952, 1953, 1954, and no number (1881) contain his reports for the years 1876 to 1881. 126 LV, Shenandoah County, Board of Supervisor’s Records, 181-2; Shenandoah County Library, Shenandoah County Almshouse Records, Reel #1, Almshouse Book, 205. As testament to the farm’s productivity and the efforts of Mrs. Fansler, the inventory listed “44 Gal. of apple butter, 8 Gal. of preserves” as well as “44 ‘A gallon fruit jars 20 tin cans tomatoes— 9 lard... tin— 42 bushels potatoes— 10 hams, 2 middlings—I shoulder.” The larder was well stocked indeed. 127 LV, Annual Reports, Shenandoah County, Box 1957, 30 November 1894.

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rhythm, the poor farm added the care of the indigent. Those disabled or paralytic inmates

relied on the healthier paupers to see to their needs. They in turn relied on the Keeper

and his wife to supply those needs. Only by working together could they make a go of

the place. Those county almshouses that pulled together achieved the “self-sustaining”

sobriquet. Good management and interdependence were the key.

Such reliance upon one another fostered the relationships that create a communal

life over time. Often the county expended very few dollars indeed to support its

poorhouse. That fact, however, does not automatically lead to a conclusion of inhumane

treatment. The farm was meant to be self-sufficient and supplied its inmates with ample

n o food as well as adequate shelter. Actual cash outlays for goods not available on the

farm were minimal especially during Reconstruction when specie was in short supply.

Mutual relationships often incorporated humane treatment forging what emerged as a

community within the institution. On the one hand were the farmers and their families

and on the other the various members of the inmate population, many of whom lived their

entire lives at the institution. 129

128 Lu Ann Jones, M ama Learned Us to Work, 6. “’They were tough days’...but ‘we were happy, because we had a-plenty to eat, growed plenty of food in the garden. And raised plenty of hogs.’” Typical testimonies from these farm women indicate that while they were poor, they never went hungry. 129 Counter to the images of destitution and despair by progressive reformers, fictional accounts of the poor farm offer a more neutral view of life there. Ellen Glasgow’s vignette in her 1926 Barren Ground sees the inmates as “neglected in freedom,” allowed to carry on their lives of poverty with a measure of autonomy not to be discounted. Katherine Paterson’s JIP: His Story (New York: Dutton, 1996) depicts a New England poor farm in the mid-nineteenth century. Her unsentimental account of a mulatto boy’s experience with his fellow inmates including a “lunatic,” a feeble-minded man, a widow and child, emphasizes the relationships both positive and negative formed on the farm. Robert Hale’s Elm at the Edge o f the Earth (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1990) purports to be based on his own childhood experiences living on a poor farm in the summer where his aunt and uncle worked. A deformed woman, a giant of a man placed at the institution by his wealthy family embarrassed by his size, a blind woman, and a murderess confined to her room make up a partial cast of inmates with whom the boy associates and befriends. Hale’s coming of age story paints a picture of acceptance and tolerance rather than negative judgment.

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Variety dictated by location remains the hallmark of the nineteenth-century Poor

Farm. Virginia was no exception. By looking at the physical structures, the inmates they

housed, and the keepers entrusted with the running of the place, this chapter will get at

where each of the six counties falls along the continuum of internal communal

development. Perpetuation of the institution was in part dependent on the strength of

those bonds. In addition to considerations of budget and bottom line, counties closed

their Poor Houses when such internal communal relationships did not materialize or

failed altogether.

Clues to the internal life of the institution are revealed in the physical structures

themselves, their variety and size as well as location within the community. The city of

Alexandria’s Almshouse seems to have represented the epitome of architectural thinking

for the institution in the early 19th century. Rather than commandeer an existing building,

the city fathers appear to have had one built for that purpose in the first decade of the

nineteenth century. Despite its modest size, it was stylistically closer to the large urban

structures in cities like Richmond and Charleston than to its rural counterparts across the

state. Poorer communities were more in the business of making do. In keeping with the

local nature of welfare at this time, counties found a variety of structures to serve as the

“Place of General Reception.” What they shared was the idea that they would function as

self-sufficient farms whether or not they met that goal.

Early twentieth-century reformers decried the isolation of poor farms and the

difficulties they had getting to them over rutted dirt roads. However, these farms were

widely recognized institutions within their respective counties. While many were located

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on the outskirts of a community town center, the roads leading to them clearly bore the

name of the institution. What was Rockbridge County’s poor farm remains today

situated on PoorHouse Road. 1 "30 Twentieth-century maps of Alexandria unabashedly cite

the location of the Almshouse on PoorHouse Road. After the 1926 demise of the

institution, the road was renamed Monroe Avenue. The location of the institution may

seem to have been off the beaten track to modern viewers, especially Progressive

reformers coming to inspect, but it was common knowledge to the members of each

community. Follow this road and you will come to the Poor House itself.

Within these similarities variety abounded. The location of the poor farm often

had quite a bit to do with the availability of land and/or a suitable structure. A case in

point is the Shenandoah Alms House which dates to 1783. Prior to its use as the poor

farm, the land belonged to the Beckford Parish for use as the glebe farm established in

1760. Patriot and priest, Peter Muhlenberg had been called to the parish in the early

1770s to unite the German Lutheran community with the established Church of England.

His family lived at the farm during his military service in the Continental Army. After

the war, glebe farms in many instances reverted to the Commonwealth when the church

was disestablished. The Muhlenbergs vacated the property in 1783 and the Alms House

131 was then instituted by the community.

130 This name may soon change since the farm has recently been sold by the McCrowell family to a developer who is planning an upscale housing project for much of the site. The original superintendent’s house and one outbuilding have been sold as a unit and are being restored by the present owners. The poor farm graveyard has also been identified and preserved from development as well. bl Irvin D. Magin, Shenandoah County Gazetteer & Historical Geography (Stephens City, VA: Commercial Press, Inc., 1991), 31-32; Fred P. Painter, A Brief History o f the Alms House o f Shenandoah County (Stephens City VA: Commercial Press, Inc., 1979), 1-9; Harriet L. Tynes “History of Poor Relief Legislation in Virginia” (Master’s Thesis, School of Social Science Administration, University of Chicago, 1932), 44-45.

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The present structure was built about 1830 of brick molded locally.132 Compared

to its Alexandria cousin, the Shenandoah Alms House was land rich, sitting on two

hundred and sixty-five acres of gently rolling farmland. While many farms had

outbuildings to house the paupers, local historians assume the house with its two wooden 1 ^ ^ wings was the home of the keeper and his family as well as the inmates. Two single

story wooden residential wings which later state inspectors designated as the “barracks

style” of facility flank the oldest central two-story brick building.134 State inspectors

from the Board of Charities and Corrections indicated in 1909 that the superintendent and

his family occupied eight rooms in the central brick home while males were housed in

one wing, females in the other. Each wing consisted of eight rooms with a potential of

1 Tf four inmates per room. In addition, each wing had a sitting room for central gathering.

This housing arrangement supports the idea that close proximity fostered a communal

atmosphere, not only among the inmates, but also between the farmer’s family and the

inmates as well.

Numerous farm outbuildings, all painted white remain, the largest of which is a

tin gambrel-roofed barn that bears the words “Shenandoah County Farm,” clearly visible

from the road to passersby. While the paint is peeling in places and some smaller

structures have fallen into disrepair, the farm remains a working institution. In the early

1990s, the farm accommodated homeless families as well as the few elderly remaining

132 The Virginia Landmarks Register cites a date of 1829 while a local history specifies 1839. Virginia Landmarks Register, Fourth Ed. Calder Loth, ed. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 1999): 488 and Fred Painter, A Brief History, 12. I3j The Shenandoah County Alms House as well as the one in Frederick County are on the National Register of Historic Sites. L’4 James, Disappearance of the County Almshouse, 18.

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residents, some of whom had lived there all their lives. When their care required more

medical attention than could be provided on site, the last three residents were moved to

area nursing homes or assisted living facilities in 1997. The Shenandoah Alliance for

Shelter, which assumed management of the facility in 1991, continues to provide

temporary shelter for county needy. As if to underscore the pride the county takes in

this institution, the farm is listed on both the National and Virginia Registers of Historic

Sites.

Rockbridge County’s facility, in contrast, was sited on steeply rolling hills

making for numerous up and downhill treks. According to a survey of the property

completed in 1909, the land was originally divided into three tracts totaling 309 acres

“conveyed by Henry McClung to Overseers of the Poor, Nov. 4th 1829.”137 The extant

Superintendent’s House is a white Victorian clapboard structure with a peaked roof built

in 1903 and sited atop a steep hill that affords a panoramic view of the surroundings. The

survey map indicates several large structures at the bottom of that hill, one on either side

of the public road that runs to and through the property, labeled “Pauper’s Quarters.”

Two more modest buildings are allotted for tenants while nine farm buildings are

indicated by black boxes, two of considerable size probably denote barns and/or stables.

All of these structures were within sight of one another, so while the housing

arrangement was not as close as that in Shenandoah, the inmates lived in relatively close

proximity to one another. The Superintendent’s house clearly established who was in

135 Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections, 1908-09, 89. 136 Casteel, M. (1998, November 25) “Living outside the almshouse,” The Free Press , Woodstock, Virginia, Vol. 14, Issue No. 16: 1, 3.

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charge, but the relationship between the various inmate structures easily allowed for a

communal farm life.

The lower portion of the property is cut by the B & O Railroad track which

traverses the rutted farm road via an arched bridge built in the early 1870s. All that

remains of the inmate buildings and wash house are rudimentary portions of the

foundations. As in Shenandoah, all indications are that inmates were segregated by

sex. What arrangements were made for families when both parents were there is not

entirely clear. Generally, the children aged five and below would remain with the mother

while older boys would be housed with the father. Segregation by race (not clear in

Shenandoah) is indicated in the following letter dated June 5th 1867:

To the Worshipfull County Court of Rockbridge

The undersigned President of the Overseers of the Poor for the County aforsaid [sic], respectfully asks the Court now in Session to make an app[r]o[pr]iation of Five hundred for to enable the overseers to erect additional buildings at the poor house for the accommidation [sic] of the Freedmen, the number is increasing, and thier [sic] is not room for them at the Poor House. About 2 years ago the Court ordered the overseers to erect new buildings for the accommodation of the Freedman [sic]. But now it is absolutely necessary that some new Buildings should be erected and we can make a beginning with the sum asked.

Respectfully, John Wallace [,] Prest139

A pattern of building cabins as a means to house the indigent was a not uncommon

practice and, as seen here, a necessary financial expedient. By the early twentieth

137 Map of an Inclusive Survey of the County Farm. D eed B ook Q, 342. Rockbridge County Courthouse, Lexington, Virginia. 138 Meghan E. Steele, In the Shadow o f the Poor House: The Poor Women o f Rockbridge County Virginia, 1870-1930, PowerPoint Presentation, SURF 2001. 139 LV, Rockbridge County Circuit Court Records.

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century the rows of cabins at the Rockbridge Poor House had been consolidated into

larger dormitory style structures.140

In addition to these structures, some provision must have been made for care of

the sick. Much of the confinement of the ill would have occurred in individual rooms.

However, the considerable number of births occurring at the Poor House in the last two

decades of the nineteenth century, with a number of repeat mothers, suggests some

provision may have been made for lying-in during those years. Certainly, the Rockbridge

County Poor House carried on a significant hospital function well into the twentieth

century.. 141

The Rockbridge facility closed in 1927 in favor of a consolidated District Home

built in Waynesboro. The property and an adjacent farm were subsequently purchased by 1 49 the father of Mr. Mack McCrowell in that same year. The state valued the land at

$15,000, a tidy sum to help defray the county’s share of the District Home expenses.

Like the early Rockbridge County institution, the Caroline County Poor House

was also apparently a series of outbuildings. Rather than arranged in neat rows, however,

they were widely dispersed smaller cabins housing from two to six persons, generally

segregated by sex, color, or family unit. The 1870 census lists three group dwellings: one

of three elderly black males; a second with a seventy-five year old black female; and a

third with a white husband and wife. The census enumerator completed the picture by

140 Rockbridge County Court House, Board of Supervisors Order Book #1, 18 August 1883, 435. This entry indicates that rows of cabins were the means of housing the inmates at this time. By the 1909 survey, they had been replaced by the larger dormitory. 141 Mary Ellen Henry, “Neglected in Freedom.” Unpublished paper, American Historical Society Conference, Session 122, January 6, 2001. 142 McConnell, Mack. Personal Interview. 15 August 2001.

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adding this note, “Living in houses on Poor-house farm—remote from each other.”143 By

1909 all that remained were “two houses, six rooms,” that had been rented out since 1900

when the facility fell into disuse.144 The dispersed living arrangements would have made

it more difficult to establish that sense of community available to inmates in Shenandoah

and Rockbridge counties.

In addition, Caroline County appears to have gingerly used its “Place of General

Reception” located in Reedy Church Parish. Rather, the Overseers of the Poor preferred

to provide assistance under the aegis of outdoor relief. The Overseers Report for 1870

indicates that at a total cost of $1823.00, 143 persons received relief during the year

while only 40 of those were inmates of the Poor House. Of that total eighty-four were

white and fifty-nine ‘colored.’145 Subsequent years show an outlay of funds that

continued to expend more in the four respective townships than at the Reedy Parish

institution. The levy for the poorhouse remained at only $200 during the 1880s while the

four districts expended between $1500 and $2000 for any given year. The many medical

bills submitted to the Board of Overseers for treatment of inmates at the Poor House

suggests that only the most debilitated of paupers were housed at the central site. Other

arrangements such as paying a stipend to someone willing to care for an invalid appear

regularly in the minute books. As this entry indicates, the poorhouse was to be a

temporary expedient if at all possible:

Mrs. Cannon made application to the Board of Overseers for aid which was granted upon the condition, that said Cannon will leave the poorhse and H.C. Peatross the Supt. Is hereby authorized as soon as said Cannon is permanently

143 Ninth Census of the United States, Caroline County Virginia, 18 August 1870. 144 Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections, 1908-09, 49. 145 LV, Caroline County Ledger 1853-1872, Trustees of the Poor Minutes, January 3, 1870.

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located elsewhere to furnish or cause to be furnished the said Cannon and three children 5 pecks of corn pr. Month and report bill of charges.146

Mrs. Cannon and children were apparently healthy and deemed worthy of county charity.

No mention is made of where she would be housed or boarded, but the corn allotment

suggests, once she had a roof over her head, the family would still be in need of a staple

food supply. The worthiness of Mrs. Cannon and her children is signified through the

overseer’s use of her title as “Mrs.,” rather than using just her given name. Presumably

she was a widow who found herself in extremis.

In the 1880s the number of inmates at the Caroline County farm ranged from

seven to ten in any given year. Those figures jumped into the teens in the hard times of

the 1890s but dropped back to only seven in 1900 shortly before the county closed the

facility. Interestingly, the Superintendent, Mr. Richard Blanton, had nine children of his

own ranging in age from twenty-one to six months. He apparently had no qualms about

raising his family in close proximity to Poor House paupers.147 Given the physical layout

of discrete cabins relatively remote from one another, the chances for the development of

a cohesive poor farm community seem slim. When the state conducted its initial survey,

inspectors described a vacant, unused institution on 150 acres valued at only $1,500 and

costing the county a token $25 per annum to maintain.148 In 1926 Arthur W. James, as

the social service representative of the commonwealth, complimented Caroline and other

counties for their enlightened perspective on poor relief, “[Mjore than thirty almshouses

have been discontinued by the adoption of a system of outdoor relief or private boarding,

146 LV, Trustees of the Poor Minutes Ledger, Caroline County, 1853-1872, January 3 1870. 147 Twelfth Census of the United States, Caroline County, Virginia, June 1900. 148 James, Disappearance of the County Almshouse, 64.

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which is the ne plus ultra in poor relief at present.”149 Ironically, Caroline County had

pursued this ‘up-to-date’ policy for more than fifty years.

Another possibility for Caroline County’s emphasis on outdoor relief lies in

demographics. The 1860 Census demonstrates that Caroline had one of the largest

populations of free blacks in the state. A figure of 904 in 1850 grew to 1839 in 1860.

That community maintained a strong tradition of dependence on itself rather than

government in times of need. The number of multiple surnames in a given household

suggests a pattern of extended kinships and friendships that the free black community

employed depending more on itself than on local county charity. By the war’s end the

slave population of over 12,000 would be added to that number outdistancing the white

population by a considerable margin.150 However, there was no corresponding uptick in

the number of inmates at the Poor House. The 1870 census indicates that five blacks, out

of a total seven inmates at the Poor Farm, were all aged seventy-five to ninety and

presumably infirm. Five men and one woman, these black paupers must have lacked

family to provide for them so late in life. The poorhouse as an essentially paternalistic

institution would have been the responsible agency for these aged blacks, certainly long

standing county residents whether slave or free.

On the other hand, the diminished number of blacks at the county poor farm may

be explained in part by the historical fact that the black community certainly had no

reason to trust the Overseers of the Poor. According to a Virginia state “law of 1806”:

149 Ibid.,16. 150 Eighth Census of the United States, Caroline County, Virginia and J.D.B. DeBow, Statistical View o f the United States: A Compendium of the Seventh Census, (Washington: Beverley Tucker, Senate printer, 1854),

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Any slave hereafter emancipated who shall remain within the commonwealth more than twelve months shall forfeit all such right, and may be apprehended and sold by the overseers of the poor of any county or corporation in which he shall be found for the benefit of the poor of such county or corporation.”131

As dispensers of charity, the Overseers of the Poor found their revenue where convenient.

The hardship remained with the black person who had ties to family and locale, but was

forced to move over state lines to preserve his or her freedom. Black Virginians would

have had little reason to view the Overseers of the Poor as friends during the antebellum

period. After the war, that distrust would have continued to color their view of county

charity and the institution. The poorhouse would have been a place to avoid. However,

blacks and whites continued to live together at the Caroline poorhouse until its closing,

albeit in very small numbers for each.

At least one scholar has found evidence that African Americans were specifically

denied access to welfare in the South.152 Howard Rabinowitz argues that the Freedmen’s

Bureau instituted welfare measures for blacks that were later expanded by Radical

Republicans who established a policy of segregation. While questions remain about

exclusionary policies on the part of whites as well as rejection of welfare measures by

blacks, it is true that across Virginia, blacks appear on the poorhouse rolls as well as on

320. On the subject of community reliance, see Crandall A. Shifflet, “Shadowed Thresholds: Rural Poverty in Louisa County, Virginia, 1860-1900,” University of Virginia PhD., 1975, especially Chapter V, 152-185. 151 Virginia Statutes at Large, new series, 3:252 (1803-1808) as quoted in Lucius Porter, Free Negro Labor and Property Holding, 6. 152 Howard N. Rabinowitz, “From Exclusion to Segregation: Health and Welfare Services for Southern Blacks, 1865-1890,” Social Service Review, 48 (Sept.74): 327-54. This study examines institutions such as insane asylums, orphanages, and schools for the blind, deaf, and dumb in five states including Virginia. While his conclusions are plausible given the data, he looks at state run institutions and large municipalities such as Richmond and Atlanta, rather than counties. Nor does he consider the records of the Poor House in those communities. He does indicate that Virginia had always admitted blacks to its state insane asylum in Williamsburg alone among the five states.

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the lists of those receiving outdoor relief. Within their local county communities, blacks

were not automatically denied the refuge of the poorhouse when they needed it.

However, it is also true that black communities of varying sizes in Virginia had

learned to rely on themselves by pooling their meager resources. Despite paying taxes

that would go into the county levy for the poor, black citizens in an increasingly

segregated society sought means to support one another. An insightful study by John

Ellison in 1933 catalogs this development, from the 1870s and 1880s forward, of burial

societies, fraternal organizations, as well as churches, and eventually, cooperative

extension agencies for farmers. These organizations became the mainstay in times of

financial duress in the more populated black communities within the state. 1 53

Mecklenburg County in Southside Virginia was one such predominantly black

county, yet presents a different picture of poor relief from that of Caroline County despite

quite similar demographics. The almshouse appears to have played a more solid role in

the county and therefore allowed for a poor farm community to form at the institution. In

1850, the county had 912 free blacks to 12,480 slaves and a white populace numbering

7256.154 This was tobacco-growing country and many blacks farmed or labored to

produce that cash crop. Timber and lumber provided the other agricultural mainstay of

the county.

That the county struggled financially in the late nineteenth century is played out

in the poorhouse census. During the 1870s the numbers served in the almshouse steadily

153 John Malcus Ellison, Negro Organizations and Leadership In Relationship to Rural Life in Virginia (Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 290, May 1930). 154 DeBow, Statistical View, 326.

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increased from thirty-four to double that number in the early 1880s.155 As in Caroline

County, a number of families received assistance at their place of residence. However,

the records also indicate that a number of family groups, not just single elderly folks,

resided at the poor farm as well. The Superintendent for these years, J.G. Sneed, was

careful to note in his annual reports just who received assistance and where. The

presence of these groups as well as other long-term care paupers increases the likelihood

that the Poor Farm was able to create and sustain its own sense of community.

Generally, the average number of inmates stayed near forty through the 1890s. At

the same time the balance between black and white inmates went from twice as many

white as black in 1870 to an even ratio in 1880. By the mid-1880s the scales tipped in

favor of the black population. By 1900 the inmate population decreased dramatically to

only fourteen inmates, with only one white male. 1910 demonstrated another about face

with only three inmates and no blacks. In 1920 inmates totaled seven with three blacks

and four whites. 156 By 1926, there were only two inmates remaining, one of whom was

an elderly black woman known as “Aunt Charlotte.” 157

This gradual movement from white to black poor at the institution may reflect the

general county perception of the place as racial segregation took hold. The Poor Farm

sheltered mainly blacks in the 1890s; therefore, only the most destitute whites were to be

found there as the lines of racial conduct hardened. Wayne Flynt has suggested this

155 The numbers here include all those who came to the institution over the course of the year, rather than who was at the poor farm on the date of making the report. Therefore the numbers seem larger than those reported in other counties for the same period. 156 Figures compiled from Annual Reports to the General Auditor, Overseers of the Poor, Library of Virginia and the Census Reports from 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920.

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association between blacks and indigent whites reflected a “prevailing apathy” on the part

of welfare administrators in Alabama towards their poor white population. Since whites

and blacks consorted only in brothels, the poorhouses were unsavory and neglected

1 rn indeed to allow the races to mingle in the early twentieth century.

However, the presence of blacks and whites in the poorhouse is somewhat more

complicated. Certainly, the presence of both races also reflected the stark reality of

poverty. Blacks were present in the poorhouses of Virginia from their onset in the

eighteenth century. Poverty and disease were no respectors of racial lines. The

intermingling of the races at the poorhouses became problematic for county

administrators only as segregation policies established new rules. Large municipalities

like Charleston and Richmond created separate institutions as buildings for that purpose

became available. Typically, the blacks received the structures abandoned by the whites

when they built new facilities. Funding for improvements and upkeep proved notoriously

inadequate bordering on the “apathy” Flynt denotes. 159 However, on the county level

supporting two institutions was not conceivable. A county like Mecklenburg would have

to house its poor regardless of race at the one poorhouse. Completely denying access to

the institution does not appear to have been an option.

157 Land by the Roanoke: An Album of Mecklenburg County, Virginia. A Publication of the Roanoke River Branch of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, 1957, 76. 158 Wayne Flynt,Poor But Proud: Alabama’s Poor Whites (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1989): 184. 159 As Elna Green points out, Richmond’s facility for blacks was established during Reconstruction from the converted smallpox hospital known as Howard’s Grove. See This Business o f Relief 95-96.

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The Mecklenburg facility itself was another large farm located near the county

seat of Boydton and consisting of 365 acres but valued at only $5000 in 1926.160 Unlike

the discrete cabins found in Caroline County, architecturally, the institution presented yet

another housing variant denoted as the “slave quarters type.”161 The buildings clustered

together were generally single story brick stuccoed structures with pitched metal roofs.

Within each building were five units with separate entries and one or two windows. The

superintendent lived in a separate frame house. 1 62 The 1870 census listed as many as ten

households located on the property, which would be in keeping with this style of housing

unit as well as the cabin configuration. Photographs from the early twentieth century

confirm the “slave quarters type.”163 While the image is an unhappy one for its reference

to slavery, it also suggests real opportunities for communal living among the indigent

housed there.

State inspectors pronounced them “old and out of repair, but well kept” when they

made their initial visit in 1909.164 By that time, the facility, according to the

superintendent, had from “eight to twelve paupers. ..most of whom are old negroes.”165

These structures seem the polar opposite of the whitewashed Alexandria vision of 1883

and suggest a level of care considerably below that of a wealthier Valley county like

Shenandoah or Rockbridge. However, the judgment “well kept” suggests that despite

160 James, Disappearance of the County Almshouse, 46. 161 Ibid., 10. 162 Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections, 1908-09, 73. 163 Land by the Roanoke, 76. 164 Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections, 73. 165 Ibid., 73.

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their run down condition, the buildings received care from paupers who apparently still

took some measure of pride in their surroundings.

During the late nineteenth century both the physical characteristics of the

Mecklenburg Poor Farm and the numbers served there indicate the institution supported

some sort of communal life. As with many rural poor farms, the population waxed and

waned over the course of a given year. However, a core group of inmates remained. In

Mecklenburg County, approximately one third of the inmates resided for the entire year.

Within that group, many were inmates of long standing. For example, Kitty Arnold,

colored, was sixty in 1880. The census enumerator for that year listed her as “deaf &

dumb.”166 Neither her age nor her condition, however, prevented her from working on

the farm. Superintendent B. C. Smithson, newly appointed in 1884, included her as

“washing & waiting on the sick” for the six months of his tenure. Thereafter, he listed

her as performing housework over the course of the year.167 She must have become quite

a fixture at the institution engendering a certain amount of mythmaking. The 1900

census taker was so impressed with her advanced years (although he listed her as 75

rather than 80) that he attributed her birthplace as Africa rather than Virginia. 1 68 Had she

been a former slave whose longevity and endurance required some embellishment of her

origins? Regardless, her continuing presence at the institution would have provided a

kind of glue for internal community development.

Nor was she alone. Sallie Evans, a white woman, was also a resident of long

standing having come to the institution in the 1870s. Aged 49 and listed as “crippled” in

165 Tenth Census of the United States, Mecklenburg County, Virginia, 1880. 167 LV, Annual Reports, Mecklenburg County, Box 1954, 26 July 1880; No Box #, 31 July 1884.

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the 1880 census, Sallie resided at the poor farm with her 16-year-old daughter Nannie.

Eventually, Nannie left to make her own way. Sallie, although younger than Kitty,

disappeared from the rolls by 1890. Perhaps Nannie succeeded in establishing a home to

which she brought her mother. In all likelihood, however, Sallie died and was buried on

the farm. She too would have been a fixture of the institution and a member of the poor

farm community.

In addition to these long time inmates, the Mecklenburg Poor Farm regularly took

in family groups. Twelve family units ranging in size from two to five filled the rolls in

1880 accounting for almost half of all the inmates reported in the Annual Report of Supt.

Joseph Sneed for that year. Their stories are equally various. Take the case of the

Woottens (Mortons). Charles, a thirty-eight-year-old black from Boydton, arrived May

5, 1879. He was blind. On July 15th, he was joined by his family, Fanny (25), his wife,

and their three children, Ann (6), William (4), and Rosa (2). Fanny was pregnant, further

exacerbating their circumstances. In September or October she gave birth to another

daughter Sally. Whether Charles’s blindness came about suddenly or gradually, the

family had reached a breaking point. However, he may in fact have been able to earn

some sort of a living despite his disability. Or Fanny may have been able to support

them, since the family was able to leave the Poor Farm on January 7, 1881. When they

left, however, the oldest girl Ann was not with them. She had probably been boarded out

in the county as was the custom for children over five when the parents could not provide

168 Twelfth Census of the United States, Mecklenburg County, Virginia, 1900.

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for them. During their stay of almost two years, the Wootten family surely contributed to

the Poor Farm as familiar members of that institution’s community.169

The Olivers, another black family of five stayed even longer than the Woottens

arriving in July 1880 and leaving in January 1885. They too had a baby while at the

institution. The Tuckers, a white family consisting of a crippled father, James E. (36),

wife Susan, and son Jim, Jr. (5) arrived August 15, 1879. By the time the census taker

came the following summer, Susan had left leaving the boy with his father. Young Jim

was discharged on September 26th either to rejoin his mother or to be farmed out since he

was now six years old. James, Sr. then became another fixture of the poor farm

community. More commonly called “Ned” after his middle name Edward, he was still on

the rolls in 1891 and listed by the census at age 59 in 1900. Presumably, he died in the

first decade of the twentieth century and was buried on the farm. 1 70 The Tuckers

illustrate the unhappy dissolution of a family when the head of household becomes

disabled and in need of nursing. At the same time, Ned’s longevity at the institution

indicates he received tolerable care becoming a long-standing member of that community

even as the number of inmates was starting to dwindle.

Ned Tucker, Charles Wootten, and Loderie Oliver were unusual in that they

arrived at the Poor Farm with their families. More commonly, women and children came

because they had already lost, or never had, a male bread-winner to support them.

169 LV, Annual Reports, Mecklenburg County, Box 1952, 28 July 1879; Box 1954, 26 July 1880; No Box #, 1 July 1881 and Tenth Census of the United States, Mecklenburg County, Virginia, 1880. The census enumerator listed the family surname as Wootten while Superintendent Sneed listed Fanny and the children as Mortons which may have been her maiden name and an indication that she and Charles were unwed. 170 LV, Annual Reports, Mecklenburg County, Box 1952, 28 July 1879; Box 1954 26 July 1880; No Box # 1 July 1881; Ledger 1891-1892 1 July 1891 and Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900.

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November 6, 1879, the intergenerational Jones family arrived at the Poor Farm. Mary,

was the matriarch, Betty (29), Josephine (10), Willie (5), and twins, Henry and Rosa (3).

Mary died on March 4th. By September Rosa was discharged, probably taken by a county

family to raise and/or adopt. Betty and the remaining children left the institution

sometime in the next two years as no Jones family members appear on the 1884 roster of

inmates.171 Like the Wootens, the Jones family made the Poor Farm their home for over

two years contributing to the daily communal life.

Other single mothers appear on the 1880 rolls in various stages of duress. Usually

pregnancy or some unallayed illness brought them to the Poor Farm and their stay was of

relatively short duration. Not so the case of the Goodes. Lilly (30) and Lola (12) Goode

arrived in October of 1879. The Superintendent noted that Lilly was an illiterate

“colored” woman and crippled to boot. Lola was no doubt her nurse as well as her

daughter. Lilly’s discharge date was October 28, 1880. Since Lola remained at the

institution until June 1, 1881, Lilly likely died leaving the able-bodied 13-year-old girl to

be placed out in the county or, more unlikely, claimed by a family member. For some

twenty months, the girl had called the Poor Farm home, eight of those on her own. Jane

Phillips, a sixty-year-old white woman came to the farm also in October of 1879

accompanied by Josephine (11), either her daughter or granddaughter. While she was a

literate woman, she too was crippled and in need of nursing. When Jane died on July 1st,

1880, Josephine remained for only a few more weeks, leaving on the 19th. She too had

called the Poor Farm home for almost nine months. Young girls like Lola and Josephine

l7i LV, Annual Reports, Mecklenburg County, Box 1952, 28 July 1879; Box 1954 26 July 1880; No Box # 1 July 1881 and 31 July 1884 and Tenth Census of the United States, Mecklenburg County, Virginia, 1880.

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were an integral part of the Poor Farm community as they nursed an aging parent for the

length of their stay.172

Finally, those county families whose intransigent poverty brought them repeatedly

to the Poor Farm became “the familiars” of the institution. Two white families, the

Malletts and the Hendricks, filled that roll in Mecklenburg County during the 1870s and

80s. Mary Mallet (32) and her two daughters, Lena (4) and Eva (2) had been residing at

the Poor Farm for at least one year in 1876. Superintendent Sneed recorded their

discharge on September 19, 1879, but by November 6th they had returned if they ever left

at all. Also on the roster was a Tom Mallet whose name does not appear next to theirs as

part of the immediate family group. However, besides the surname, both Tom and Mary

share a disease that explains their presence at the Poor House: syphilis. Tom was gone

within the year while Mary and the two girls remained into the early 1880s. By then the

girls were 8 and 6 respectively, but they had not been removed from their mother and

farmed out in the county. Rather the three had become long term members of the Poor

House community, the girls essentially growing up on the farm.1 73

The story of the Hendricks family provides yet another take on the stresses of a

laboring white family in the county. Julia (39) had resided at the Poor Farm for a year

with her children Joe and Nannie, presumably for a period of lying-in and giving birth to

Jim Hendrick, Jr. They were joined in the early spring by husband, James Hendrick, Sr.

By 1879 Joe and his father had left while Julia remained with Nannie and young Jim.

172 Ibid., Box 1952, 28 July 1879, Box 1954 26 July 1880, and No Box # 1 July 1881. 173 Ibid., Box 1947 July 1876, Box 1952 28 July 1879, Box 1954 26 July 1880, No Box # 1 July 1881 and Ledger 1885-1887 1 July 1885. The last mention of the Mallet name appeared in 1885 when Mary and George Mallet arrived for one month 18 November to 24 December 1885.

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Sneed indicated that Julia was suffering from a “Womb disease” presumably as a result

of her birthing the boy. As with Mary Mallet, the children were not separated from their

mother even though Nannie was 11 that year. She would have been a help to care for

both her mother and baby brother. But certainly her education suffered as a result. The

census enumerator noted that while her mother Julia was literate, Nannie was not by age

12. These three eventually left sometime after 1881 having made the farm their home for

a period of at least six years. They would have been very much fixtures about the place

with the children growing up with the Mallet girls.

In the meantime James Hendrick and son Joe returned to the Poor Farm as

laborers. The new Superintendent B.C. Smithson listed them as such when he arrived in

1884. The following year James and William Hendrick (a brother or Joe by another

name?) had been “tilling the land” for the past year. Smithson indicated in his Annual

Report remarks that “There are two hands hired to cultivate the farm at the Poor House,

James and William Hendrick. Their wages have been paid to them in full to 1st July.”

While Smithson did not list the dollar amount of those wages, it must have been enough

for James to be able to support Julia and the children to keep them off the Poor House

rolls. The two men remained in the capacity of hired laborers for several more years.

They too became regulars about the place enough so that the nickname “Buck” replaced

the more formal William by 1887. They too were members in good standing of the Poor

House community.174

The Mecklenburg County Poor House by virtue of its physical configuration and

steady population was able to offer, beyond shelter and care, an environment that fostered

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some level of communal living. Inmates depended on one another to some degree. The

crippled and ill were cared for by the more able-bodied. Young girls tended smaller

children relieving new mothers. While consignment to the Poor House was a last resort

for the impoverished, they did not check their humanity at the door to become “dregs.”

When given the opportunity, paupers formed relationships and forged bonds giving shape

and meaning to their impoverished lives.

In 1926, shortly before the Mecklenburg institution closed, one of the last two

inmates, Aunt Charlotte, was photographed as she stood on her plain wooden stoop. If

she was unhappy or discontented, her face with its half-smile does not say so. Her eyes

are downcast as she focused on smoking her pipe in her hand rather than facing the

camera. The Poor House community had dwindled to herself and one other inmate, the

Superintendent and his family, and those few hired hands who worked the farm. Her

meager and impoverished circumstances, however, do not deny her essentially human

persistence in the face of adversity.

In marked contrast to sprawling Mecklenburg County, Highland County was the

least populated and undoubtedly the poorest county of the group. Perched in the

Appalachians to the west of the fertile Valley on the border with West Virginia, Highland

had a relatively small total population and comparatively few blacks. Total population in

1850 was 4227 with 26 free black and 364 slave. In 1920, the total population was a

mere 4931 with only 221 blacks living in the county.175 Not unlike Caroline County,

through the 1850s, Highland practiced primarily a poor policy of outdoor relief

174 Ibid., in addition Ledger 1884-1888 1 July 1886 and 1 July 1887.

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supplemented by payments to caregivers who boarded paupers in their homes. A typical

entry in the records is this one from June 18th 1856:

Ordered that Jesse Crew be allowed $113.00 for keeping Sarah Wilson from the 15th June 1856 to the 15th June 1857. 1239 tithables 80 cents each 176

The arrangement with payment in advance suggests that the practice was a common one

and sufficient for the needs of Sarah. If the overseers were willing to spend about one

third of their revenue gleaned from the 1239 tithables on one person, the care must have

been amenable to all concerned. An entry on June 19th 1861, concludes Sarah’s chapter

in the county, “Ordered that John Page be allowed $3.50 for making coffin for Sarah

Wilson.”177 A plain wooden coffin and modest burial would have ended the county’s

financial obligation to the woman.

As the conflagration of the Civil War loomed larger, Highland’s policy of

predominantly outdoor relief changed. The mountaineering county decided to invest in a

farm to be used as an almshouse. The undertaking was a major one for such a poor and

sparsely populated county.

Ordered that John M. Rexrode, Sheriff of Highland County pay on the order of this Board the sum of One thousand dollars with interest on said sum from the 1st day of Dec. 1861 to 27th day of Dec. 1861 which sum was levied by the county court of Highland to go towards paying the second installment of the purchase money of a farm for the maintenance of the Poor of Highland County.178

175 Wilson Gee and John J. Corson, 3rd. Statistical Study o f Virginia (Charlottesville, Virginia: Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, University of Virginia, 1927), 117. 176 LV, Highland County, Records of the Overseer of the Poor, 1847-1861, June 18th 1856. 177 Ibid., June 19th 1861. 178 Ibid., Dec. 29th 1861.

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Money had also been allotted to fix up the farm, purchase “grain, flour bedsteads.”179

Since this payment was the “second installment,” it is likely that the farm purchase

occurred as early as 1860. The farm was then let by the Superintendent of the Poor to a

farmer who agreed to care for paupers sent to the place in return for working the farm for

his own profit.

The population of inmates oscillated from a low of two reported in 1876 to a peak

of twenty in the 1880s, falling off in the early 1890s then peaking again at twenty in 1893

when all were in the grip of the century’s major depression. Housing appears to have

been in the cabin/dormitory style of Rockbridge County. According to the 1901 Annual

report, “Within the last 12 months the dwelling house for the Superintendent or his tenant

has been built new & is a comfort & convenient house. Also all the Pauper houses have

been rebuilt with recent date and they are in a good & comfortable condition.”• 180 As

poor farm populations were dwindling in counties such as Mecklenburg and Caroline,

Highland overseers continued to invest in their poor farm. State inspectors visiting in

1909 described the farm as having a home for the superintendent/farmer and two pauper

cottages. One cottage consisted of just two rooms while the other had eight rooms in a

one and a half story structure. In addition there was another two-room building used as a

wash room and milk room.181 Presumably segregation by gender was easily

accomplished between two structures. Segregation by race would have been on a room

to room basis. However, since few of the county’s blacks appear to have sought shelter

there, the problem for the superintendent was a moot one. The configuration of cabins in

179 Ibid., June 19th 1861. 180 LV, Annual Reports, Ledger 1899-1907, Highland County, June 30, 1901.

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close proximity to the farmer’s house suggests that Highland’s poor farm supported a

small, but tightly knit community.

Highland’s smaller facility demonstrates the shared circumstances to be found

within Poor Farm communities. Regardless of size, the populace served by the county

poor farm in Virginia bore striking similarities in the late nineteenth century. For

example, within the Highland inmate population existed certain remarkable consistencies

that echoed the larger Mecklenburg facility and repeated a pattern for many rural

poorhouses. Women tended to dominate the population. In this case, several older

women made the farm their home for more than ten years. Amanda Freed and Betsy

Holcomb were variously listed by the Keeper as “old” or “old & crazy.” Betsy first

appeared in 1880 when she was sixty-three disappearing from the rolls in the latter part of

the decade. Amanda was recorded first in 1885 and as having died 31 October 1894.

Older women, single or widowed, made up a regular component of the poor farm

community. Despite age and recorded disability, these women often served their fellows

as cooks, washerwomen, or nurses. Their nurturing role in the community was a vital

one.

In addition to the aging women were those in need of their ministrations. In

Highland, William and George Simmons represented the cohort of the feeble-minded.

Poor farms were often the repository for the retarded who varied in degree from severely

to moderately mentally challenged.182 The Keeper described these two i boys as “idiotic” • •

181 Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections, 1908-09, 65. 182 See Philip M. Ferguson, Abandoned to Their Fate: Social Policy and Practice toward Severely Retarded People in America, 1820-1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994) for a specific discussion of the almshouse as an institution for the retarded. Insane asylums also housed many profoundly retarded

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when they arrived in 1876 at ages 13 and 16. Addison Jordan, also listed as an idiot,

joined them in 1885. These three would spend the rest of their lives at the institution. By

1900, when the Simmons men were 30 and 34 respectively, they were listed as illiterate

only. Presumably, their mental retardation precluded learning how to read and write.

Illiteracy, however, was a common factor shared by poor farm paupers. William died

December 5, 1904, the younger of the two at 34.183 By 1920, George was sixty-five and

more neutrally referred to as a ‘white lodger.’ The level of their mental abilities is

difficult to discern, but they apparently never were able as boys to do any chores about

the farm. Addison Jordan, however, “did a little work” when a new overseer, Cornelius

Wimer took over in the early 1900s. Thereafter, the Annual Reports list him as one of

the few paupers to do chores.184 The Highland records seem to indicate by virtue of

Addison’s and George’s relatively long lives and residence on the poor farm, that “idiots”

did receive some measure of the humane care A. T. Stephenson insisted was dispensed

and were very much a part of the farm life. As a core constituency, these boys grew into

manhood, spending the remainder of their lives at the institution and thereby shaping the

rhythm of the farm day.

The Simmons surname appears often in the Highland records as another indicator

of chronic poverty in this mountain county. Repeated references to a Phoebe (spelled

variably) Simmons reveal the poverty associated with a woman in an extended family or

individuals when counties were not able to care for them. For late nineteenth-century and early twentieth- century attitudes towards the retarded see James W. Trent, Jr. Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History o f Mental Retardation in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). On the specific response to retardation in Virginia see Stephen Noll,Feeble Minded in Our Midst: Institutions for the Mentally Retarded in the South, 1900-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). 183 LV, Annual Reports, Ledger 1899-1907, Highland County, June 30, 1904.

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clan that for whatever reason remained mired in their impoverishment. The poorhouse

became for them a necessary failsafe. As early as 1858, Henry J. Fleisher received $175

from the county “to be applied to the maintenance of Phebe Simmons children.” Then

again in 1861 $10.00 in outdoor relief was allotted “for the benefit of Phebe Simmons

children.”185 Were George and William who appeared in the almshouse fifteen years

later somehow related? Whatever the circumstances, county officials deemed that Phebe

Simmons’s children as well as the retarded George and William were worthy recipients

of county charity. The Simmons surname continues to appear in the Overseers of the

Poor records. Again in 1861 $25 went “for the benefit of Thomas Simmons & wife.”

Twenty-two years later, in 1898, a second Pheby Simmons appeared at the poor

farm with a child. In all likelihood, the baby was born at the poorhouse. When the report

was filed, the Keeper noted the unnamed child was four months of age and Pheby “can

do some work.” 186 The following year she was listed as residing at the farm with the

child for “part of the year.” In 1900, Phebe and child resided at the poor farm for eleven

months. In 1901, she returned for a stay of eight months and had a second child with her.

Again she resided at the poor farm with the two children for eleven months in 1902. The

Census records for 1900 list a Phoebe Simmons, twenty-six years, and three children,

Arlis, age two, Harry Lee, five months, and Sadie R., also two. Were Arlis and Sadie

twins or perhaps part of an extended kinship group under Phoebe’s care?1 87

184 Ibid. 185 Ibid., Ledger 1847-1861, Highland County, June 23rd, 1858 and June 19“’ 1861. 186 Ibid., Ledger 1885, Highland County, 30 June 1885. 187 Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, Highland County, Virginia.

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At the same time in 1898, a Jane Simmons and a child of six months were listed

next to Phoebe’s entry and with the similar notation “part of the year” and “can do some

work.” Jane remained for part of the following year, but then was gone. She may have

been a sister, sister-in-law, or cousin in this same family group. Given the quite common

inaccuracies of the census enumerators, relationship is a tricky call. Since the census

does not tally with the annual report numbers, the second Phoebe could be more than one

person with the same name. In all likelihood she was the next generation of Simmons

women to come to the poorhouse. The repeated entries are in favor of the same woman

who was well known in the county and deemed worthy enough to receive repeated care,

perhaps lying-in, and who paid off her debt by doing “some work” when she was

physically capable. Whatever her capacity and determination, Phoebe like Jane

disappeared from the almshouse rolls in 1902.188

The next generation in the person of her son, Arlis, however, did not. In 1910,

Arlis was twelve years old and boarding in the county with Lem and Emma Haybright

and their daughter Margie. He was listed as a renter who supported himself as a farm

laborer. While he was not attending school at the time, Arlis could both read and

write.189 In 1920, at age twenty-one, he appeared on the list of poorhouse inmates as a

farm laborer. Just as Jim and Buck Hendricks worked on the Mecklenburg County farm,

Arlis appears to have resided at the farm and worked for Henry Mullinax who was both

the tenant farmer and the Superintendent of the Poor. Despite having seven children of

his own, Mullinax would have needed help on the farm. His oldest daughter was 18 and

188 LV, Annual Reports, Ledger 1898, 30 June 1898, Ledger 1899, 30 June 1899, Ledger 1899-1907, 30 June 1901 and 1902, Highland County.

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available to help out, but the next two, a 14-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter were

in school. Someone would need to look after the two youngest boys, 3 and 1 V2

respectively. Apparently, Arlis was a decent enough worker, who had no problem with

working and living at the county institution. He felt comfortable in turning to the

poorhouse, which had served his mother, and had become his familiar resort.190 The

work gave him a leg up and the ability to eventually get off the county dole. In the

meantime, he was a steady member of the poor farm community that included George

Simmons and Addison Jordan.

The Highland County story is mostly a picture of poverty in a white Appalachia

with the majority of the inmates women with young children or older women, widowed

and infirm. Additionally, the poor farm became the life long home for a cohort of

mentally disabled men. Occasionally, a ‘colored’ entry would be listed, but not usually

for very long. Solomon Stone was an exception. He arrived in the winter of 1892.

Despite his old age, he was still able to do some work that spring. By 1897, however, his

condition deteriorated to “old/infirm.” Possibly, old Solomon was suffering from senile

dementia or the final stages of syphilis. He must have had enough energy in him to make

life difficult for his poorhouse caregivers. Even though he had been a part of the poor

farm life for five years, “[He] went to insane asylum Oct. 5th 1897.” 191 If Solomon were

subject to uncontrollable fits during which he could harm himself or others, the Keeper

would have been obliged to have him removed simply to protect the other inmates like

189 Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910, Highland County, Virginia. 190 Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920, Highland County, Virginia. Arlie C. Simmons (1897- 1960) is buried in the McKendree Methodist Church Cemetery next to his wife, Phoebe E. Simmons (1918- 1971).

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George and William Simmons. Since the waiting list to transfer from a county institution

to the state asylum was often a long one, this decision was not one that the longtime

tenant, Henry Mullinax, nor Superintendent A.T. Stephenson would have made without

serious deliberation and perhaps regret.

While the Simmons family had come to rely on the Highland County Poor Farm

for relief in times of trouble, the Mullinax family had a long history of farming that plot

of land as the tenant responsible for the care of the inmates. In 1881 James K. Mullinax

served in that capacity. Ten years later, a Henry Mullinax rented and worked the farm

until C.D. Newman took over in 1898. By 1920, yet another Henry Mullinax was

working the farm with his wife Mamie, their seven children, and a sixty-five-year-old

aunt, Kate Collins, who lived with them. While the position of tenant was a contractual

one, the presence of a member of the Mullinax family on the Blue Grass District farm

over the years suggests that the institution was not unlike the ‘family business.’ These

consistencies among county families also speak to the development of a communal life

on the farm that was mutually supportive for all its members, caregivers and inmates

alike.

Down the mountain in the Great Valley of Virginia, two much wealthier counties

demonstrate both the variety and similarities to be found in the poorhouse community.

Both Rockbridge County to the south and Shenandoah, another hundred miles down the

Valley, bear out the pattern affirmed in Highland and Mecklenburg counties of women

with small children, older women and men, and the feeble-minded. These groups formed

the core of the Virginia rural poorhouse community.

191 LV, Annual Reports, Highland County, Ledgers 1892, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896,1897,1898.

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Around this central grouping revolved those of a more transient nature. Families

temporarily in distress, daughters nursing aging parents, or the insane waiting for a place

in a state asylum completed the common rolls. Many of the paupers in all these groups

were brought to the poorhouse by some physical disability that had simply overwhelmed

their ability to care for themselves. A window into their world begins with the 1880

census which, in addition to the vital statistics of birth, age, race, marital status,

occupation and literacy had a number of categories under the general heading of

“Health.” Uniquely, the 1880 census enumerator was to note if a person was blind, deaf

and dumb, idiotic, insane, or “Maimed, Crippled, Bedridden, or otherwise disabled.”192

In addition, if the person was “unable to attend to ordinary business” because of some

illness or disability, the census taker was charged with describing that condition. This

they did with varying accuracy. Add to this information that contained in the Annual

Report of the Overseers of the Poor to the General Auditor of Virginia. This document

first required in 1829 was usually prepared by the local Superintendent of the Poor and

gave his take on the state of his charges and whether or not any were able to work on the

farm during the preceding year. Consequently, the almshouse inmates listed for that year

in Shenandoah and Rockbridge counties provide a fuller picture of the kinds of

debilitating conditions that brought the poor to these country institutions. Often their

condition kept them at the county institution for extended periods so that they too

contributed to the communal life on the farm.

Rockbridge County was a wealthy farming county with a thriving county seat of

Lexington. Two educational institutions, Virginia Military Institute and Washington and

192 Tenth Census of the United States, 1880.

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Lee College had attracted young men from across the South concomitantly providing jobs

for many locals who catered to the student population.193 Unlike Highland County,

Rockbridge also had a significant black population mainly centered in the town.

Population in 1850 was 16, 045 with 364 free blacks and 4,197 slave. By 1920,

Rockbridge had added only 4500 more residents in keeping with its overall rural

character and blacks remained just about 13 percent of the overall populace.194 Those

demographics readily appear in the county poor farm inmate population.

June 30, 1880 Rockbridge Superintendent C. J. Brawley reported a total of thirty-

six inmates compared to the thirty-two recorded by the census on June sixteenth.

Twenty-five were white, eleven “colored.” Twenty-one were female, fifteen male. Most

had resided at the poor farm for over one year. Almost all shared the common

denominator of illiteracy. Twelve of the women were either single or widowed; seven

were small girls under ten including infants. On the other end of the life span, Brawley

characterized women forty-five and above as “old” although only Betsy Moore at

seventy-five would meet today’s standard for that designation. Despite her being “old

and worn out,” he listed her as “cooking a little.” Betsy Myers, however, at fifty-five was

“old and diseased” suffering from syphilis and completely unable to work. Caroline

Cunningham, forty-five, despite suffering “Epilepsy badly” was able to offer up twenty-

193 For a discussion of the political, economic and social climate in Lexington after the Civil War, see David Coffey, “Reconstruction and Redemption in Lexington, Virginia” in Koons, Kenneth E. and Warren R. Hofstra, Eds., After the Backcountry: Rural Life in the Great Valley of Virginia, 1800-1900 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000), 206-220. 194 1850 figures from J.D.B.DeBow, Statistical View of the United States and 1920 numbers from Wilson Gee and John J. Corson,3ld, Statistical Study o f Virginia.

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five days of “knitting some.” These women were very much a part of the community

within the institution.

Supplementing this core of women was the family of John Vantudor, forty-three.

He was a laborer suffering from paralysis. No cause was given for his disability.

Whether he had had some work related accident such as falling from a roof, his ill fortune

brought both himself and those who depended on him to the poorhouse. His wife Martha

and their four small children, one boy and three girls, ages ten and under were listed with

him. When Martha wasn’t nursing him or taking care of the children, she did “general

housework” for one hundred days. Despite their troubles, the Vantudors stayed intact as

a family. The children were not dispersed across the county, but rather left in their

mother’s care.

A number of cases of chronic illnesses, predominantly epilepsy and syphilis filled

the rolls. One or two cases described as paralysis may have been the advanced stages of

syphilis as well. Often infectious diseases such as tuberculosis or smallpox appeared in

the poor farm register; however, none is recorded for 1880. Then there were the blind:

one forty-year-old white woman and three black men in their seventies.

Single mothers also appeared. Nancy Phillips, “nearly blind” herself, was there

with her small daughter, Nannie, and despite her affliction was able to do “a little of all

kinds of housework” for two hundred days. Nancy Ingram was just twenty-five and had

given birth to Charley. She paid back the institution with sewing and housework for one

hundred days once she was back on her feet. Margaret Eckard, thirty, was widowed and

accompanied by her four-year-old daughter, May. The census enumerator listed her as

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epileptic, but Brawley only said she was “Rather simple.” Whatever her disability, she

gave two hundred days of work of “all kinds.” Jane Terrell, a thirty-year-old black single

mother with two small girls was there only briefly. Her name appeared on the census of

June 16th, but was gone by the time Brawley filed his report two weeks later. In contrast,

Ginny Johnson, a black woman also with two small daughters was a longtime resident

who cooked for the maximum three hundred days. She also appears to have had a son,

Joseph Carpenter, a mulatto “boy raised on the place” who worked as a farm hand.195

Then there was Jerry Kelly. As an Irishman, he had the distinction of being one

of the two normative Virginians at the poor farm. Brawley characterized the seventy-

year-old as “crippled,” while the census taker labeled his disability as “Rheumatism.”

Regardless, he was able to garden for one hundred days to earn his keep. The other

foreigner, Thomas Forsyth, sixty-nine, was an English cabinetmaker who had fallen on

hard times. While he was married, his crippled condition with “sore leg” must have been

more than his wife could cope with so he came to the poorhouse. That his profession is

acknowledged as well as his ability to read and write set him apart as one of the worthy

poor indeed.

Physical disability often brought the impoverished to the poor farm, but as the

Highland County records showed, mental disability did as well. The census categories of

insane and idiotic covered a wide range of abilities and disabilities of mental illness and

retardation for the time. For example, the census taker listed one white teenage male as

“simple” but then checked the column for “insane,” rather than the one for “idiotic.”

Likewise, a thirty-one-year-old black male was “partially insane.” Were these paupers so

195 LV, Annual Reports, Box 1945, Rockbridge County, November 30, 1878.

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profoundly retarded that they were unable to care for themselves or do any work about

the place? Brawley indicated that they were both idiots. Again, that term had a broad

connotation in the late nineteenth century as opposed to the Binet-Simon scale developed

in the early twentieth century to describe levels of retardation. By that measure, the

lowest category, idiot, included those persons with the mental capacity of one to two

years of age.196

Superintendent Brawley seems to have developed his own ideas of mental

abilities presumably based on his practical knowledge of the individual inmates and his

many years of experience running the place. His tenure on the farm began well before

the Civil War. In his annual reports, he used the following terms listed in increasing

order of severity: simple, not smart, idiot and crazy. How Brawley distinguished between

those he called ‘simple’ and those ‘not smart’ is difficult to discern. None of the inmates

so designated was literate; however, not all illiterates were so characterized. Ability to

work gives few clues as well. One “Rather simple” thirty-year-old widow with a four-

year-old daughter was able to do two hundred days of “all kinds” of work and another

“not smart” thirty-one-year-old woman labored for three hundred days in the dairy and as

a washerwoman. The tasks at which these women were put were certainly more labor

intensive than mentally challenging. Brawley’s point in so labeling them seems to have

been motivated by a desire to give an accurate assessment of their condition to justify

their presence. In addition to being females without family support, their mental inability

was further proof that these women were not able to take care of themselves and were

196 State Board of Charities and Corrections, Mental Defectives in Virginia (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Public Printing, 1915): 8-10.

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thus ‘worthy’ of the county’s benevolence. They were certainly members in good

standing of the poor farm community.

Also worthy through no fault of their own were those whom Brawley described as

“idiots.” As in Highland County, this term seems to indicate an inability to do work.

Neither the thirty-one-year old Robert McClure, “colored,” nor the nine[teen]-year-old

William Foundling, “white,” were listed as working during Brawley’s tenure as

superintendent. 1 97 Robert McClure had been living at the poorhouse since at least 1870;

Foundling made his first appearance in the records in 1880. Both men spent the rest of

their lives at the poor farm each dying in his sixties. Both were familiar figures about the

farm.

George Byrd was a somewhat more vexing problem. He was a single, white male

about forty-eight. A carpenter by trade, Byrd was also literate. Brawley listed him

simply as “crazy,” but added the notation “comes & goes at will.” Whatever the nature

of his insanity, he must have been sufficiently harmless to himself and others for Brawley

not to have taken a more aggressive tack and locked the fellow up. Nor did his condition

warrant being sent to Western State Hospital in Staunton. Presumably Byrd had family

or some means of sustaining himself when not at the poorhouse so that he was able to

come and go. As much as that behavior may have annoyed the superintendent, it was

tolerated.198 George Byrd was a known quantity and member of the community in his

own right.

197 The 1880 census lists William Foundling as nine, however, subsequent census data and his approximate age of sixty-two when he died in 1923 indicate he was probably ten years older in that year. 198 LV, Annual Reports, Box 1945, Rockbridge County, July 25, 1880 and Register o f Paupers at Rockbridge County Poor House, Tenth Census of the United States, Rockbridge County, June 16, 1880.

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The picture of the poor farm community varies somewhat farther along the Valley

in the Shenandoah County Almshouse. Shenandoah was a slightly smaller county

according to population with a much smaller black representation. In 1850 of the 13,768

inhabitants 292 were free blacks and 911 slave. By 1920, Shenandoah had surpassed

Rockbridge topping out at just over 21,000 souls, but only 2 percent of those were black.

Those demographics are born out in the poor farm roles that indicate only one or two

black inmates in an average of thirty to forty inmates in the late nineteenth century.199

For June of 1880, however, census data listed only twenty-two inmates. By

November 30th when the superintendent filed his annual report, there were an additional

nine. With the approach of winter weather, the census commonly increased in

poorhouses.200 J. B. Shefler, the forty-eight year-old superintendent lived at the farm

with his wife and six children. Of the inmates, following the census data, exactly half

were female and half, male. In November, six more women and three more men joined

the group. Two African Americans had lived at the poor farm for more than ten years:

Lucy Douglas, thirty-nine, and Prince Jefferson, forty-six. The latter seems to have been

an off and on resident over that time period until his eyesight precluded him from finding

employment outside the institution. With the exception of William and Elizabeth Miller,

an elderly couple, all the paupers were single and few could read and write. William

Miller, seventy-nine, came to the poor farm first and was joined by Elizabeth, also

seventy-nine, within a few months. No indication was given of his condition; however,

she was described as both “infirm" and “insane.” Given her age, the latter designation

199 DeBow, Statistical View o f the United States and Gee and Corson, Statistical Study o f Virginia.

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may have more accurately been senile dementia rather than insanity. Certainly she was

not separated from her husband and sent to the lunatic asylum. Elizabeth remained at the

almshouse until her death from “paralysis” the following year.20 1 Perhaps m

consideration of their age, this elderly couple stayed as a part of the farm community

rather than be separated as Elizabeth’s condition deteriorated.

Shefler reported no cases of infectious disease for that year. Nor did he indicate a

long list of the chronically ill as occurred in Rockbridge County. The census enumerator

described two men as “crippled,” one of whom was also “idiotic.” Since neither of these

men appeared on the work list, they may indeed have been bedridden requiring nursing

care. A sixty-one-year-old man was “paralized” and, like Elizabeth Miller, designated

“insane.” He had resided at the poorhouse for the last two years suggesting that the

degree of his insanity was not so troubling as to have him removed to the state institution.

Interestingly, a lone Irishman, Lawrence Quinlivan, sixty-two, was an inmate of

long-standing. In a county with a negligible foreign population, he would stand out.

Like Jerry Kelly in Rockbridge, he was literate and worked as the gardener for the poor

farm. He was one of the farm community regulars. Apparently he was also married, not

a widower, but his wife never appeared on the poor farm rolls.

Again, similar to Rockbridge but in smaller numbers, unwed mothers and their

children were on the rolls. In this case only two. Virginia Reedy, twenty-five, had given

birth to twins, a boy and a girl. Martha J. Root had presumably been at the institution for

eleven months along with her child, but she was not listed in the census nor was her

200 See Michael B. Katz, Poverty and Policy in American History, particularly his analysis of the Erie County, New York poorhouse, 57-89.

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offspring on the census or clearly indicated on Shefler’s annual report. Shefler however,

placed Mary C. Rilforce’s name directly after Martha’s and indicated that she too had

been at the poorhouse for eleven months. Since Virginia Reedy’s children were listed

immediately after her name, in all likelihood Mary is Martha’s daughter. On the work

list, Shefler clearly stated that both Martha and Virginia were “young girls with children”

who helped to cook. 909 They too had their roles to play in the poor farm life.

What makes the Shenandoah poorhouse community for 1880 stand out is a higher

percentage of inmates with mental disabilities. Of the twenty-two recorded by the census

taker, five are designated as “insane” and an additional six as “idiotic.” The fluidity of

the latter term again comes into play here. Two of the men listed as idiotic and one as

insane also appeared on the work list. The census had Andrew Fogle, a thirty-six-year-

old long time resident, as insane. However, Shefler found him “a tolerable good hand on

farm.” Apparently his insanity did not prevent him from putting in a good day’s work as

a farmhand, a job he had had for some years and would continue to perform for quite a

few more. Perhaps, the census enumerator simply erred having just labeled the previous

inmate on his list, Julia Fogle, as insane.203 Philip Baker, forty-nine and idiotic, had been

a “very poor” worker according to Shefler. His poor showing could have been

attributable to his age as well as to the degree of his mental disability. Finally, Prince

Jefferson, also labeled idiotic, had worked as a farm hand for a number of years before

his eyesight began to fail. Still Shefler commented that he was “good help to attend

201 LV, Annual Reports, Box without a number, Shenandoah County, November 30, 1881. 202 Ibid., Box 1954, Shenandoah County, November 30, 1880.

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sick.”204 While Shefler did not add further commentary, these three supposed idiots did

not have so serious a degree of mental retardation that they could not be productive about

the place in some capacity. Their daily lives were very much a part of the rhythm of the

farm.

Two other older men were also listed as idiotic. Jacob Lutholtz, a seventy-year-

old white man had been a long time resident. While he was not on the work list for 1880,

he did appear there in years past as doing farm work. Likewise, William Ritenhour, fifty-

three, “crippled” and “idiotic” had also worked in the past. Had their age and physical

condition caused the census enumerator to see them as mentally deficient, as “idiotic”?

Or was he simply at a loss for a proper category in which to place them? Regardless,

they were familiar members of the communal life on the farm.

Of the five women with mental disabilities, three were “insane” and two “idiotic.”

Elizabeth Miller, already mentioned, was a possible case of senility. The other two

women seem to have been more serious cases if only because they never appeared on the

work list despite their relative youth. Julia Fogle as mentioned appeared in the mid-

1870s. Her tenure and possible relationship with Andrew Fogle suggests a manageable

condition that was tolerated by all on the farm. Amanda Bowman, however, was a recent

arrival and just twenty-three when she first came. The following year, Shefler called

attention to several medical issues in his remarks to the Board of Supervisors, of which

she is likely one. He characterized her, “a female 24 years admitted 1878 (order of the

203 Andrew is also unusual since he came to the farm at about age eleven. The common practice was to bind out children of that age; however, he stayed. Julia came in the mid-1870s and may have been his sister or possibly his wife. 204 LV, Annual Reports, Box 1954, Shenandoah County, November 30, 1880.

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court) Insane.” 205 She must have been enough of a problem to merit the remark and be

referred to a physician for possible commitment to the state institution.

Of the two “idiotic” women, one was white and the other “colored.” Lucy

Douglas, already mentioned, had been at the poorhouse for ten years and had been on the

work rolls until two years previous. Sarah Reed, on the other hand, was admitted to the

poorhouse on February 8, 1847 as a baby and remained for the rest of her life.206 Her

name never appeared on the work rolls, but she lived into her sixties, presumably passing

away in the late 1890s. Her name disappeared from the annual reports between 1898 and

1899. These women would likewise have been familiar members of the farm community

contributing to the fabric of life there.

Sarah Reed’s longevity at the institution was a story repeated in many almshouses

of the late nineteenth century. As with the Simmons brothers in Highland County, the

fate of the feeble-minded who could not be cared for by family or friends was to be

institutionalized in the local county poorhouse. Sarah, like William Foundling in

Rockbridge, became a long-standing member of the poorhouse community. The nature

of their lives at the institution is poignantly captured in “Boo” Foundling’s case.

William Foundling, age nine, was listed by the 1880 Census enumerator in

Rockbridge County as a white male pauper who was “simple.” Interestingly, the man

then checked the block marked “insane.” Certainly, William was mentally retarded, but

was he so severely so to be characterized as insane? Insanity seems to have been a

layman’s shorthand for mental retardation in general. Was he indeed a ‘foundling’? In

205 Ibid., Box without a number, Shenandoah County, November 30, 1881.

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all likelihood, he may have been born at the poor farm. The Register of Paupers at

Rockbridge County Poor House listed him only as the sixteenth person with no indication

of when he was admitted to the institution. 207 He was distinguished in the register only

by his color—white—and the name “Boo” given in parentheses. In the Annual Reports to

the General Auditor, his name appeared variously as Willie or John Foundling. He was

described as an “Idiot” and not on the list of those put to work, but he seems to have had

the run of the farm. By 1886 and 1887, Mr. H. C. Alexander, the Keeper, listed him

simply as “Willie, an Idiot.” The following year, Alexander reverted to the more proper,

“William Foundling” in his report. By 1893, Mr. H. Lackey had taken over as

superintendent. He listed “Wm. Foundling ‘Boo’” and indicated he had worked “1/4 the

time” doing chores. By 1898, “Wm. Foundling” was again off the work list. In 1899, he

was “Wm. ‘Boo’ Foundling;” in 1900, back to plain “Wm. Foundling.” The following

year he was “Foundling ‘Boo’” having lost the William entirely.208 The 1900 census

taker, David R. Reveley, listed William Foundling as a white male born in March of 1860

and therefore forty years old. If this birth date is correct, then he would have been

nineteen or twenty in 1880, not nine. Mr. Reveley also indicated that he was a widower,

which seems unlikely for a “simple” man who had lived for the last twenty years at the

poor farm. Ten years later, the 1910 Census transcribed his name as William Booze, now

single and fifty-five years of age.

206 Shenandoah County Public Library. Shenandoah County Almshouse Records, Special Collections, microfilm Reel #1. 207 The dates in the Register o f Paupers at Rockbridge County Poor House at the Library of Virginia begin in the 1880s and reach to the 1920s, recording inmates’ comings and goings as well as births and deaths for the period.

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The State Board of Health Burial Permit issued 3 February 1923 listed William

Boo, a white male, “about 62yrs.” The nature of “Boo” Foundling’s death suggests that

he often helped out around the farm and that he suffered a tragic farm accident in the

process of doing so. According to the permit, he died on January 15th, 1923. Cause of

death: “appoplexy.” He would be buried on the farm.209 However, the list of deaths in

the register has this uncommon entry:

Billie Boo, white, 65. Died by falling from barn floor to feed room do...[sic] supposed to have apoplexy on Jan 7th 1923.210

The recorder of deaths in the register wanted to set the record straight. Had “Billie” died

as the result of a farm accident, from carelessness on his or someone else’s part? As a

“simple” person, had he been assigned a job that he shouldn’t have been doing? Had he

been left unsupervised? Regardless, he had lived at the institution for some forty years or

more, presumably in good enough health to have the run of the place. The use of

“Billie” by the recorder suggests some measure of affection for the deceased and perhaps

a desire to acknowledge his life and value in the community by accurately portraying his

death. He was buried on the farm, his grave marked by a wooden stake with a number on

it, as were all the graves. Initially the numbers were recorded in the register next to the

deceased’s name. No number, however, is given next to “Billie Boo,” a defining member

of the poor farm community.211

208 LV, Annual Reports, Rockbridge County, Boxes 1944, 1945,1946,1953,1954, No #, Ledgers 1877-1885, 1884-1888, 1888-1889, 1893, 1897-1898, 1899-1907. 209 LV. Rockbridge County Records, Register o f Paupers at Rockbridge County Poor House. Loose papers pressed between pages. 210 Ibid., 206. 211 Mack McCrowell. Personal Interview. August 15, 2001. Mr. McCrowell recalled there were a number of wooden posts to mark between fifty and sixty graves. The graveyard is located beyond the road on the

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Despite variations in size and location, these rural poor farms served a similar

core population. What differences do occur among institutions seem to be seated in the

particularity of place. Interestingly, blacks appear on the almshouse rolls in all five

institutions, but are more predominant in those counties with a significant African

American population. Highland recorded only occasional black inmates while

Rockbridge County had a steady flow of black inmates requiring appropriately

segregated housing. Blacks in Virginia were denied political power and increasingly

circumscribed in their ability to improve financially in the late nineteenth century.

However, they were not barred from receiving county poor relief. The almshouse as an

essentially paternalistic institution gave them refuge. Since only the most destitute

sought shelter there, blacks would only confirm their lowly status by their presence.

White county officials affirmed the orderly structure of their southern society by granting

blacks on the bottom rung what charity the county had to offer. As providers of poor

relief, prominent community whites never left any doubt about who was in charge.

As a hallmark of their control, a given county’s expenditures waxed or waned

according to variations in the way those very county overseers fixed the pauper levy.

Initially, Highland county officials determined the levy for the poor according to the

number of “tithables” or tax-paying citizens in the county. The exact amount of the tax

collected by the sheriff varied from year to year depending on the cost of supporting the

poor from the previous year. On the one hand, it was the duty of all citizens to share in

the maintenance of the poor. On the other, the individual cost to those citizens depended

next hill over to the south of the keeper’s house and at the end of the pasturage. He asserted that the graveyard was completely overgrown and inaccessible by vehicle.

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to a certain extent on population. In larger, wealthier counties like Rockbridge, the pool

of money garnered from the levy would be correspondingly larger. Good stewardship of

these funds demanded revisiting the amount needed on an annual basis. Other counties

like Caroline established a flat rate for the poor farm while the amount paid in outdoor

relief varied according to need in any given year.

Also a factor in how much a county spent on its poor was the profitability of the

farm itself. In 1893, a particularly disastrous year for the nation as a whole, Highland

County reported a levy of $350 supplemented by an additional $350 in the value of the

farm’s crop. $25 went for medical expenses. These amounts were in support of twenty

inmates “including Malinda & Lewis Simmons kept away from the poor farm.” The total

of $725 would seem to include both indoor and outdoor relief, but more likely refers only ~) 1 7 to expenses at the farm itself. In addition, the Board of Supervisors regularly paid

doctor’s bills submitted to them in support of the county poor. That same year

Rockbridge County reported a levy of $1805 in support of 38 inmates plus an additional

$567.93 in the crop value. Caroline County had a levy of only $200 at the poor farm

housing 17 inmates for 1893.213 The Shenandoah County superintendent parsed the

figures to include salaries separate from the farm levy, but did not include the value of

the crop. For instance in 1894, the county allotted $500 for the “support of Beckford

Parish.” An additional $350 salary went to the superintendent, $150 to a farmhand, and

212 LV, Annual Reports, Ledger 1893, Highland County, June 30, 1893. 213 Ibid., Caroline County, June 30, 1893.

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$77 for “female help.” The report included no mention of the value of the crop or the

annual salary to the physician. This $1077 supported 40 inmates for that year.214

Mecklenburg County’s spotty financial records don’t include 1893. In the closest

year, 1887, the Superintendent listed a levy of $750 in support of 27 inmates. According

to these figures, Mecklenburg County spent $27 per inmate annually, Rockbridge, a

whooping $47.50, and Highland a more modest $17.50. Shenandoah County vied with

Caroline County for spending the least, $ 12.50/inmate to Caroline’s $11.76/inmate.

None of these figures gives an accurate representation of the relative generosity of the

county in providing poor relief. No wonder Progressive Era reformers despaired when

faced with such inefficient accounting practices.

What is clear from these seemingly haphazard spending practices is that the

Overseers of the Poor as well as the Superintendent of the Poor in each county played a

very hands-on role in determining and dispensing tax funds for poor relief. Nor did any

of these men question the obligation of the county to provide for the poor in their midst.

Each county supported its poor farm as the generally accepted means of maintaining the

needy who were unable to help themselves. Certainly, overseers and superintendents

made choices concerning the worthiness of individuals to receive county charity. If any

were turned away, the records are silent on the point. On this local level, the poor were

not strangers, but rather known and, more often than not, recommended for county

charity. The prospect for their being “well cared for and humanely treated” at the

poorhouse was not so far fetched.

214 Ibid., Box 1957, Shenandoah County, November 30, 1894.

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The feeble-minded often found lifetime homes at the county poor farm as did

many single women. Blacks as well as whites were nursed, fed and sheltered. Many

disabled elderly were also on the rolls for extended periods of ten or more years. The day

to day well being of these indigents fell to the Superintendent of the Poor or the Keeper

of the Poor House, whoever was onsite on a daily basis. His main qualification for the

position at a rural county almshouse was that he make a go of the farm itself. His family

would support him in his position helping in a variety of ways to care for the farm’s

paupers. The wife in particular would set the standard for cleanliness and meal

preparation. In some cases, she would also provide/make clothes for inmates. Together,

the farmer and his family and the inmates for whom they were responsible made up the

almshouse community that followed the daily routine of rural farm life. For many the

farm was a home, for some, the only one they would ever know. While the quality of

that life on many isolated farms was dismal indeed, on others it was possible for

supportive communal life to form. Despite the moniker of paupers, disease-ridden

bodies, mental deficiencies, and questionable moral standards, these poor found

community in a place that saw them not as ‘dregs’ but human beings in distress. The

poorhouse supplied them refuge.

Despite the formation of communal life on the farm, most poor did not come to

the poorhouse willingly, but out of necessity. Then, as now, for people living on the

margins, taking sick would put that person or family over the edge. The majority of

inmates at any given time sought the refuge of the poorhouse in times of illness, both

acute and chronic. Perhaps one of the most important functions of the institution on a

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local level was to provide medical services for the destitute. The poorhouse regularly

offered refuge for the ill and dying.

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ALMSHOUSE FOR THE ILL AND DYING

James Entwistle, Jr. supported his wife, their five children, and a sixteen-year-old

black serving girl on his livelihood as a druggist in the city of Alexandria. In 1870, he

was forty-two and moderately successful in his trade. From June 1870 forward,

Entwistle would present his monthly bills “for medicines furnished the poor” to the City

Council.215 Those medicines cost the city roughly $20.00 to $25.00 per month and

included what he supplied to both the Almshouse inmates and outdoor pensioners.

Entwistle continued as the druggist of choice throughout the 1870s and was eventually

appointed “Dispenser of Medicines” in July 1881 when that position was created by the

Common Council.216

One of the reasons for James Entwistle’s rising prosperity was that he had a

steady roster of pauper patients. Braided strands of disease and disability entangled the

poor so profoundly that determining which came first confounded those offering poor

relief. Of the twenty-four inmates of the Alexandria Almshouse in 1880, fully half were

listed with some disabling illness. Three were paralyzed; one was “crippled from being

burnt.” A forty-year-old black laborer was “sick from exposure.” Another had heart

disease, another syphilis. A sixty-five year old black laborer was “on the sick list,” while

a ninety-year-old black man was listed as “worn out.” A seventy-year-old white woman

215 City Council Minute Book, No. 16, 1859-1871, Alexandria, Virginia, June 14th, 1870. 216 City Council Minute Book, No. 18, 1871-1882, Alexandria, Virginia, July 18th, 1881. 119

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was blind and “under treatment” while a thirty-five year old black man was “Entirely

Blind.” A twenty-five year old white woman was listed as having “an incurable disease.”

Finally, a forty-one-year-old white woman was classified as “Idiotic.”217

In this period of time before the development of germ theory, not much could be

done for the suffering of individuals due to illness other than palliative measures meant to

relieve symptoms. Most of the formulary typical for the era was for the relief of minor

rather than serious ailments in the face of which the Keeper of the Poor House as well as

the pauper were resigned. Bills of lading from the 1830s offer a glimpse of some of the

druggist’s supplies: “camphor, laudman[sic], epsom salts, elise parigoric, unguent of

T 1 Q basil, castor oil, olive oil.” This list of typical drugs underwent little change by the late

nineteenth century and would have been staples of Entwistle’s stock in trade. When

presented with illness, most physicians of the day would attempt to relieve suffering by

some ‘heroic’ measure such as bloodletting, inducing vomiting, purging, or, conversely,

sedating the patient. Camphor and laudanum acted as narcotics, the epsom salts worked

then as now as a laxative, the paregoric offered soothing relief of pain while castor oil

was the tonic of choice to promote general well being. To these were added quinine for

the relief of fevers, particularly malarial, and calomel, the most commonly used

cathartic. Use of these and other medicines provided Entwistle with steady business and

Poor House paupers with some measure of relief.219

217 Tenth Census of the United States, 1880, Alexandria, Virginia. 218 LH, “Alexandria City Records,” 19 E. 219 The history of medicine and medical practice in the United States on which this section draws begins with the work of George Rosen, particularly, The Structure o f American Medical Practice, 1875-1941 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983). For a general examination of medical practice in

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With few curative options, it is no wonder that the medical profession in the mid

nineteenth century was regarded askance by the general public. Doctors’ reputations had

steadily eroded during the antebellum period. Laws controlling licensing of doctors were

removed in state after state. Methods of training were exposed as haphazard even while

medical schools proliferated. Requiring anywhere from six months to several years of

instruction, these institutions gave only minimal assurance of a given doctor’s ability.

Medical societies, which worked to control the licensing procedures, were in conflict

with the schools touting the value of their diplomas. The subsequent infighting among

doctors served to eviscerate the medical licensing system so that few, if any, states

required doctors to even have a license by 1860. 220

At the same time competing medical approaches such as the Thomsonian

Movement which eschewed heroic therapeutics in favor of more natural botanical

measures that were aimed at restoring “the body’s natural heat” challenged regular

the nineteenth century, see William G. Rothstein,American Physicians in the Nineteenth Century: From Sects to Science (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972) and Judith Walzer Leavitt and Ronald L. Numbers, eds. Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History o f Medicine and Public Health, 2nd Ed, Revised (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985). On medical practice in the South see Ronald L. Numbers and Todd L. Savitt, eds., Science and Medicine in the Old South (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), Chapters 7-14; Todd L. Savitt and James Harvey Young, eds., Disease and Distinctiveness in the American South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988); Wyndam B. Blanton, Medicine in Virginia in the Nineteenth Century (Richmond: Garret & Massie, Incorporated, 1933); Steven M. Stowe, Doctoring the South: Southern Physicians and Everyday Medicine in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Sandra Lee Barney,Authorized to Heal: Gender, Class, and the Transformation o f Medicine in Appalachia, 1880-1930 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). On issues of childbirth and pregnancy see Judith Walzer Leavitt, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750 to 1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) and Sally G. McMillen,Motherhood in the Old South: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Infant Rearing (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1990). For a first person account of midwifery practices at the turn of the twentieth century see Onnie Lee Logan as told to Katherine Clark, Motherwit: An Alabama Midwife’s Story (New York: E.P.Dutton, 1989). 220 Rothstein, American Physicians, 108. Ronald L. Numbers, “The Fall and Rise of the American Medical Profession,” in Sickness and Health in America'. 185-196. This article provides a good overview of the state of the medical profession across the nineteenth century.

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physicians. Eclectics and Homeopathic practitioners also sought alternatives to what they

saw as the unnecessarily harsh and not necessarily effective methods of traditional

schooled doctors. The dissension within the medical community escalated further

eroding medical practice by mid-century to the level of what Ronald Numbers has

characterized as a “trade” rather than a profession.221

Much of the turmoil ensued because in the face of illnesses such as scarlet fever,

tuberculosis, diphtheria, not to mention the dreaded epidemics of cholera and yellow

fever, doctors did not have much in their respective arsenals to cure such maladies. Nor

was there a clear understanding of the causes and transmission of such diseases until the

advent of germ theory at the end of the century. As Todd L. Savitt has noted during these

years, “Physicians played their most crucial roles in executing certain surgical

procedures, assisting mothers in childbirth and instilling confidence in sick patients

through an effective bedside manner.” 222 Most folks resigned themselves to waiting out

such illnesses giving themselves over to God’s will rather than relying on some local

doctor to perform a miracle cure.

That is, if there were even a doctor available. Most doctors in the South and

across the country in general practiced in urban centers rather than the countryside. Rural

populations relied on a combination of ‘domestic medicine’ spelled out in manuals that

described diseases and treatments, drugs with which to stock a medicine chest, and

22lRonald L. Numbers, “The Fall and Rise of the American Medical Profession,” 186. 222 Todd L. Savitt, “Black Health on the Plantation: Masters, Slaves, and Physicians,”(348) in Science and Medicine in the Old South, 327-355.

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finally when to call in a physician who may not arrive for hours or even days. As

Elizabeth Barney Keeney has pointed out, “Jacksonian Americans, including southerners,

had little respect for elites or education. Many southerners who used domestic medicine

did so because they felt that they could do all a professional could, if not more.”224 The

constant bickering within the medical community did little to allay these attitudes in the

minds of later nineteenth-century country people who had learned to rely on themselves.

The physician was called usually only in times of dire trouble, when a birth went awry or

a fever escalated to a frightening degree. Desperation reasoned that a doctor’s expertise

might just work when all else had failed.

City and county governments, however, actively sought to employ Physicians to

the Poor. Despite the general turmoil in the larger medical community, on the local level

doctors must have been able to render some sort of relief for suffering despite their

limited supplies. Overseers of the Poor acknowledged as well that many of the problems

of the poor were seated in temporary ill health or chronic long-term illnesses. For

example, Alexandria had for many years appointed Physicians to the Poor. An 1853 Act

of the Board of Aldermen formalized the process:

Dec. 1 Be it enacted by the City Council of Alexandria, that there shall be hereafter elected by.. .Council two Physicians to the Poor whose duty it shall be to attend to the inmates of the Poor & Work House, and also the Poor of the Town, and who shall be paid at the rate of $135 each per annum— 225

223 Elizabeth Bamaby Keeney, “Unless Powerful Sick: Domestic Medicine in the Old South” in Science and Medicine in the Old South, 276-294. 224 Ibid., 282. 225 LH, “Alexandria City Records”, 19 JJ 7.

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By the 1870s the number of physicians had grown to four, one for each of the city wards,

and chosen from a field of seven practicing in the city.226 Because the position was an

appointed one, these local doctors had a certain political cachet within the community.

Certainly, the names that consistently appear in the 1870s through the 1890s are

among the more prominent men of the profession who could boast a medical degree from

an accredited institution as well as membership in the Medical Society of Virginia. For

example, Bedford Brown, a North Carolina native, was an 1848 graduate of Transylvania

University, a medical college, in Lexington, Kentucky. From there he went to Jefferson

Medical College in Philadelphia, graduating in 1855. He served as a surgeon in the

Confederate Army for four years establishing his practice in Alexandria after the war. By

the 1880s he was a member of the Board of Medical Examiners of Virginia and also of

the Medical Society of Virginia. In addition, by the late 1870s he was also the author of

six medical papers.977 Dr. Brown is somewhat unusual in the pursuit of his credentials in

a profession that was during the late nineteenth century establishing just what those 998 credentials ought to be. More typical are the resumes of his fellow Physicians to the

Poor, William Gibson and R.C. Powell who list no graduating institution in the medical

directories of the period although the latter was a member of the Medical Society of

Virginia. By the mid-1880s doctors were required to pass a state medical examination in

226 Alexandria Archaeology: Volunteer News, Vol.XVII No.9, September 1999. Published by the Friends of Alexandria Archaeology. “Demographics,” 5. 227 Polk’s Medical Register and Directory o f the United States and Canada. 1st Edition, 1886 and Samuel W. Butler, MD., Medical Registry and Directory of the United States, 2nd Edition. Philadelphia: Office of the Medical and Surgical Reporter, 1877. 228 Barney, Authorized to Heal. See especially Chapter Two, “Physicians and the Quest for Professional Identity,” 41-70.

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order to practice. However, if they had been practicing successfully prior to 1885,

doctors were often certified without taking the exam.

Alexandria, bowing to older medical practices, also paid one William H.

DeVaughn for his services as a “cupper and leecher” to the poor. A typical bill from

1873 goes as follows:

To Wm H. DeVaughn , Dr. For Cupping & Leeching the Poor of the City as per Voucher attached 1872 October 19 For Leeching Edw’d Athey Dr. Garrett $2.50 1873 March 17 Cupping John Smith “ 1.75 “ 25 “ Mrs. Clarke “ 1.75 April 9 Leeching Cath Parkers child “ 1.75 « 1Q « « « « « 1.75 $9.50230

Presumably, Dr. Garrett, as one of the Physicians to the Poor, was the authorizing

physician in each case. While William DeVaughn is often referred to as a doctor in the

city records, the census lists his occupation as “cupper and leecher” exclusively.231 Dr.

DeVaughn’s skills brought him steady work in the city whether or not his training and

credentials elevated him to the pantheon of regular physicians such as Bedford Brown.

Within the fluid world of late nineteenth-century medicine, William DeVaughn had his

useful niche.

While many of these medical services were provided in the community, it is clear

that the Almshouse also served the city as a hospital for the indigent ill and those with

highly contagious diseases in need of isolation. As early as the 1840s, the Keeper of the

Poor had come to rely on the Hospital portion for a measure of income for the institution:

229 LV, Highland County, Miscellaneous Records, 1885-1937. 2j0 LH, “Alexandria City Records,” 19 JJ 7.

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The expenses of the poorhouse depends in Sum measure on the sales of Oakum and the Hospital accounts which are not always the same by two or three hundred dollars... 999

While Jacob Curtis, the Keeper, was bemoaning the unreliability of hospital funds to

support the institution in 1844, there is no doubt that the hospital function was an integral

part of the facility.

That function was sorely tested in 1872. An epidemic of smallpox swept through

the city. When undertaker B. Wheatley presented his bill on January 1, 1873 for burying

the poor from September through December, of the twenty-nine deaths, fully seventeen 999 were children. In July, the stress on the Physicians to the Poor was addressed by the

City Council who authorized the equivalent of hazardous duty pay for the four doctors:

Adding to the salary of the Physicians to the poor $3 for attendance upon cases of smallpox, cholera, or yellow fever while in hospital...234

Then, the Keeper of the Poorhouse put his foot down and refused to accept any more

cases of contagious diseases at the Almshouse prompting the President of the Board of

Health, J.T. Armstrong, to make this appeal to the City Council:

I will call your attention to the subject of not having any place provided for the reception of Small Pox or any other contagious diseases the Board of Health is thereby unable to order any case of contagious disease out of the city and further, the Keeper of the Poor House has refused to receive any case of Small Pox at that place. Under these circumstances the Board of health will ask you to provide some suitable place as in your judgement may seem best.23 5

231 Ninth Census of the United States, 1870. City of Alexandria, Virginia. 232 LH, Papers of the City of Alexandria, Reel 2. 2j3 LH, “Alexandria City Records,” 19E, 14, 1873. 234 City Council Minute Book, No. 18, 1871-1882, July 15, 1872. 2j5 LH, Papers of the City of Alexandria, Reel 2.

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The Almshouse had been an ideal location for smallpox patients because it was

outside the city limits and fit the Board of Health’s requirements for removal. The

Poorhouse had often served as an isolation unit for those with contagious diseases

particularly smallpox. That option no longer available thanks to James Stephenson’s

forceful stand, Armstrong’s appeal was heeded by the city fathers who temporarily

established a Small Pox Hospital in 1873 with one Dr. J.B.Johnson in charge to meet the

current crisis.

While the charity hospital had long been a feature of large urban almshouses,

hospitals as institutions were just emerging in the cityscapes of the late nineteenth

century. In Virginia, Norfolk stands out in that the port city had three such institutions

serving distinct populations: a large City Almshouse hospital established in 1836, the

Naval Hospital across the river in Portsmouth, and a Catholic institution, St. Vincent’s

established in 1856. By the 1880s Richmond had four specialty hospitals in addition to

the large Almshouse hospital. Options for the poor in the outlying counties were more

limited. The development of the hospital in the rural areas was slow in coming and again

a predominantly town centered phenomenon. The county almshouse, therefore, provided

an essential service functioning as a nascent hospital whose role in the rural community

literally swung between birth and death.

Babies were born and the chronically ill were nursed until disease or old age

overtook them. The county then provided a coffin and a burial plot on the farm unless

friends or relatives made other arrangements for the deceased. While the large urban

236 Polk’s Medical Register and Directory of the United States and Canada, 1st Edition., 1886, 910.

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almshouses all had hospital wings, their country counterparts were not simply

microcosms of these institutions. Alcoholism was less of an issue than feeble

mindedness, for example. A more appropriate model can be found in David Rosner’sA

Once Charitable Enterprise. Therein he describes the small community hospitals of the

late nineteenth century that were found in urban local neighborhoods to serve local needs.

Because small charity facilities often had fewer than fifty beds, they generally sent the “unworthy poor,” alcoholics and criminals to the public hospital and served primarily the dependent poor and working-class people of their communities. The local sponsors who were trustees of these small institutions were rarely prominent outside their particular neighborhood and often saw their commitment to the hospital as a commitment to their community or faith.237

Parallel institutions of rural Virginia reflected a local, but more public commitment to the

poor. The county levy rather than faith based organizations supported the facility.

However, overseers too made a distinction between the worthy and “unworthy poor” by

simply not admitting the latter or sending them to the local jail, which often reflected the

“dumping ground image, associated with the poorhouse. The Overseers of the Poor,

usually one for each district in a county, were charged with the dispensing of poor relief

and functioned not unlike the sponsors who determined who would receive care in an

essentially paternalistic institution.

As on the rural poor farm, patients in the early hospitals Rosner describes were

required to work when able:

237 David Rosner, A Once Charitable Enterprise: Hospitals and Health Care in Brooklyn and New York, 1885-1915 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 17-18. 238 191 1 findings of the Board of Charities and Corrections as reported in Arthur W. James, V irginia’s Social Awakening: The Contribution o f Dr. Mastin and the Board o f Charities and Corrections, (Richmond: Garret and Massie, Inc., 1939): 20.

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The matron and superintendent oversaw the patients much as a mother and father might supervise their children in the house. They considered patients in need of training in proper morals and work habits. When physically able, patients made their beds, washed their clothes, and did other necessary tasks.239

The Annual Report for each county had a column headed “Number Put to Work.” While

many inmates were often too incapacitated to participate in the daily chores, a core

contingent served as cooks, nurses, baby-sitters, farmhands, seamstresses, and

laundresses. For example, Nancy Phillips, a young white mother suckling twin girls was

able to contribute 300 days “sewing and darning” as repayment for her keep.240 Lucy

Douglass, a colored woman “subject to fits,” was able to “help milk and wash.241

Moreover, superintendents were not above commenting critically in their annual remarks

when the able-bodied refused to help out. Sounding like an exasperated father, the 1894

newly appointed Shenandoah County Superintendent complained about several of his

charges adding that, “a little experience in the Richmond Institution would make.. .(them)

wise.”242 Presumably, these inmates were not sufficiently appreciative of the charity they

received in the healthy countryside. A tour at the massive, crowded Richmond

Almshouse would provide a corrective dose. A Rockbridge County Superintendent noted

that a young black woman stayed less than one week in midsummer leaving with her

infant son, “to keep from work.”243 Her decampment did not go against her apparently.

In October, she returned for a period of lying-in delivering a baby girl in mid-February

2j9 Rosner, A Once Charitable Enterprise, 19. 240LV, Annual Reports, Box 1944, Rockbridge County, November 30, 1876. 241 Ibid., Box 1947, Shenandoah County, November 30, 1876. 242 Ibid., Box 1957, Shenandoah County, November 30, 1894. 243 LV, Rockbridge County Records, Register of Paupers at the Rockbridge County Poor House, 1881-1924.

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and finally departing with her children in June. When she sought medical care in

childbirth, she was received.

Like the almshouse, the small charity hospital proved a multifaceted affair:

Unlike its modern-day counterpart, the nineteenth-century hospital was not solely a medical facility but a facility that provided shelter, food, and care for those in need.244

Rosner’s description applies equally to the role of the rural poorhouse in its Virginia

setting. In the nineteenth century, those who could afford it received medical care in

their homes. In some cases, the county paid someone to care for the sick as this Highland

County bill shows:

David Shaffer keeping Sally Douglass 16 days while sick & two children same time 87 1/2 cents/day=$ 14.00, citizens of Bath County.245

Even though Sally Douglass and her children rightly belonged in neighboring Bath

County, Highland did not turn her away. Caring for folks in need dovetailed with

traditions of outdoor relief. David Shaffer would be happy to help out as long as the

county paid him for his efforts. Counties like Highland often used the expediency of a

private home to nurse the temporarily ill, rather than transport them to the poor farm for a

short stay. In this case, two goals would be achieved. Sally would receive the nursing

she required and the children would not be exposed to the conditions of other inmates

that might prove harmful. Once back on her feet, Sally would presumably be able to

manage either in Bath or wherever she was headed when waylaid by illness.

Indoor relief at the charity hospital was reserved for the most needy of the

working poor who could not be adequately served in their homes. Rural poor farms

244 Rosner, A Once Charitable Enterprise, 18.

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followed suit. Fully two-thirds of the women at the Rockbridge Poor House were either

diagnosed with some chronic physical ailment that required nursing care or they were

there to birth a child. The rest were in a more transient group. Temporarily indisposed,

these latter women stayed an average of one month before moving on.246 The quality of

the care received remains more difficult to determine.

That the numbers of paupers coming to the poor farm gradually increased over the

1880s and 1890s speaks to at least tolerable conditions prevailing in these institutions.

When in extremis, the poor could count on the poor farm for shelter and a hot meal.

General well being about the place rested with the farmer and his family. Either the

Superintendent of the Poor or the Keeper of the Almshouse was in charge of care. The

division of labor usually left the running of the farm to him while his wife oversaw the

domestic side of meal preparation, cleaning, and nursing. When need arose and funds

allowed, she hired outside help. Inmates themselves often provided nursing care for one

another. County almshouses during this period, like their city counterparts, also

employed physicians, usually one, to attend the poor.

Overseers of the Poor annually put out notices for the position of Physician to the

Poor, often appointing the low bidder. This approach may indeed reflect the low regard

for the medical profession during this time; however, forgoing the services of a physician

does not appear to have been an option. The arrangement in Shenandoah County for

1884 was a typical one:

245 LV, Highland County, Records of the Overseers of the Poor, 1847-1861, June 23ld, 1851. 246 LV. These figures come from the Register of Paupers at the Rockbridge County Poor House, 1881-1924, Rockbridge County Annual Reports to the General Auditor, Overseers of the Poor, and the United States Census 1870-1910.

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Appointed Dr. D.D. Caster as physician at the Beckford Parish for the year. For $75 he will attend there once a week and attend all paupers within a 2-1/2 mile radius of the almshouse. He’s to provide all services and medicines. 247

Dr. Caster, unlike his Alexandria counterparts, did not have the benefit of the services of

a druggist paid for by the county. His black satchel would have contained supplies of

calomel, quinine, laudanum, and the like that he had paid for and was expected to

dispense gratis to the poor.

Nor were country physicians always paid for services they considered above their

nominal salary. D.L. Shaw was appointed for a $70.00 annual fee in 1891. By 1895, his

fee had dropped to $60 reflecting the general belt-tightening in the economic hard times.

In 1897, however, he needed to amputate the arm of a long-term inmate who had been in

a farming accident. Perhaps signs of economic recovery emboldened him to approach

county officials for the $20.00 he sought for this operation. However, when Shaw

presented his bill to the Shenandoah County Overseers, he received this terse reply:

Ordered that the a/c of D.L. Shaw for amputating the arm of Lawrence Quinlan an inmate of the Almshouse be disallowed on the ground that his salary covers said work $20.00248

Dr. Shaw may have been caught in a financial trap of his own making. Prior to the

1890s, the appointed Shenandoah physician had received an annual salary of between

$75.00 to $100.00. As in Alexandria, these positions had a political component, but the

doctors also petitioned for the position and stipulated a fee for which they were willing to

work. Dr. Shaw underbid the competition to keep the job and its steady if meager

M7LV, Shenandoah County Records, Board of Supervisors Minutes, 1884-1896, November 24, 1884. 248 Ibid., July 26, 1897.

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allowance of $60. According to the Overseers, limb amputation fit within the job

description of Physician to the Poor.249

In addition to the designated Physician to the Poor, other doctors in the counties

paid numerous house calls to paupers as the many medical bills submitted to the county

9 SO boards attest. Highland County even paid mileage:

That the Physicians of Highland, practicing, or administering medicine amongst the paupers of Highland County for the first visit without an order from an Overseer Poor be allowed fifty cents for each mile of necessary travel in going to see said pauper & nothing for returning and also the same mileage for subsequent visits which may be ordered by an Overseer of the Poor and all visits made by the physicians to paupers without an order from an overseer of the poor shall not be paid, unless in extreme cases where it is necessary to save life and entirely out of the power of the Physician to consult an overseer of the Poor.251

The Overseers were watching the county purse strings, but may have also been hoping to

curb opportunistic doctors whose credentials and services could have been less than

optimum. Sally McMillen in herSouthern Women: Black and White in the Old South

offers this caveat:

Doctors proliferated in the South, taking advantage of the region’s sickly population and its cheap land and economic opportunities. By 1860, the region had a higher proportion of physicians than the Northeast.252

249 Dr. Shaw’s treatment by county officials reflects the general lower regard in which the medical profession was generally held during this time period; however, county budget concerns may have played a role as well. Bills at the farm mounted in the wake of a new superintendent. He had hired “female help” at $ 1.50/week costing the county $39.00 for the six month period from June to December. Unlike the doctor, she labored daily on the farm to earn her similar annual pay. However the overseers assessed Dr. Shaw’s duties and compensation that year, they did increase his salary a modest $5.00 in November. 250 For example, in 1885 Rockbridge County spent a total of $613.48 on medical expenses approximately $100 of which was for the county physician according to the Annual Report for that year. 251 LV, Highland County, Records ofthe Overseer ofthe Poor, 1847-1861, June 23ld, 1858. 252 Sally G. McMillen, “I’m Almost Worn Out in the Cause” from Southern Women: Black and White in the Old South (Harlan Davidson, Inc. 1992) as quoted in Portrait o f America, Volume J: to 1877, 8th Ed. Oates and Errico, eds. (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003): 173.

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While economic opportunities in Highland County were surely limited, a number of

doctors resided in the tiny Appalachian county. One medical registry for 1877 listed at

least three physicians residing in the county seat of Monterey alone. It is also true that

the training and qualifications of physicians in general might be checkered at best in the

years following the war. However, the professional associations that arose in the 1870s

were a corrective to these inadequacies and an attempt on the part of the medical

profession to police its own and weed out the so-called “quacks.”254 By the 1880s and

1890s, doctors in Highland registered in the county clerk’s office recording their passage

of the state medical examination and their license to practice medicine. At least nine

such physicians registered with the county for the decade of the 1890s.253 In addition, at

least six county doctors’ names appeared inPolk’s Medical Register for 18 8 6.256

Disreputable doctors surviving for long in the rural counties seems unlikely

especially given the propensity for country communities to rely on known quantities

rather than strangers. Overseers of the Poor in the country, as in Alexandria, were much

more inclined to appoint a doctor whose reputation in the community was established.

For example, the Shenandoah County Board of Supervisors required a judge to resolve a

tie vote for Physician to the Poor in 1892. Both candidates had served in the position and

were known in the county, Dr. J.L. Campbell and Dr. D.L.Shaw. Campbell was elected

at a salary of $100. The following year, Dr. Shaw regained the position for only $70.

253 Samuel W. Butler, MD, Medical Registry and Directory o f the United States, 2nd.Ed. (Philadelphia: Office of the Medical and Surgical Reporter, 1877). 254 Barney,Authorized to Heal, 41-70. 255 LV, Highland County Miscellaneous Records, 1885-1937. 256 The doctors were listed by the Highland County community in which they resided such as Crabbottom or Doe Hill. Polk's Medical Register and Directory o f the United States and Canada, 1st. Ed. (Detroit: )

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Since both men had their advocates on the Board of Supervisors, their reputations in the

community were well known. Eventually, the question devolved to the doctor who

9 S7 would work for the least cost.

The majority of the physician’s rounds involved providing relief to the

chronically ill via his limited medicinal supplies or setting broken bones. As the century

waned, however, the rural Physician to the Poor witnessed a steadily increasing demand

for obstetric services. As Judith Walzer Leavitt and Sally G. McMillen have pointed out,

this phenomenon emanated from pregnant women’s fear of both pain in childbirth and

subsequent death. Nor had these very real consequences abated to any significant degree

by the turn of the twentieth century. As Leavitt notes:

Medicine may have improved comfort levels and may have rescued women from complicated labors, but it did not, on the whole, increase women’s chances of survival.238

Middle- and upper-class women wrote about their fears in letters and diaries and sought

the amelioration offered by the use of anesthesia as well as an attendant physician should

the birth prove suddenly life threatening to the mother or child. Poor women had few

such options.239

257 LV, Shenandoah County Board of Supervisors Order Book, 1884-1896, November 24, 1892. 258 Judith Walzer Leavitt, “'Science’ Enters the Birthing Room: Obstetrics in America Since the 18th Century,” inSickness and Health in America, 85. 259 The work of Judith Walzer Leavitt, particularly, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750 to 1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) provides a grounding in childbirth practices in the United States for the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sickness and Health in A m erica includes her overview essay “'Science’ Enters the Birthing Room: Obstetrics in America Since the 18th Century”(81- 97), the second chapter from Brought to Bed. In addition, the collection includes an essay by Frances E. Korbin, “The American Midwife Controversy: A Crisis of Professsionalization” (197-205), which focuses on the early twentieth century efforts by medical doctors to specialize in obstetrics thereby replacing midwives in the birthing room. Sally G. McMillen’s work focuses on the antebellum South, but provides insight for the attitudes of late nineteenth-century southern women. See Motherhood in the Old South:

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County almshouse rolls almost invariably included one young woman who had

arrived on the doorstep about to deliver a child. While the common perception of the

unwed mother with no place else to go shapes the poorhouse image, many other poor

women came to the poor farm when their time was upon them. The Rockbridge County

Records provide a clear account of the women who sought out the poor farm to deliver

their children. Babies proved steady business. Between the years 1887 and 1910,

seventeen black women and twenty-six white women delivered children at the

almshouse. Of that number, three blacks and five whites returned to deliver a second,

and in three cases, a third child over a period of years. The length of stay was slightly

shorter for blacks than for whites averaging about three and a half months for the former

and four months for the latter. The range, however, varied from two weeks to several

Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Infant Rearing (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1990). Her subsequent collection of essays, Southern Women: Black and White in the Old South (Arlington heights, 111.: Harlan Davidson, 1992) includes her own essay “I’m Almost Worn Out in the Cause” on the subject of birthing. Todd Savitt’s work addresses issues of black health on the plantation including birthing. “Black Health on the Plantation: Masters, Slaves, and Physicians,” in Science and Medicine in the O ld South, Eds. Ronald L. Numbers and Todd L. Savitt (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1989): 327-355, gives a useful overview. Just as Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale (New York: Vintage Books, 1991) delineates the beginnings of physician assisted births competing with traditional midwifery in the late eighteenth century, these scholars see a gradual decline in the practice of midwifery over the course of the nineteenth century culminating in the debates of the early twentieth century when doctors specifically take on the “midwife problem.” Deborah Gray White,A r ’nt I a Woman? (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1985) and Suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women o f Petersburg (New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 1984) address the role of black midwifery practiced in the poorest communities and rural counties. For the postbellum period to the early twentieth century, Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor o f Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family, from Slavery to the (NPresent ew York: Vintage Books, 1986) establishes a particularly useful context for the role of the black midwife. For a personal account, see Onnie Lee Logan as told to Katherine Clark, Motherwit: An Alabama M idwife’s Story (New York: E.P.Dutton, 1989). 260 LV, Rockbridge County Records, Register of Paupers at the Rockbridge County Poor House, 1881-1924.

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The attraction of the almshouse for lying-in and birthing among the poor may best

be explained by the accompanying fear of childbirth during this period coupled with an

inability to pay for a midwife or doctor.

Statistics from the 1850 federal census demonstrate that Southern white women were twice as likely to die in childbirth as women in the Northeast. An unhealthy climate, the prevalence of malaria, improper medical practices, and the comparably frequent childbearing of Southern women all contributed to the grim statistics.. .As their diaries and letters reveal, nearly all women entered each confinement expecting it to be their last moment on earth. 261

The result of these fears was the gradual acceptance of the physician within the birthing

room. At the very least, a doctor would be in attendance or on call should the birth prove

a difficult one. With the development of anesthesia in the 1840s to allay the pain of

labor, the physician was even more welcome where the midwife had formerly reigned.

This displacement of the midwife was primarily a town phenomenon, however. In the

countryside where physicians were comparatively few and in poorer communities where

a doctor’s services simply were not affordable, midwives presided at the births of their

neighbor’s children.

Poor southern women shared the dread of childbirth with their wealthier sisters.

While these fears had abated somewhat by century’s last decades, the preference for

attendance by a physician should problems occur brought to the almshouse poor women

who could not otherwise afford the medical fees. McMillen estimates that the average

fee for a midwife ran between $1 and $4, while a doctor charged anywhere from $5 to

261 Sally G. McMillen fromMotherhood in the Old South as quoted in Portrait o f America, Volume I: to 1877, 8th Ed. Oates and Errico, eds. (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003): 171.

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$25 for his attendance during labor and birth. While coming up with cash was difficult in

the best of times, these fees were beyond the reach of poverty-stricken women.262

Childbirth remained a life threatening experience well into the twentieth century

for poor and well-to-do women alike. Postpartum hemorrhaging claimed lives.

Puerperal fever remained a common killer whose cause was only just coming to be

understood at the century’s turn. Elizabeth Wright, heavy with child, arrived at the

Mecklenburg County Poor House May 21st, 1880 along with her 2-year-old daughter Eva.

She delivered a son, William O. Wright, but did not survive the experience dying on May

26th. The children remained at the institution through the summer. Eva was taken away

in late August and four-month-old William in September.263 By coming to the poor farm,

Elizabeth had assured that her children would be somehow taken care of in the event of

her death and that she herself would be buried albeit in a pauper’s grave.

In a number of cases, while the mother survived, the child did not. Mary Miller

successfully delivered a baby boy, Harry at the Rockbridge County Poor House in the

winter of 1889. She returned with Harry, then two, in March of 1891 for another period

of lying-in. June 19th she delivered a second son, Jonathan, who lived just two months.

He died August twentieth. After another month, she left with Harry to be taken in by N.

H. Lackey, one of the Overseers of the Poor. Allice Bryan lost a daughter. Arriving at

the Almshouse in late November 1898, she delivered a girl, Viola, several months later

on February fifteenth. The child died ten short days later and Allice, unencumbered by

262 McMillen in “I’m Almost Worn Out in the Cause” Southern Women: Black and White in the South, 175. 263 LV, Annual Reports, No Box Number, Mecklenburg County, July 1, 1881.

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another child, precipitously left the almshouse on the first of March.264 A day before

Viola’s birth, February fourteenth, Sallie Hues, a black woman delivered twins “born

dead.” Unlike Allice and Mary, she had not come to the institution several months in

advance, but just ten days before her delivery. However, she remained recovering until

the end of March.

In many of these cases, only the mother and child(ren) were recorded in the

through the birthing. Allice’s flight from the institution strongly favors the likelihood she

was unwed. That Mary Miller and her son Harry stayed together and were taken in by

Mr. Lackey suggests that she was worthy of county charity and extra help to get back on

her feet. Since she was not on the Poor House rolls except for birthing, she must have

been able to support herself and the boy. Perhaps the father was known although not her

husband. Sallie Hues also must have been able to work as well. The necessity to keep

working may explain why she delayed so long in coming to the poor farm. Work may

have also contributed to poor pre-natal nutrition and care resulting in the stillborn birth of

her twins. Whatever their circumstances, however, these women continued to come to

7 AS the Poor House to deliver their children. The Rockbridge County Poor House must

have earned a reputation among the poor as a safe haven for birthing.

One woman in that group who returned for more than one delivery provides yet

another window through which to glimpse life on poverty’s edge. Rebecca Thompson,

age 33, came to the almshouse for the first time with her two sons aged 5 and 2, on

264 McMillen points out that four weeks was the general period of recovery after childbirth during this period. See “I’m Almost Worn Out in the Cause” in Southern Women: Black and White in the South.

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November 23, 1887. Although there was no state law regarding the status o f children in

the almshouse, the practice in Virginia was to find homes for all children five and over

who could not be supported by a parent. Accordingly, Samuel was “Taken by Trent

Seibert to raise” on December 12th.266 Also at the almshouse at the time was John

Nuckols, age 85. He left in early December, but returned to marry Rebecca on February

1, 1888. The marriage enabled her to recover Samuel from the Sieberf s. She returned to

the almshouse in the spring of 1891 with both boys in tow presumably to give birth to a

son, Joseph. In December of 1894, she again returned with Joseph and Samuel only and

delivered a boy, Walter, in May of 1895. Samuel then 12 was again sent off, this time

“taken to Andy Mines” in early January, less than a week from their arrival. Rebecca

was now apparently a widow since in the following spring she left to marry Walter L.

Harlow, May 6, 1896. She returned again with the two youngest boys to stay for a week

in August of 1896 leaving when her husband came to fetch her. By December, she was

back again and delivered another son, Lewis, January 21, 1897. The family of mother

and three boys was joined by the father who worked on the farm doing chores for two

months in 1899. They were back again in 1900 before disappearing from the rolls. The

annual reports for 1899 and 1900 accord Rebecca the title of Mrs., a status not given to

all and a certain signal of her worthiness to receive charity. Her life was a hard one, but

the poor farm for a period of ten years offered necessary relief and medical services on

which she had come to depend.

265 LV, Rockbridge County Records, Register of Paupers at the Rockbridge County Poor House, 1881-1924. 266 Ibid., 1.

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Another segment of the population, while also worthy because of their condition,

proved more problematical than women in the throes of childbirth. The feeble-minded in

degrees ranging from simple to idiot were often given custodial care in the rural

Ofci 7 almshouse. As previously mentioned, the Highland County Almshouse was home to

the Simmons brothers, labeled “idiots” and “unable to work” from their infancy until

their deaths some forty years and more later.268 Likewise, “Boo” Foundling, as he was

called, and Robert McClure, the former white and the latter black, lived and worked at

76Q the Rockbridge County Poor House until their deaths at ages well into their sixties.

Feeble-minded women, however, posed an increasingly more perplexing issue

centered on their role as mothers. Rose Rhea first came to the Rockbridge Poor House in

December of 1887 at the age of 19 to deliver a daughter. When she returned with the

seven-month-old baby the following winter, the superintendent noted that she was

“retarded.” Pregnant again the following winter, she returned and gave birth to another

daughter in February. That spring, the oldest girl, then 2, was taken to live with a woman

in Roanoke. Since children under five usually remained with their mother, this

separation suggests Rose was unable to cope with more than one child. The youngest,

just three months and no doubt still nursing, left with her mother in May. They were

back for two months in July before another family took both mother and child. Then in

267 See Philip Ferguson, Abandoned to Their Fate: Social Policy and Practice toward Severely Retarded People in America, 7520-/920,(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), Steven Noll,Feeble Minded in Our Midst: Institutions for the Mentally Retarded in the South, 1900-1940, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), and James W. Trent, Jr., Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History o f Mental Retardation in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 268 LV, Annual Reports, Highland County, 1876-1907. 269 L V, Rockbridge County Records, Register of Paupers at the Rockbridge County Poor House, 1881- 1924: 206.

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January, they abruptly returned and Rose was “Taken under arrest and confined in

Lexington 90 days for cruelty to her child.”270 What happened to the eleven-month-old

child is not clear in the records. The case, however, raises the question of Rose’s fitness

as a mother in association with her mental capacity.

Cases like that of Rose Rhea occurring in the 1880s and 1890s predated the Binet-

Simon test for measuring intelligence developed in the early twentieth century. County

officials including the Superintendent of the Poor used their own judgment and

experience to determine how to handle Rose and what would be best for her daughters.

Clearly, the children needed to be raised by someone other than their unfit mother. No

mention was made in the records of the cognitive level of the girls or any problems with

either their placement in foster care or adoption. Since the oldest girl was taken to

Roanoke, several counties to the south of Rockbridge, the county likely saw no reason to

pursue the child’s fate once a satisfactory arrangement had been made.

The fate of women such as Rose, increasingly classified as feeble-minded, was to

change markedly as their cases came to the attention of Progressive Era reformers on the

state level. As scientific evidence mounted by the turn of the century, early social

workers had more tools to help them with what had become the “problem of the feeble-

minded.” First came the classification of cognitive ability via the Binet-Simon• test. 271

By that measure, people were sorted into categories according to their ability to work.

The bottom classification of “idiot” consisted of those feeble-minded who could do no

labor and often required custodial care. On the top of the scale was the “moron,” those

270 Ibid., 4.

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who could reason and use judgment skills on the job. In between were various levels of

“imbecile.” The lowest on the scale could do “simple menial work.” Next came those

who could safely do “simple manual work” to be followed by those who could labor at

“complex manual work.”272

At the same time that these cognitive standards came into practice, theories of

inherited imbecility gained credence as the eugenics movement took hold in the nation

and Virginia. As Stephen Noll has shown, the ideas of Hastings Hart, a

Congregationalist minister working for the Russell Sage Foundation, were to hold sway

with Virginia officials. He focused particularly on feeble-minded girls advocating their

segregation from society for their childbearing years.273

Focus on women sprang from the belief that feeble-mindedness “multiplies twice

as rapidly as normal stock and from it springs, by inheritance, all other ills affecting the

socially unfit.” Those ills included “imbecility, the criminalistic tendency and the

tendency towards pauperism.”974 If feeble-minded women could be prevented from

having children, many of the causes of poverty would be alleviated since “[n] early all

paupers are mentally deficient.” In addition, reformers believed that “[fjrom feeble

mindedness springs epilepsy and insanity, physical weakness and deformity; and the

feeble-minded, more than any other class, spread the specific diseases.”275 Arguments

271 “Mental Defectives in Virginia,” (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Public Printing, 1915): 9. 272 Ibid., 9. 27j Noll, Feeble M inded in Our M idst, 15-16. 274 LV, “Menace of the Feeble-Minded,” Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Charities and Corrections (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Public Printing, 1912): 21. 275 Ibid., 24.

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were clear. Control reproduction in feeble-minded women and many of the causes of

poverty would be eliminated.

By 1915 state officials put together a report for the General Assembly that

proposed “A Plan for the Training, Segregation and Prevention of the Procreation of the

97 f\ Weak-Minded." The legislature had in fact already approved the call for segregation

of feeble-minded women by allowing their placement at the State Colony for Epileptics

in Lynchburg the previous year. Following Hart’s ideas, state officials believed these

women would be prevented from having children by removing them from the larger

society altogether. Segregation, however, could only go so far in face of the numbers of

feeble-minded women reformers perceived.

Sterilization gained credence as a means to prevent the procreation of these

undesirables, the mentally defective, who would only become a burden on society.

Statistics gathered proved that not only were the almshouses filled with the feeble

minded, but the majority of prostitutes in cities like Richmond were feeble-minded as

well.277 Following these arguments, the Virginia General Assembly legalized the

procedure in 1924, but the practice was an already accepted one at the several state

institutions housing the feeble-minded including the Lynchburg facility. After the

Supreme Court ruling in 1927 in Buck vs. Bell, the entire nation seemed to agree that

given the inherited nature of mental retardation, sterilization was a reasonable means of

978 limiting the numbers of feeble-minded persons.

276 “Mental Defectives in Virginia,” 14-18. 277 Ibid., 4-6. 278 See Noll and Trent for a fuller development of eugenic theory for the period. The notion of inherited idiocy coalesced during the 1880s and 1890s finally receiving widespread acceptance in the early twentieth

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The common belief that retardation ran in families was not lost on local

Superintendents of the Poor. They too believed that the feeble-minded were a burden on

their respective county taxpayers. Tucy Turner, a young white woman, delivered a son at

the Rockbridge Poor House in April of 1901. Shortly after delivering, she and the boy

were taken by a county family. However, in 1903 they were returned to the poor farm

where Lucy remained until May 1914 when she was taken to the newly established

feeble-minded colony in Lynchburg. In the intervening years, she gave birth to three and

possibly four more children. The eldest was “given to Rev. Maybe of Richmond” who

ran the Children’s Home Society and often took rural white children for placement

through his agency. Another boy went to a county family and a third died on the farm at

the age of three in 1915 after she left. No indication appears in the records about the

mental condition of the children. However, since Reverend Maybe was willing to take

the boy for placement, he must have been a healthy and potentially adoptable child.

Whether Lucy Turner’s conceptions were consensual or forced, the problem for the

overseer was how to stop her. The state institution once it was established became his

welcome solution. 279 If he could not control her reproduction, those overseeing the state

institution could.

In another case, after six months in the poorhouse, Ann Brad’s 70-year-old

mother died. While she had been an able enough nurse while her mother lived, Ann must

have posed a potential threat once on her own. In the spring of 1914, the 26-year-old

century. That perception in turn prompted such state action as the establishment of the Feeble Minded Colony in 1914. 279 LV, Rockbridge County Records, Register of Paupers at the Rockbridge County Poor House, 1881- 1914: 11. See also Noll, 11-26 on the development of institutions in Virginia.

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780 woman was sent to the feeble-minded colony. Her likely fate as that of Lucy Turner

would have been the common practice of sterilization or incarceration at the colony

throughout their remaining childbearing years. Before the state institution and afterward

as well, local almshouses supported women whose mental condition gradually became an

issue of larger concern. By the 1910s, the feeble-minded were no longer tolerated and

accepted members of the community, but transformed into misfits whose very existence

was a danger to society. 78 1 The mentally ill were another proposition altogether. State institutions for the

insane had existed in Virginia for many years. Eastern State had been founded in

Williamsburg in 1773 and Western Lunatic Hospital had been established in Staunton in

1828.282 County Superintendents of the Poor regularly passed along difficult inmates

declared insane when they could. The length of the process, however, meant that caring

for the severely insane appeared regularly on the list of local almshouse duties. In the

late 1880s and early 1890s, four women, two whites and two blacks, from Rockbridge

County remained in the poorhouse an average of three months before being transferred to

281 Treatment of the mentally ill and the role of the asylum in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century may be found in Gerald N. Grob, Mental Illness and American Society, 1875-1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983) and David Rothman, Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum and its Alternatives in Progressive America (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980). For a specifically southern approach see Peter McCandless, Moonlight, Magnolias, and Madness (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). McCandless underscores the relationship between mental illness and pauperism in his study of South Carolina noting that the first public institution for the insane was the “Mad- House” attached to the poorhouse in Charleston (5). Other state studies include Roy M. Brown, P ublic Poor Relief in North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1928) and Peter Wallenstein, “Laissez Faire and the Lunatic Asylum: State Welfare Institutions in Georgia— The First Half- Century, 1830s-1880s” in Elna C. Green, Before the New Deal: Social Welfare in the South, 1830-1930 (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1999), 3-23. 282 Wyndam B. Blanton, Medicine in Virginia in the Nineteenth Century (Richmond: Garret & Massie, Incorporated, 1933): 204passim.

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the Lunatic Asylum. Their children when they had them were subsequently dispersed

throughout the county.

Management of the insane was never easy. On more than one occasion,

Shenandoah superintendents protested the keeping of lunatics. In 1881, J. B. Shefler

noted that it was only by “order of the court” that he maintained a twenty-four-year-old

insane woman. A decade later R. D. Funkhouser assessing his charges declared that

“some ought to be in the Lunatic Asylum.”284

Dorothea Dix’s antebellum campaign notwithstanding, the fact remains that many

of the mentally ill were provided with custodial care in almshouses across the country.

Gerald Grob in Mental Illness and American Society, 1875-1940 cites the national

statistics for the insane.

Out of the total number of insane persons in 1880, nearly 52 percent were female, 71 percent native born, 93 percent white, and 7 percent black. About 9,300 were kept in almshouses. Of the remainder, half were cared for in mental hospitals and the other half in their own homes.285

The image of the large asylum was a daunting one, prompting families to care for the

insane at home or close by in the local almshouse. While Highland County seems not to

have had inmates recorded as insane, the poor farm did shelter senile women listed as

“old & crazy.” One woman remained from the mid-1880s until her death in 1895. 286

Shenandoah County listed three insane women on its rolls for 1880. One, a 79-year-old,

was attended by her daughter for several years until her death. Another who entered the

283 LV, Rockbridge County Records, Register of Paupers at the Rockbridge County Poor House, 1881-1924, 1-16. 284 LV, Annual Reports, Shenandoah County, Box no number (1881) and Box 1957 (1894). 285 Gerald N. Grob, Mental Illness and American Society, 8. 286 LV, Annual Reports, Highland County, 1876-1907, Ledger 1886-1889, June 30, 1888.

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almshouse in the early 1870s as a young woman remained until 1891 when she

presumably died.287 Of the nineteen female inmates in Rockbridge County in 1880, three

were diagnosed with syphilis in various stages, with one listed as “insane.” Another

woman suffering from paralysis may well have had the venereal disease also.288 While

superintendents were not altogether happy with the prospect of caring for the mentally ill,

they did so on a regular basis. The care was in the form of tolerance, shelter, and food.

In the case of the mother and daughter, the almshouse provided a space for hospice.

Meager charity, perhaps, but certainly not neglect.

The sick and the aged infirm accounted for fully one third of the poorhouse

inmates in Virginia. While the diseases listed included epilepsy and cancer, by far the

most virulent cause of death during this period was consumption. The case of Liz

Robinson, a 24-year-old black woman was not atypical. She first came to the Rockbridge

County poorhouse in the summer of 1887 and stayed two months. She returned in March

and again in December for one month each time as she continued to weaken. Finally, she

nog returned April 29, 1889 and was dead five days later. Of the thirty-nine women who

died in Rockbridge from 1887-1910, eight died of consumption after a brief stay. The

terrifying nature of the disease is born out in the unusually specific notation of the

Shenandoah County superintendent on the death of a 21-year-old black woman, “Come

here April 9th ’96, Died April 14th at 11 0”clock PM of galloping consumption.” His

287 LV, Annual Reports, Shenandoah County, 1872-1905, Box 1954, November 30, 1880. 288 Ninth Census of the United States, 1880, Rockbridge County. 289 I F Rockbridge County Records, Register of Paupers in the Rockbridge County Poor House, 1881- 1924, 1-3.

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helplessness in the face of the disease is clear. All he could offer was a bed and a

burial.290

Inmates with chronic illnesses such as epilepsy or who were characterized as “old

and worn out” stayed on the poor farm the longest averaging periods of five to ten years.

Mary Alexander of Rockbridge County was an exception. She came to the poor farm

with her ailing husband in 1891. He died within six months and Mary remained until her

death by a form of paralysis in 1924. Despite her infirmities, she served for many years

as a cook for her fellow inmates. In the end she was buried on the farm. 291 Rebecca

Burner was Mary’s equivalent in Shenandoah County. She was originally admitted to the

almshouse in June of 1857. August of 1863, she delivered a son, James, who worked on

the farm for many years. Rebecca did general chores about the place and remained a

fixture there until her death in the early 1900s.292 Neither of these women had a listed

illness or mental disability, rather they were characterized by their poverty and need

alone until old age overtook them. They are indeed the exception in a system that seems

to have focused on dispensing institutional care to the sick, weak, and disabled.

More common were the chronically ill. Despite having “epilepsy badly,”

Caroline Cunningham remained at the Rockbridge County poor farm from the late 1870s

until her death in 1891.293 Also despite the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind

290 Shenandoah Almshouse Book, Shenandoah County Almshouse Records, microfilm Reel #1, Shenandoah County Library. The term “galloping consumption” was reserved for particularly rapid and virulent forms of the disease according to Todd L. Savitt in “Black Health on the Plantation: Masters, Slaves, and Physicians”inScience and Medicine in the Old South, 335. 291 LV, Rockbridge County Records, Register of Paupers at the Rockbridge County Poor House, 1881-1924, 1-16. 292 Shenandoah County Almshouse Book and LV, Annual Reports, Shenandoah County, 1872-1905. 29j LV, Rockbridge County Records, Register of Paupers at the Rockbridge County Poor House, 1881-1924 and Annual Reports, Rockbridge County, 1876-1901.

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established in Staunton in the 1850s, the poor farm rolls regularly carried inmates so

afflicted. The school was for training the young. A blind widow such as Hannah Byers

was not even considered.294 Institutions such as the Virginia Colony for Epileptics

established in 1910 eventually offered superintendents alternatives for placement of

inmates so diagnosed, but during the late nineteenth century and even after the inception

of such institutions, the onus stayed with the local almshouse.

In some senses, the role of the poor farm as community hospital was by default.

Nonetheless, local doctors did what they could to serve the needs of the ill. The

Shenandoah County superintendent in 1891 was ordered “to take an inmate of the

Almshouse to Winchester for a consult with Dr. Whittoch to see whether the man’s

cancer can be treated.” These efforts were often in the face of recalcitrant overseers

loath to pay for medical services they saw as extra.

No complaints, however, were ever registered about providing a coffin and burial

for paupers. Many of the aged poor seem to have come to the poorhouse to secure that

office. The Rockbridge County rolls show a number of eighty-year-old men coming to

the almshouse and dying within two weeks to a month of their arrival.296 In a few cases,

cause of death is listed such as “dropsy” or “consumption,” but most are simply described

as succumbing to “old age.” Sometimes family or friends would claim the body for

burial, but most often the pauper was buried on the farm in a simple grave marked only

with a wooden stake on which a number had been carved. The Register would record the

name of the deceased next to the corresponding number. The burial ground itself would

294 LV, Annual Reports, Rockbridge County, Box 1954, July 25, 1880. 295 LV, Shenandoah County Records, Board of Supervisor’s Minutes, 1884-1896, January 3, 1891.

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offer no clues or record of the lives of the poor who were interred there. 297 Counties

guaranteed the indigent their variation of a decent burial albeit a pauper’s grave.

Changes in the field of medicine itself brought about changes in the small charity

hospitals that evolved into paying institutions. As David Rosner points out:

In the nineteenth century, differences in patients’ susceptibility to various conditions like consumption, venereal disease, cholera, or other infectious illnesses were often explained as matters of a patient’s social situation and individual morality.... By the end of the period, disease was understood in terms of germ theory and not regarded solely as an indication of morality or social status. As a result, hospital trustees and staff came to see themselves as providers of medical treatment, not moral or social reformers. 298

Likewise, social welfare reformers in Virginia began to emphasize a program of physical

and mental hygiene at century’s close. Tuberculosis patients needed to be isolated just as

smallpox victims had been. Sanitation and cleanliness were paramount. Physicians to

the Poor sometimes had their hands full attempting to pursue a public health regimen. In

March of 1902, the Rockbridge County Board of Supervisors had to order the “tenant

house—where John Heckman died” on the poor farm property to be burned to prevent

smallpox contagion. Why couldn’t the place just be fumigated and scrubbed? The

doctor’s urging of what may have seemed a wasteful, radical procedure had not gotten

the job done previously.299

State welfare reformers also stressed the need to treat various special conditions,

which led to the development of institutions such as the previously mentioned Epileptic

Colony in 1910, and the acceptance of feeble-minded women at the same facility in

296 LV, Rockbridge County Records, Register of Paupers at the Rockbridge County Poor House, 1881-1924. 297 Mack McCrowell. Personal Interview. August 15, 2001. 298 Rosner, A Once Charitable Enterprise, 5.

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19 1 4.300 By 1910 the state had established Catawba, a sanatorium for the white

tubercular near Lynchburg and ordered poorhouse supervisors to pay for transporting

inmates there. 301 In addition hospitals described as such were beginning to appear in the

rural counties. Lynchburg General Hospital, for example, began to evolve from the city’s

almshouse when it launched an operating room as early as 18 97.302 These alternatives to

the almshouse appeared in fits and starts during the early twentieth century, but were

often remote from rural county poorhouses.

The counties for their part continued to dispense poor relief with its attendant

medical care in much the same way as always. The movement to close the county

almshouses eventually made inroads in the 1920s, but not without loss to the local

communities. Inmates who had come to rely on the poorhouse were forced to seek

alternatives that in the main were simply not there or physically far removed from where

they lived. Practices in both medicine and social welfare became concerned with issues

of professionalization, with treatment of a disease or condition rather than an individual.

The development of specialized institutions mirrored that sea change.

The poorhouse was a place of refuge in its role as community hospital. If the

poor in rural counties were neglected by the state in the late nineteenth century, those that

knew them, for better or worse, received them. Poor men and women were able to use

the system in ways that suggest a kind of freedom. The imposition of state regulations in

299 Rockbridge County Court House, Supervisor’s Order Book, 1895-1908, 485. J°° Noll, Feeble M inded in Our M idst, 25. j01 LV, Second Annual Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Printing, 1910): 223. ,02 Blanton, Medicine in Virginia, 220.

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the twentieth century removed that small measure of autonomy in the rural countryside.

When the almshouses closed, these paupers were left with literally nowhere to go.

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THE GOOD STEWARD

Changes were afoot in the implementation of poor relief on the state level as the

twentieth century dawned. Virginia poor policy as it was understood in the nineteenth

century, a combination of outdoor relief and indoor relief in the institution of the

poorhouse, was a strictly local phenomenon administered and paid for by the presiding

county or city. However, Progressive Era reformers had been agitating for systemic

changes in this arrangement. Social work, as it was coming to be known, was in the

process of professionalization. Pursuing their own ‘search for order,’ these concerned

reformers sought to eradicate poverty through defining its causes.303

Nineteenth-century practice had distinguished poorhouse inmates by their

impoverished condition alone. These progressive social workers, however, classified the

30j See Robert H. Bremner, From the Depths: The Discovery of Poverty in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 1956) particularly his discussion in Chapter 8 (123-139) of the desire on the part of social workers to bring efficient administrative practices to bear on poor relief and to work for the elimination of “the destructive forces” they had identified as the causes of poverty. Roy Lubove provides an in depth study of these reformers inThe Professional Altruist: The Emergence o f Social Work as a Career, 1930 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1965). Robert H. Wiebe’s classic text on the development of the Progressive Era, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967) provides the context in which these social welfare workers evolved. The particularly southern approach to social welfare issues may be found in Elizabeth Wisner, Social Welfare in the South: From Colonial Times to World War I(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970. Dewey Grantham looks at the development of social welfare only briefly in hisSouthern Progressivism: The Reconciliation o f Progress and Tradition (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983). See Chapter 7, “Social Justice,” 178-245. However, he does highlight the economic and political climate across the south from which the many and various reform movements emerged. William Link’s The Paradox o f Southern Progressivism, 1880-1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992) focuses on the issues of education and public health rather than social welfare measures, but captures the desire of reformers to create a “new degree of centralized state power” which was Mastin’s purpose. See particularly Chapter 7, “Building the Social Efficiency State,” 203-238. 154

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poor according to what they determined was the root source of their poverty. This they

discerned through case studies of individuals. An almshouse inmate was poor because of

a given disease that prevented useful employment. Or a child was dependent and/or

delinquent due to feeble-mindedness. Dewey Grantham called this new approach “social

environmentalism” and its early practitioners motivated by “genuine concern and

compassion for the groups whose social control they wished to effect.”304 In this climate,

state institutions were launched that would deal with those predominant conditions.

This humanitarian effort was aimed at providing the individual with specific care

that addressed an underlying condition. A concomitant effect, not always successful, was

to draw down the poorhouse population in order to make those local institutions obsolete.

Therefore, in addition to the established state institutions for the insane and schools for

the blind and the deaf and dumb, Virginia added sanatoria for the tubercular, one for

whites and, eventually one for blacks. A colony for the epileptic expanded to take in the

feeble-minded. At the same time, what was to become the State Department of Public

Welfare was in the formative stages.

1903 saw the first concrete steps in the direction of state oversight of county poor

policy at the Virginia Conference of Charities and Corrections held in Richmond. That

meeting brought together the heads of existing state institutions, heads of private

charitable organizations, religious organizations and prominent citizens concerned with

the condition of the state’s poor population. As the title suggests, this body focused on

present policies and the institutions in place, namely jails and almshouses. The members

304 Dewey W. Grantham,Southern Progressivism, 111.

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formed a powerful coalition that gained a sympathetic hearing from the governor and

politicians across the commonwealth.

Virginia was a somewhat late arrival in following a national movement begun

almost thirty years previous after a National Conference of Charities and Corrections was

held in 1874. Many states began establishing Boards of Charities and Corrections to

monitor and assess those tax supported institutions such as jails and poorhouses. It would

take another five years before the state assembly enacted a bill to establish the Virginia

Board of Charities and Corrections, March 15, 1908. While this body had no legal power

over the counties, it could serve in an advisory capacity to bring the latest thinking on

how to deal with the “dependent, delinquent, and defective classes” to local communities

in Virginia.303 The Board chose a man uniquely qualified to be its executive secretary,

i.e. the actual gatherer of information, the Reverend Dr. Joseph Thomas Mastin.

At the time of his appointment to the Board of Charities and Corrections,

Reverend Mastin was the financial officer of the Methodist Orphanage of the Virginia

Conference Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Richmond. This six-year-old

institution provided for the care of poor children from across the state. Mastin’s

orphanage ministry capped a distinguished career of some thirty years in postings around

Virginia where he earned a reputation in the Methodist community as a skilled fundraiser

and builder of churches.306 His financial acumen had been tapped for the orphanage

position. When he arrived in 1902, that newly formed institution was in financial

j05 Arthur W. James, Virginia's Social Awakening, 2. j06 Dr. Mastin’s Methodist denomination has cultural significance here. As Dewey Grantham has noted “Methodists evinced mounting interest in practical religion...southern Methodism dealt increasingly with

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turmoil. Construction costs had saddled the orphanage with a debt of $27,000. Within

three years, Mastin had the orphanage running in the black.

At the same time he had become convinced that such institutions were not the best

solution for the care of dependent children.307 Institutions could be cold and daunting

places despite the most well intentioned care givers. Foster care, the home environment,

seemed to him a more humane and productive means for providing for the needs of poor

children. This combination of fiscal acumen and practical experience in poor policy

issues brought Rev. Mastin to the fore in the likely list of candidates to take on the

challenging task of secretary for the newly created board.

Reverend Joseph T. Mastin had been born in Spotsylvania County in 1855. As a

result of his father’s early demise and poor management of his mother’s inheritance by

her brother, Mrs. Mastin and young Joseph were left in much straitened circumstances.

Her one asset was a woodlot that remained from her husband’s estate. She added to their

income by astute management of that acreage selling off wood periodically. When Joseph

wanted to attend Randolph-Macon College to pursue a career in medicine, he was able to

arrange to borrow against that land to pay his tuition. Rather than sell the property, he

used it to achieve his ends.

While at the school, he came under the influence of its prominent teacher, Dr.

James A. Duncan. Under his tutelage Mastin discovered his call to the ministry. He then

left off his medical education taking up studies in preparation to be a Methodist minister

instead. In his third year, however, he was forced to leave the institution when the bank

problems of practical and social interest,”(18) in Southern Progressivism. Dr. Mastin’s career in the church demonstrates this ability to address social problems with the application of practical solutions.

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he had been dealing with failed, effectively freezing his assets. Rather than give up his

intended goal of serving the church, he applied to the Methodist Virginia Conference for

admission to the ministry on a two year trial basis and was accepted. For nine months he

worked as a junior minister on the Culpeper Circuit until receiving an appointment to the

newly formed Woodville Circuit which pulled together four churches in the counties of

Culpeper, Madison and Rappahanock. From there he embarked on a career that had him

moving every two to four years to another Virginia community.308

Each position provided new challenges and a hands-on education in the habits and

condition of the state’s impoverished citizenry. His enthusiastic supporter in this

enterprise was Fannie Cowles Nottingham whom he married in 1879. An early stint in

Bowling Green, Caroline County made him and Fannie aware of discriminatory practices

by church members against the Indians in that county. The workable solution at the time

was segregation. If the groups could not worship together, they could do so separately.

Two buildings would serve the community rather than one. Not an ideal option, but a

practical one. Mastin’s penchant for practical solutions to thorny issues would come to

characterize his work in the church.

In 1885 while in Northumberland County, the Mastins saw the need for and

established a Sunday School in Reedville. This experiment in religious education led to

the planting of a new church in that community. A few years later, while in Crewe,

Nottoway County, he worked with the impoverished in jail and founded a YMCA to offer

307 James, Virginia’s Social Awakening, “Dr. Mastin’s Early Career,” 177-188. 308 For a valuable discussion of the Methodist tradition in the South during these years see Hunter Dickinson Farish, The Circuit Rider Dismounts: A Social History o f Southern Methodism, 1865-1900 (Richmond VA: The Dietz Press, 1938; reprint New York: DaCapo Press, 1969).

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more wholesome and alcohol free activities for the rowdy and carousing railroad

workers. The head of the railroad had dismissed Mastin’s do-good efforts until he saw an

increase in productivity brought about by the sober and punctual behavior effected in his

workers. He became an enthusiastic supporter of the Mastins’ endeavors, which he

demonstrated through generous giving to their programs and even supplementing the

minister’s salary.

By 1892 Mastin was in Norfolk where he championed the work of the Florence

Crittenton Home for delinquent girls and unwed mothers, often young prostitutes, about

to give birth. To the dismay of some of his congregants, he welcomed four of these

fallen girls into the church. Parishioners apparently did not share Mastin’s belief in the

power of reform and saving grace. The hostility of the affronted congregation may have

discouraged the young women since only one had the courage to persevere and became a

member. But Mastin was a hopeful realist willing always to try rather than give up on

humanity. While in Norfolk, he became good friends with Dr. Kate Waller Barrett of

Alexandria who ran the Crittenton homes in Virginia and eventually nationally. She

would prove an invaluable aid in later years developing policies for unwed mothers and

their offspring.309 In 1895, he served as pastor of the Trinity Church in Richmond where

he came to know a number of prominent citizens whom he would eventually call upon to

support his social welfare initiatives. After another two years in Norfolk, he and Fannie

moved back to Richmond to take up the post at the newly established orphanage in 1902.

309 For an understanding of this remarkable woman’s life and work see Otto Wilson, Fifty Years Work With Girls, 1883-1933: A Story o f the Florence Crittenton Homes (Alexandria, VA: The National Florence Crittenton Mission, 1933).

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When he was tapped for the Board of Charities and Corrections position in 1908,

Mastin’s progressivism shaped his thinking on public welfare issues. As a manager, his

ideas fell under two broad headings: order and rehabilitation. The first element required

taking an inefficient and haphazard county set of policies and bringing professional

standards to bear which in turn would prove fiscally sound as well as beneficial for these

rural areas. The second was that the aim of any welfare program ought not to be

custodial care except in the few necessary cases of the old and infirm, but rather the

rehabilitation of the poor reclaiming them as productive citizens of their communities.

Such rehabilitation could involve anything from corrective orthopedic surgery to

establishing industrial schools and farms aimed at reforming young delinquents.

Underpinning Mastin’s humanitarian impulses and faith in Progressive Era

reforms were what may seem a contradictory set of values. As a late nineteenth-century

Virginian, Reverend Mastin was no radical, but rather an educated man of his times.

Thoroughly steeped in middle-class values, he sought to impose those standards on the

poor he would rehabilitate. Eschewing alcohol, attending church, and working

productively were all worthy patterns of behavior the poor needed to emulate. He had

been able to succeed in life by dint of hard work, faith in God, and belief in himself.

At the same time he was thoroughly steeped in the notion of a hierarchical society

with respect to both race and class. While all ideally could rise in life, not all individuals

started out on a level playing field to pursue their goals. Many of the poor were less

fortunate in both their physical and mental endowments. His duty, essentially

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paternalistic, was to work for their betterment helping them to rise as far as they were

capable. At the same time he could also determine what those capabilities were.

Having lived through both the Civil War and Reconstruction, Mastin’s racial

attitudes mirrored the times. He did not believe that the races should mix. Coming to the

Board of Charities and Corrections a little over ten years after thePlessey v.v. Ferguson

decision, Dr. Mastin advocated segregation as a standard policy in matters of welfare.

Taking the ‘separate, but equal’ doctrine to heart, he worked to establish programs and

institutions similar to those he proposed for whites. He was, however, a pragmatic

welfare crusader. While blacks were always included in his surveys and assessments, he

recognized that funding for their needs was secondary. That whites came first was

simply a fact of life. His sponsorship of programs that even included blacks at all marked

him as a kind of Southern liberal in the vein of such sociologists as Howard Odum or

Arthur Raper.310

However forward thinking he was with his desire to address social problems,

Mastin’s attitudes about hierarchy and race were ultimately limiting. Eventually, they

would lead him to accept eugenic notions that some human beings were higher on a

relative human scale than others. Mental capacity could indeed shape and define abilities

in humans just as a crippled leg could limit a person’s ability to labor. Both disabilities

placed a burden on society as the dependent and defective required care. His

humanitarian duty to manage these issues and people led him first to a policy of

segregation for the feeble-minded and second to a policy of sterilization with a view

310 Morton Philip Sosna, In Search of the Silent South: Southern Liberals and the Race Issue (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977. See particularly Chapter II, 20-41.

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towards preventing feeble minds altogether. Reverend Mastin was certainly not alone in

these attitudes that permeated the thinking of social welfare activists across the nation.

In his capacity as Executive Secretary of the Board of Charities and Corrections,

Mastin saw the first order of business as a survey of the institutions, both jails and

almshouses, statewide to assess the actual state of affairs. To aid him in this endeavor,

the board hired Martha Bowie, a recent graduate of Bryn Mawr where she had majored in

sociology and the social sciences. The task required visiting all ninety-six county and

sixteen city poorhouses as well as all the jails and compiling the results of these findings.

Through these endeavors crisscrossing the commonwealth, Mastin became convinced

that the poorhouse, especially the small county version, was an outdated and inefficient

way to serve the needs of Virginia’s poor. Accordingly, he pushed for closure of these

institutions.311

Mastin’s initial survey, in conjunction with his accumulated experience, provided

the basis for this initiative. By 1908, many rural almshouses had few inmates and some,

like Caroline County, had none. Therefore, in the interests of both fiscal and humane

efficiency, Mastin argued for the closure of the small county institutions in favor of a

local placement system. Invariably, however, a core constituency within many a county

required institutional care. To that end, he advocated a consolidated almshouse, one that

would be better able to serve the dwindling almshouse populace. That group of country

paupers, however, remained as diverse as ever according to Mastin’s findings.

A total of 1,963 inmates was enumerated— 1,224 whites and 739 Negroes—of whom 148 were children under sixteen, 184 idiots and low grade imbeciles, and 71 epileptics according to the diagnosis and

311 Ibid., 8.

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classification of the time, along with the helpless aged, the blind, crippled, ill, insane, and numerous unmarried women with one or more children— or expecting one.312

Of particular concern to Virginia reformers were the two groups initially named above:

children and the mentally retarded. The working rubric of Progressives for the poor had

by this time become the “dependent, defective, and delinquent classes.”313 Children were

spread through all three categories. The feeble-minded ranged in age as well. Their

mental defect was cited as a cause for dependency when young and for subsequent

delinquent behavior as they matured and a return to dependency when aged. All three

stages were burdensome conditions for the county and state.

The 1908 inspections illuminate the county almshouse populations and the kind of

care this diverse group received.314 In addition, what Mastin wanted to know about each

reveals his policy concerns. Were the poorhouses paying operations? Just exactly who

was served in them? What kind of care did paupers receive? Were there efforts at

rehabilitation or were Superintendents only able to provide custodial care? Were the

inmates properly segregated racially? Beyond the general mandate to work when able,

did the inmates have opportunities for recreation? Were religious services provided?

Caroline County (population, 16,709) practicing a policy of predominantly

outdoor relief had no inmates residing at the poor farm. Nor did the superintendent live

there. The two-hundred-acre-farm rented for $60 annually and had only a modest fifty

312 Ibid., 10-11. 313 This terminology was common parlance in the social welfare community in the early twentieth century. See, for example, “Public Welfare as a Function of Government in Virginia,” Address of Arthur W. James delivered August 2, 1929, printed in Social Problems Pamphlets, Vol. 19, #1. C harlottesville, A lderson Library, University of Virginia.

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acres under cultivation in tobacco, corn and peas. Cost to the community associated

with the institution was the annual $25.00 salary of the Superintendent of the Poor.

Caroline’s poorhouse was effectively gone.

While the Appalachian county of Highland (population, 5,647) maintained a farm,

the modest cost to the county echoed Caroline. At the time of the survey, four inmates

resided in the two cottages on the property and were cared for by the superintendent who

received his house and the “use of the farm” in lieu of a salary.313 He industriously

cultivated all 130 acres in corn, wheat, rye, oats and potatoes bringing in a $300 profit.

Each cottage had a wood stove and lamps, but no running water. One cottage housed two

feeble-minded men while the other had “a young white woman” in one room and “two

white men” in another. Mastin noted that the sexes were separated and those who could

worked about the place. Inmates had the “farm to move about over” for recreation, but

no religious services were held. He did not itemize the cost to the community, but listed

expenses of $158.50, presumably for supplies and medical services. In contrast to

Caroline, tiny Highland County spent very little money for outdoor relief. Only three

paupers had received any compensation and that totaled a mere $25 for the year.

Apparently the hardscrabble mountain life was shared by all. In such a poor county only

the neediest depended on local public charity.

Mecklenburg County (population 25,551) in Southside Virginia had a much larger

institution, but one certainly in flux. In 1908-9 the almshouse had served 21 inmates, but

314 All subsequent statistics and observations taken from Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections, 1908-1909, “Part II: County and City Almshouses and County and City Jails.” 315 In nineteenth-century Highland, the position of Superintendent of the Poor was separate from that of the farmer who contracted to keep the poor while making a go of the farm for his own profit.

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in September had only three present. The superintendent confirmed, “We generally have

from eight to twelve paupers in the poorhouse, most of whom are old negroes.” This

gentleman received a salary of $500 plus a house and supplies. Mixed messages abound.

Only 25 of the farm’s 400 acres were under cultivation in corn, oats and vegetables.

Presumably, these crops supplied the farm, rather than made any profit. The local cash

crop of tobacco was much to labor intensive for the farm’s diminished and aging labor

force. Nor would forestry and lumber, the other county staple, have been suitable. The

Superintendent worked only that modest acreage needed for the farm itself.

Inmates were required to work and had “cut rations” when they refused. Mastin

took note of this remnant of slavery methodology applied to the “old negroes” who

stayed there. Recreation was not recorded. Unlike Highland, however, religious services

were held often, but “not regularly.” The two pauper buildings were “old and out of

repair, but well kept.” Fireplaces provided warmth and lamps, light. As with the other

farms, there was no running water. The fluctuating populace suggests the place was a

temporary refuge at best with few if any long term residents such as the feeble-minded

men in Highland. Cost to the community was $1212.50 for the year, an outlay of $700,

above the superintendent’s salary, and which could include food, medical, clothing, and

other supplies. Mastin, however, made no overt derogatory comment about his findings

there.

His window opens slightly when he visited Rockbridge County (population

21,799) in early December. The main structure was a wooden building with twelve

rooms heated by stoves which apparently were not lit “except in sickness.” Capacity was

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four to a room with the sexes separated. A separate building of eight rooms was under

construction for “colored paupers.” Typically, no running water serviced these rural farm

structures. Nor was there any recreation. The only employment appeared to be “waiting

on each other.” Religious services were held “sometimes.” He did take care to note that

three of the inmates were children and one an epileptic. The superintendent received a

salary of $345 plus house and supplies. The farm cultivated 213 acres of the total 454 in

corn, wheat, hay and potatoes bringing in $2,611.41 for the year. That profit outstripped

the expenses to the county of $2,300 for the almshouse. Here was an institution that was

paying for itself. It is possible that Mastin found the superintendent a competent farmer,

but not much concerned for the care and well being of his 29 charges for that year. His

specific notations of no fires, no lamps, and no exercise other than caring for each other

would suggest the inmates tended to fend for themselves. Implicit areas for improvement

included better oversight as well as light and warmth.

If Reverend Mastin was noncommittal at best in his survey of Rockbridge, he was

positively effusive when he described the Shenandoah County facility two days later,

declaring, “This is one of the best institutions in the state.” What would make it so?

Population figures for that year were somewhat less than for Rockbridge coming in at

20,253, about 1500 fewer, but certainly comparable. Also, the almshouse had cared for a

similar number of inmates, 31, only two more than Rockbridge. The differences emerge

when he described the building itself, “a brick house with two wings.” The

superintendent lived in the center eight rooms while one wing was for women, the other

for men. Each wing had eight rooms with the possibility of four to a room. In addition,

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each room was heated by a stove and lighted by lamps. “One room in each wing is used

for a sitting-room; water is kept in these rooms,” Mastin observed. These physical

amenities were complemented by a daily routine that involved the inmates in the life of

the farm. As at Rockbridge, inmates cared for one another when able, but they were also

employed doing household and outdoor chores. While religious services were infrequent,

an atmosphere of kindliness prevailed prompting these remarks:

Obedience is encouraged by kind words and reward for good conduct. It is the custom of the institution that all inmates leave their rooms during the day, either staying in the sitting-room or roaming about on the farm.316

To this image of social interaction, Mastin made the point of adding that both the

superintendent and the matron were responsible for the care of the paupers. Their

oversight was certainly a positive element in the running of the institution so Mastin took

care to catalog the sorts of charges with which they were faced.

One blind man, a man with one leg, two cripples, one man bedridden (colored), three men over 65 years old (work in the garden); one lunatic, 28 years old; one woman who can neither walk nor talk, one “simple” and diseased, one “always sick and cannot talk,” four over 60 years old, two younger women with their babies, two younger women “simple” (who can do rough work with constant overlooking); one girl, ten or eleven, who is a consumptive; two small children. 3 1 7

Mastin’s detail captured the range of conditions among the poor inmates, but without the

pejorative reference to these paupers as “dregs” of humanity. All were worthy and

deserving of the care they received at the institution.

The superintendent, R.D. Funkhouser (whom Mastin does not name in his report)

performed his duties for a salary of $300 along with the house and supplies. Of the 260

jl6 Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections, 1908-1909, 89. 317 Ibid., 89.

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acres attached to the farm, fully 200 were in cultivation of wheat, oats, corn, hay, rye, and

vegetables. In addition, stock included enough cattle, sheep, and hogs to provide for the

place as w ell as sell at market. Another indicator of prosperity were the five horses and

two colts listed. Expenses for the year ran to $2,346.44 offset by the farm profit of

$2,020.24. The county levy would need to pay the approximately $326 difference as well

as an additional $1500 expended throughout the county in outdoor relief. Mastin made

no comment on the fiscal choices of the Shenandoah County Overseers o f the Poor.

Rather he emphasized a rural institution with a superior physical plant maintained in

good order that could serve as a model for others around the state.

Having completed his survey of jails and almshouses in Virginia, Mastin was sent

by the Board to see how other states compared to Virginia. Specifically, he was directed

to travel to Ohio and Indiana to “study the work of the Board of Charities.. .with special

reference to their system of filing reports, and the work being done in the almshouses.”318

Next he traveled to New England touring a county almshouse in Andover, Massachusetts,

a city facility in Brockton and a state hospital in Tewksbury. On the corrections side, he

observed a state farm in Bridgewater, and farther south, a workhouse in New Castle,

Delaware and the city jail in Baltimore.

Armed with this additional data, Mastin set about addressing the issues raised by

his findings. He chose to focus first on the inmates rather than their caregivers. The

needs of the feeble-minded and children loomed large in addition to the care for the aged

and single mothers with babies as the Shenandoah population had revealed. Prevailing

thought in social work at the time and across the nation focused on children as key to the

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prevention of poverty. Institutional care was losing favor. Mastin’s work with the

Methodist Orphanage in Richmond had convinced him likewise that here was an area

where a real difference could be made. Rehabilitative measures in the short-term

included medical intervention when called for. For the long-term, he emphasized

rehabilitation by situating children in family rather than institutional settings. His idea

was to implement a coordinated system of foster care throughout the state.

Until the turn of the twentieth century in Virginia, the practice in church parishes

and then the poorhouses had been to farm out children in the local community. In

colonial times, white orphans, both boys and girls, were apprenticed until 21 and 18

respectively. Their contracts included a charge that they be taught to read and write.319

Children of the poor who came to the poorhouse in the nineteenth century had been

boarded out to families willing to train them in a useful trade. Boys remained in

apprenticeship until twenty-one years while girls at age fourteen were allowed to choose

their guardian. Training for females was generally limited to the domestic arts of

cooking, washing, cleaning, sewing, and knitting. However, farm chores such as working

in the dairy as a milkmaid or keeping the hen house also fell to these young women when

available. In both cases, the children were to be taught how to read and write.

As the 1908 numbers of Mastin’s survey indicate, however, many children

remained in the poorhouse rather than go to a family. A core group of these children may

have been unplaceable for a variety of reasons, such as the tubercular girl residing at the

318 LV, Minutes of the State Board of Charities and Corrections, November 8, 1908. 319 Marcus Jemagen, Laboring and Dependent Classes in Colonial America, 1607-1783 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931): 146.

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Shenandoah farm. Others were feeble-minded, crippled, or otherwise ‘defective.’

Literacy or education of any type for these remaining children rated no mention.

From the state’s perspective, all children residing in the poorhouse were at a

higher risk of falling into delinquency. Associating with older poorhouse inmates of

questionable character would teach them bad habits. One solution was to advance the

closing of the almshouses thereby eliminating the offensive environment. Children

would be removed to orphanage settings until suitable placements in specialized

institutions or foster care could be effected.

Mastin was also looking for better options for the feeble-minded. As early as

1909 he had queried the Virginia Attorney General about the placement of idiots, those

profoundly retarded believed in need of custodial care, in existing state institutions for the

insane. The legal response was two-fold. No state laws allowed for commitment of the

feeble-minded in insane asylums. Nor were they to be held in jails. The Attorney

General concluded that if families were unable to care for them, then “the counties and

cities in which they reside should take care of them in their almshouses."320

Accordingly, one step in closing the poorhouses would be to find or create more suitable

environments for these ‘defectives.’ 32 1

These decisions came not only as a Progressive Era desire to impose order, but

also in response to an altered climate towards the mentally disabled. The latter half of the

nineteenth century witnessed a change in the way the feeble-minded were viewed by the

320 Minutes of the State Board of Charities and Corrections, May 6, 1909. 321 Mastin’s request was not an unusual one. As Philip M. Ferguson has shown in A band on ed to Their Fate, the severely retarded were often held in insane asylums or specialized “idiot asylums” as well as local almshouses.

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general public. From the somewhat benign tolerance of the ‘village idiot’ in most

communities, there emerged a kind of distrust engendered by the possibility of

degenerative heredity. The effects of Social Darwinism were reverberating in the field of

social work as theories of eugenics developed.

Idiocy was related to many “sins of the father”: intemperance, poverty, consanguinity (meaning marriage between cousins), insanity, scrofula, consumption, licentious habits, failed attempts at abortion, and overwork in the quest for wealth and power.322

This new category of ‘moral idiot’ was particularly troubling when applied to

females of child-bearing age. One perplexing issue centered on their role as mothers. As

the case of Rose Rhea demonstrated in the 1880s at Rockbridge Poor House, the issue

was one of long-standing development. However, Rose and her children remained

troublesome and a burden to the community, rather than feared. As James Trent has

shown when eugenic thinking took hold, women like Rose were transformed from a

“social burden” to a “social menace.” 323 In Virginia, social workers under Mastin’s

direction mirrored that change in the annual reports of the Board of Charities and

Corrections addressed to the governor and the general assembly. By 1912 the report

included a fifteen page section titled “The Menace of the Feeble-Minded” which detailed

the problem of inherited imbecility as they saw it.324

Ideas of social control expounded by Hastings Hart of the Russell Sage

Foundation strongly influenced contemporary social workers and, as Stephen Noll has

322 James W. Trent, Jr., Inventing the Feeble Mind, 18. 323 Ibid., 163. 324 LV, “Menace of the Feeble-Minded,” Fourth Annual Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Public Printing, 1912): 21-36.

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shown, J. T. Mastin in particular. Focusing on the reproductive abilities of feeble

minded women, Hart recommended segregation of such women during their reproductive

years. Mastin adopted the approach and pushed for the development of a colony for the

feeble-minded where such segregation could be accomplished in the most fiscally

appropriate manner. Part of that push included convincing state legislators of the severity

of the problem.

“The Menace of the Feeble-Minded” report listed that group at the top of a ten

item catalogue of the “socially unfit” with paupers running in second place. “Feeble

mindedness is acknowledged by experts to be the most expensive and dangerous,” the

document asserted. The danger lay in the untoward rapidity with which the feeble

minded procreated and the conclusive evidence that imbecility was indeed an inherited

trait. To illustrate this linkage, the writers traced the lineage of a family “apparently the

most degenerate in Virginia.” Moral reprobates all whose name “was a synonym of

pauperism and crime.” Because inheritance determined both mental capacity and “the

criminalistic tendency,” these social workers speculated that family members probably

descended from “criminals and paupers imported to this country in colonial times.” The

story is one of family fortune squandered, in this case mountain landholdings reduced to

an isolated hollow. Intermarriage exacerbated the problem. The illustration concludes

with a litany of the progeny. Of the six, three males, one of whom lived at the

almshouse, were deceased. Two females aged thirty-seven and forty resided at the

almshouse. Their elder sister, aged fifty, had been committed to the hospital for the

325 Noll, Feeble Minded in Our Midst, 15-16. 326 “Menace of the Feeble-Minded,” 21.

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insane. Her four children and their present state ended the evidence. Two, a twenty-five-

year-old man and a seventeen-year-old girl lived at the almshouse. Both were labeled

imbeciles. Their older sister, aged thirty-five, was a moron who had married her cousin

and had two children “about whom nothing is known.” Their thirty-year-old brother had

a lengthy jail record with a stint in the state penitentiary for “house-breaking.” He was

labeled “defective” and “delinquent,” two out of three counts for trouble.327

These dire warnings backed up with what were to become the all too familiar

castigation of mountain “hollow folk” did not fall on deaf ears.328 The Colony for the

Epileptic near Lynchburg was already under construction and would be ready to receive

“175 epileptic women from the State hospitals and almshouses” in March of 1914.329

Feeble-minded women would be accepted there before the year was out. Lucy Turner

whose pregnancies had bedeviled the Rockbridge County superintendent was in that first

wave to be admitted. Then came men a year later and the name was officially changed to

The Colony for the Epileptic and Feeble-Minded.

What began as an internal report documenting the threat of the feeble-minded

grew into a separate pamphlet as lobbying on social problems continued to ratchet

upwards in 1915. “Mental Defectives in Virginia” as its subtitle suggested surveyed

327 “Menace of the Feeble-Minded,” 21-23. 328 As Whisnant has pointed out, early twentieth century reformers entered Appalachia seeking the “exotic” culture, the pure Anglo-Saxon stock that they also wanted to both save but also convert to their white cultural middle-class standards. A plethora of investigations ensued culminating in studies such as Mandel Sherman and Thomas R. Flenry,Hollow Folk (Berryville, VA: Virginia Book Company, 1933; facsimile 1976). Their Chapter VI, “Education and Mentality” emphasized “many generations of close inbreeding and at least two generations of almost absolute illiteracy”! 113) marking the populace. Children fared miserably on standard intelligence tests in this predominantly oral culture. Outside educators, however, were hopeful that education would bring needed uplift to the entrenched poverty they encountered. j29 LV, Fifth Annual Report of the Board of Charities and Corrections (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Public Printing, 1913): 25.

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“Weak-Mindedness in the State of Virginia, Together with a Plan for the Training,

Segregation and Prevention of the Procreation of the Feeble-minded.” 330 To conduct

those surveys, the Board hired two women and one man as experts to “investigate the

relationship of feeble-mindedness to insanity and epilepsy, to juvenile delinquency, to

crime, to pauperism and to prostitution.”• * 331 The two women as graduates of the

Vineland, N. J. summer training school brought with them the perspective and ideas of

Dr. FI.FI. Goddard. As James Trent has shown Goddard contributed significantly to the

shift from the feeble-minded as a burden to a menace. Focusing on morons in particular,

Goddard saw linkages between these higher functioning mental defectives and crime in

particular that was passed on with Mendelian regularity.332

The recommendations of the Board were based on the results of these

investigations of the feeble-minded in jails and almshouses as well as those passing

through the courts. The links were all confirmed. Almshouses harbored mostly feeble

minded paupers. Almost three-quarters of Richmond’s prostitutes were mental

defectives. Juvenile delinquents and petty criminals were likewise mentally deficient.

Mastin and the Board wanted the public schools to serve as the first line of defense and

screen children with the Binet-Simon test. Those so identified would be transferred to

schools that would train them for useful occupations. In the meantime, expansion at the

Colony for the Epileptic and Feeble-minded would enable almshouses to reduce their

j3° “Mental Defectives in Virginia: Reprinted from A Special Report of the Board of Charities and Corrections to the General Assembly of Nineteen Sixteen on Weak-Mindedness in the State of Virginia, Together with a Plan for the Training, Segregation and Prevention of the Procreation of the Feeble-minded” (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Public Printing, 1915): Title page. 331 Ibid., 4. j32 Trent, Inventing the Feeble-Mind, 161.

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roles and better prevent the creation of feeble-minded progeny. They argued for

developing an industrial farm that would receive feeble-minded juvenile delinquents

languishing in jails to better effect their reformation. Virginia legislators began the

process of acquiescing to the needs so forcefully expressed.

While the practice of sterilizing the feeble-minded to prevent procreation is

nowhere mentioned in the report, sending girls and women to the Colony for the

Epileptic and Feeble-Minded held forth that option. As Stephen Noll has found, eighty

females were sterilized at that institution in the next two years.333 Dr. A. S. Priddy

wanted to return capable feeble-minded women to society, but do so safely assured that

they would not be in danger of passing along their defect. In 1924 state legislators

sanctioned the practice to little or no fanfare in the public press. Conflation of

immorality with feeble-mindedness seemed to confirm the rightness of their decision.

While Virginia was by no means alone in what was a national eugenics

movement, such attitudes remained prevalent for years. When Governor Mark R. Warner

formally apologized to survivors of the treatment in 2002, The Washington Post ran a

story illuminating how the process worked as late as the 1950s. Rose Nuckols who was

told there was no hope for her in school learned to read and write as an adult. When she

was raped at the age of sixteen, her twin boys were summarily taken away. Two months

later her grandmother instituted proceedings to have her committed to the Colony at

Lynchburg. Rose remembered the judge saying, “Rose, you aint fit to have kids, and you

need this operation done.” Initially, however, segregation was her treatment plan. Three

years later the resulting sterilization did not effect her release from the institution despite

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her desire to leave. She continued to work there caring for other patients until she was

placed in a job bussing tables at a local Howard Johnson’s about eight years later. By

then she was in her late twenties and the year was 1969. The attitudes expressed by

everyone in charge from the birthing hospital staff to the county judge to the colony

personnel were that the feeble-minded women had to be managed and in essence had no

rights of their own as the powerless and socially unfit of society.334

But what of feeble-minded black women? Accommodation for the ‘colored

feeble-minded’ had been established on the grounds of the insane asylum for African

Americans in 1885. That institution, Central State Hospital located in Petersburg, was

eventually run by Dr. William F. Drewry. Stephen Noll found that the focus there

shifted towards males as the facility became “a dumping ground for delinquent youths”

categorized as among the deviant feeble-minded. Most came from urban environments

and had little use for the training in agricultural skills that was meant to effect

rehabilitation.335 Feeble-minded black women either did not exist in large enough

numbers or the propagation of feeble-minded black children was not nearly the menace

perceived compared to the problem with whites.

However, African Americans were not to be left out of Reverend Mastin’s new

social welfare system. Under the aegis of serving and protecting members of the black

community, the Commonwealth in the early twentieth century set up a number of other

properly segregated institutions. Along with the efforts to promote a foster care program

for black children that began in the 1910s, industrial schools, one for delinquent black

3jj Noll, Feeble M inded in Our Midst, 67. 334 Leef Smith, “Robbed of the Promise of New Life,” The Washington Post, 13 May 2002, sec. B1 and 6.

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boys and one for girls, came under state control so that by 1926 approximately “400

delinquent colored children” were placed in them. A school for deaf and blind black

children began in 1906, almost seventy years after its white counterpart was established.

A sanatorium for tubercular blacks appeared in 1916.336

Commendable as these state level institutions may have been to offer similar

services to decidedly second-class citizenry, they were necessarily limited in their

capacity just as the white institutions. Ostensibly, all state institutions and programs were

meant to relieve the poorhouses of their populations thereby eliminating their function.

While populations were indeed going down in many almshouses, the reality was that the

feeble-minded of both races and sexes remained in the county almshouse setting.

What to do with the healthy children of indigent parents became a pressing

problem as well. All agreed that the poor farm was no fit place for such innocents.

Healthy children were removed from the almshouse by a variety of means. Poorhouses

continued to use the boarding out option. For example, the Pence children came to the

Shenandoah poorhouse in 1894. Lucy (15), Nellie (12), Grover C. (7), and Robert (10)

arrived on October 24th. In November, Lucy was bound to Lem. Wakeman. Early

December, saw Robert bound to Amos Henkins. Then in January, Nellie went to John

Funk. Amos Henkins returned in March for Grover so the brothers were at least able to

remain together. While these children remained in the county and transportation was

3j5 Noll, Feeble Minded in Our Midst, 100. jj6 Arthur W. James, The Public Welfare Function of Government in Virginia, Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Bulletin (Richmond: Division of Purchase and Printing, 1934): 5-8. Commentary about welfare measures for blacks occurs in footnotes to the opening pages of this document. 337 Shenandoah County Library, Shenandoah County Almshouse Records, Special Collections, microfilm, Reel #1.

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improving in the 1890s, their separation meant necessarily diminished contact. It would

be up to the farmers who took them to support any family ties.

If the child were quite young, probably bom at the almshouse, adoption was a

likely and long-standing possibility. Unwed mothers or recent widows had few options

for providing for their offspring in a country setting. Nancy Ingram had come to the

Rockbridge County Poor House in 1880 for lying-in. Whereas the census enumerator

said nothing of her pregnant condition in the spring, Superintendent Charles Brawley

reported in his annual July assessment that she had worked “sewing & house” for “100

days.” At that point, he added “child & sick” to indicate her postpartum condition.

Charley B. Ingram, her infant son, appeared under her name. As a single white female of

twenty-five who could read, but not write, Nancy was now the mother of an illegitimate

child. Giving him up for adoption as Rebecca Strickler had done ten years earlier would

not save her reputation, but certainly give the boy better opportunities in life than she

could provide. 338

When Nancy Ingram returned to the Poor House in January of 1890, she was once

again pregnant and unaccompanied by Charley. Ernest was born on April 22nd. After

recovering from the birth and working off her debt to the county, both Nancy and Ernest

left on September 16th “To George Cameron’s.” This time Nancy kept the boy with her.

However, the stay at Cameron’s was a brief two days before both were readmitted on

September 18th. The 1893 annual report reveals that Ernest and Nancy became an

abiding presence having lived at the Poor House for at least the previous year. Illness,

338 LV, Annual Reports, Box 1954, Rockbridge County, 25 July 1880; Tenth Census of the United States, 1880, Rockbridge County, Virginia.

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associated with the pregnancy, may have been a factor that kept the two on the farm.

More likely, they simply had no place else to go. That economically trying year Nancy

had only been able to work part of the time “serving.” Time proved that she was indeed

pregnant again delivering a daughter, Emma, on August 15th. The children remained

with their mother until the spring when Nancy departed with the toddler Ernest and nine-

month-old Emma on May 7th 1894. They were headed for Indiana never to appear again

in the Rockbridge Poor House Register. 339 While she had given up her first born child,

Nancy had managed ten years later, not unlike Rebecca Harlow, to keep her young

children with her. Whatever compromises, including staying at the Poor House, she had

to make to effect that union, she did. Her journey to Indiana with the children would

surely have demanded even more.

The county, for its part, would have felt it had served Nancy Ingram and her

children well, providing for them off and on for periods of several years. While this

system of adoption and boarding out in the community seems to have worked

satisfactorily on the small county level where residents were well known, reformers like

Mastin were all too aware of the possibilities for abuse of children through lack of

oversight. Complaints in more anonymous urban centers like Richmond abounded.

Children were simply ‘removed’ from the Richmond City Almshouse with no

documentation of their subsequent whereabouts.340 In addition, women often abandoned

339 LV, Annual Reports, Ledger 1893, Rockbridge County, 30 June 1893; Rockbridge County Records, Register of Paupers at Rockbridge County Poor House, 3, 5. 340 Barbara Bellows, “Tempering the Wind, 119. Elna C. Green’s “Infanticide and Infant Abandonment in the New South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865-1915, ”in the Journal of Family History, Vol.24 No.2, April 1999 points to the steady stream of children either brought to the poorhouse as abandoned or left by a decamped parent.

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their babies at so-called maternity hospitals where the infant mortality rate was adjudged

egregiously high.341 Mastin, well aware of the possibilities, wanted some orderly

accountability process put in place to protect these most vulnerable citizens.

Many private charities were of like mind. 1900 saw the creation of the Children’s

Home Society in Richmond. This organization took upon itself the placement of

dependent white children throughout the state. For example, Rev. Maybe who headed the

charity received a number of children from the Rockbridge County Poor House. Once

given over, the children were then taken to Richmond and placed out or adopted with

follow through oversight from society staff.342

Similar aid for the many black children abandoned in almshouses came more

slowly. When attention to the number of black children residing in poorhouses surfaced

after the 1908 survey, black leader T.C. Walker of Gloucester, Virginia in concert with

Hampton Institute spearheaded a program of foster care placement. Under the aegis of

the Board, Walker worked to find such children acceptable homes. But he had to prove

the worthiness of his goal in order to secure state approval. Four years later, in 1912 he

had helped 142 black children be removed from almshouses and put in foster care. With

the “success” of those figures, Mastin was able to lobby legislators. Two years later the

General Assembly passed a law allowing the courts to commit black children to the

341 No figures for the infant mortality rates in these facilities seems to exist. That lack of factual data would have been yet another reason for Mastin to investigate the institutions more carefully. 342 LV, Rockbridge County Records, Register of Paupers at the Rockbridge County Poor House, 1881-1924, 11, 14-15.

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Board of Charities and Corrections for such placement and oversight. At Mastin’s urging

the state was making incremental legal gains in developing its social services authority.343

The Board of Charities and Corrections initially serving in a predominantly

advisory capacity, under Mastin’s guidance positioned itself to vet the various county

programs. In 1908 when it was created by the General Assembly, the Board became the

recipient of quarterly reports that had previously gone to the General Auditor. When a

county wished to build a jail, almshouse, or reformatory, the local government was

required to submit those plans to the Board for approval before they could begin

construction. The year 1908 also gave the Board the right to require the segregation of

tubercular inmates from their poorhouse fellows with the hope of relocating them in one

of the two state sanatoria.344

In 1910, the local structure of poor relief was modified through legislation that

established a Board of Poor Commissioners in each county. That body included the

Overseers of the Poor plus the Superintendent of the Poor and required them to make

semi-annual reports to the Board of Charities and Corrections. Another progressive

measure in that year addressing the subject of vagrants simultaneously validated

casework as a procedure, the first statute to do so.345 1 9 1 4 saw the Board of Charities

and Corrections taking on the legal guardianship of almshouse children in order to place

them in foster care. Effectively, many children became wards of the state when the local

community was unable to take care of them.

343 Arthur W. James, The Public Welfare Function of Government in Virginia, 25th Anniversary Bulletin, 6- 7. 344 Harriet Tynes, “The History of Poor Relief Legislation in Virginia, 1776 to 1930.” MA Thesis, University of Chicago, 1932. See especially Chapter VIII, 85-105.

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By 1918 at the same time the State Assembly passed the Almshouse

Consolidation Act paving the way for the District Homes, Virginia also passed the first

laws to provide Mother’s Assistance. The measure was a form of outdoor relief aimed at

obviating the need for single mothers, presumably widows, to seek refuge in a local

poorhouse when they found themselves in straitened circumstances.346 Two years later,

the first family responsibility law came on the books. This Virginia law focused on

requiring children sixteen and over to take responsibility for their indigent parents, rather

than the other way around. If the child had an income or the ability to earn one, he or she

would bear the familial burden.347 For example, a mother receiving assistance could be

removed from the Mother’s Aid rolls if her once dependent child could now contribute to

the family income.348 Since children were required to attend school only until age

fourteen, the age limit of sixteen seemed a reasonable enough requirement.

All the welfare laws were adding up. However, the apotheosis of Mastin’s

commitment to an orderly system of social work for Virginia came with consolidating

legislation in 1922. The initial focus was on the counties and their establishment of local

welfare units. The key element was the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court for each

county and city created somewhat belatedly by the General Assembly in 1918. That

body would now be supplemented and supported by a local Board of Public Welfare

made up of concerned citizens. Finally, rather than a kindly farmer serving as

345 Ibid., 92. 346 Frank Hoffer, Counties in Transition (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1929): 128. Hoffer points out that while legislation was enacted there were no appropriations “to carry out the provisions of the Act.” 347 Ibid., 94.

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Superintendent of the Poor or a well meaning citizen as Overseer of the Poor, a trained

social worker using approved case work methods would work full time to determine

needs and dispense appropriate assistance. What had formerly been a means of providing

basic humanitarian needs—food, fuel, shelter—in times of distress gradually turned into

a system meant to effect change with no less a goal than the elimination of poverty itself.

On the state level, the General Assembly created a Board of Public Welfare that

took over the work of the Board of Charities and Corrections. Essentially, the

development on the state level required more staff and an organization that emphasized

its targeted programs. Therefore, the legislation passed created a Children’s Bureau

based in Richmond that would work with the counties to handle all cases of “dependent,

delinquent and neglected” children. Specifically, all children “not fit subjects for

probation” would be under the aegis of the state.349 This was essentially a strengthening

of the earlier legislation by providing a specific channel through which such cases were

to be handled. A corresponding Bureau of Mental Hygiene would work with institutions

for the insane, epileptic, and feeble-minded. While the law enabled the establishment of

these several bureaus, it would be two more years before the Children’s Bureau would be

up and running. While the creation of a Richmond bureaucratic level for mental hygiene

was a consolidating achievement, the men heading the various institutions had worked in

close concert with each other and Mastin for years, ever since the issue of the feeble

minded had proved so worrisome at the century’s turn.

348 Mother’s Aid was initiated in Wise County in response to the many widows there whose husbands had died in the mines. When a son entered the mines, he then would enable the mother to get off the dole. See Frank W. Hoffer, Counties in Transition, Chapter VIII “Mother’s Aid in Wise County,” 128-141. 349 Ibid., 87.

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The Board of Public Welfare, which would become the Department of Public

Welfare in 1927, was predominantly a change in name and reflective of growth rather

than a change in political substance. The Board still functioned at the pleasure of the

governor. It consisted of five unpaid members whom he appointed. The paid secretary,

Rev. Mastin’s position, was also appointed by the governor for the period o f his

administration and with a salary established by the General Assembly. Much of what

Mastin was able to accomplish in the field depended directly on his ability to persuade

the governor that his welfare measures were indeed in the best interests of the

commonwealth. This he was adept at doing with successive governors as his campaign

to close the almshouses revealed.

“The Poor Houses in many sections of Virginia are a disgrace to our state and the

locality. I hope that means can be devised to consolidate in such units as may be

OCA advisable,” declared Gov. Harry F. Byrd in 1926. Byrd seemed a willing convert to

Rev. Mastin’s social welfare proposals, particularly the closing of the almshouses and

their replacement with district homes. What in Mastin’s argument was so persuasive?

Here Mastin’s talent for fiscal conservatism came together with his humanitarian

idealism to create social welfare reform embued with true Progressive Era spirit. That

which was unkempt, disorderly, and of questionable service—namely county

poorhouses—would be replaced by a well ordered system of clean, modern facilities that

would address the particular needs of the poor.

Mastin’s argument began with establishing the dismal condition of county

institutions, a seemingly easy accomplishment based on his data collected in the 1908

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survey. From his modern reformist perspective, the Dickensian picture of Virginia’s

almshouses needed little embellishment. The farms were unsanitary, the keepers

unqualified, and the poor often left to fend for themselves tending to each other’s needs.

Even in the best of circumstances, the variety of inmates and their ailments elicited a

litany meant to emphasize the laxity of such institutions. A follow-up survey conducted

in June 1926 reiterated these deficiencies. Witness this description of a “splendid”

Valley farm:

There were 31 inmates present that day; two idiots of the worst type, female; two feebleminded boys 12 and 17 years of age; the 12 year old one was born there and the other has been there for 11 years. Both of them should have been sent to the Colony for the Feebleminded years ago. There was also a feebleminded woman with a 2 year old illegitimate baby that was born at the almshouse. A 15 year old white girl was working in the home of the Superintendent... .she was “committed” to the almshouse by the County Board of Supervisors as a delinquent, and she is locked in her room every night. She has been there for nearly two years. The other inmates were for the most part old and either feebleminded, sick, blind, or crippled; almost none of whom was able to care for themselves, much less help with the others. One crippled woman had the full responsibility for the two idiots.351

While the Superintendent and his wife were “kindly disposed” to their charges, they were

the only caregivers and thus the institution was woefully understaffed from this

professional’s perspective. This state of affairs originated with the county’s miserly

annual $12 per inmate cost. The visitor remained astonished that the Superintendent and

his wife were able to maintain the institution in such good shape with such “poor

assistance,” physically and monetarily. FTis unspoken criticism in part was that most

dollars were spent in maintaining indigents rather than finding means to lift them out of

350 As quoted in The X-Ray, Vol. 3, No. 9, May 1926, (Richmond, VA: State Board of Public Welfare): 1. 331 James, Disappearance o f the County Almshouse, 24.

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their poverty, i.e. no rehabilitative measures. Nor were the specific needs of the mentally

disabled adequately addressed.

Along with these problems, across the state the number of almshouse inmates was

dwindling for a variety of reasons. As the century turned advances in medicine helped to

draw down the almshouse population. Many infectious diseases such as smallpox and

typhus were in the preventable category. Consumption was gaining new treatments in

state run sanatoria, one for whites and one for blacks. Other state institutions for the deaf

and blind provided opportunities for training young people so afflicted. Mastin also

championed current advances in orthopedic surgery to aid crippled children from leading

a life of dependency. While the small county poorhouse would still see all manner of

inmates with a variety of ailments, the numbers were indeed declining. That left in

principle a cohort of the aged, some of whom were feeble-minded. This remaining

constituency would be much better served by a consolidated institution geared to their

needs. Specifically not addressed were those considerable numbers of women, single and

married, who had come to the almshouse to deliver children. Despite her obviously

bulky form, the pregnant woman had been rendered invisible in the new welfare scheme.

Mastin’s vision of the District Home focused on the aged. It is worth noting that

the initial idea was not to separate these elderly paupers according to their ailments, but

rather to create a more hospital styled institution to provide nursing care for them. The

impulse was a dual one. First and foremost came cost effectiveness for the communities

balanced secondarily by the desire to escape the isolated farm atmosphere where dirt and

unsanitary conditions often prevailed. While the district home concept incorporated a

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farm as well, the actual building would be a modern, clean facility with indoor plumbing,

provide needed nursing care, and finally, be properly segregated. Black women, black

men, white women, and white men occupied separate wings. Black men and women

came together to dine as did the whites on the opposite side of the building.

The money to effect this level of care so sadly lacking in individual almshouses

would be achieved by the counties pooling their resources. The sale of poorhouse farms

would enable individual counties to invest in building a new central facility and support

the paupers they sent there. The projected savings to be realized by giving up the

maintenance of their county institutions was a linchpin in the state’s argument for closing

almshouses.

The lobbying process to effect this change was a long one both on the state level

and in the counties themselves. The idea was to base the homes geographically via the

existing congressional districts. While the state had no authority to compel counties to

abandon their almshouses, the general assembly finally enacted a consolidation law in

o r-} 1918 making the district home concept a viable one. The Board of Charities and

Corrections “advocated the district home for the unplaceable cases, along with proper

pensions and a system of care for the defectives.”352 Despite this advocacy, another eight

years would pass before the first consolidation occurred in 1926. Northern Virginia

counties including Culpeper, Fauquier, Fairfax, and Prince William joined with the City

of Alexandria to build a modern home in Manassas.

352 James, Public Welfare Function o f Government in Virginia, 25th Anniversary Bulletin, 64. 353 James, Disappearance of the County Almshouse, 19.

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Even though the District Home concept was slow to take off, some gains had been

made across the state in the almshouse removal effort. The Board had brought about the

closure of some thirty almshouses “by the adoption of a system of outdoor relief or

private boarding.”354

Most of the appeal for local governments was financial. Mastin’s original 1908 survey

had looked at the value of property in relationship to the number of inmates and the

amount of money the county spent keeping the almshouse going. His data offered a

potent fiscal argument for closure as the 1926 results indicated. A new publication in that

year by the Board of Public Welfare surveyed the remaining institutions and revisited

these statistics in an attempt to persuade county fathers of the cost benefit to be gained

through consolidation.353 Alexandria owned a mere 14 acres compared to the

neighboring rural counties. The land was valued at $10,000. According to the survey,

the almshouse had only 14 inmates and cost $4341.60 to maintain per annum. To this up

and coming city of 18,000, the state’s argument made sense. Besides, the railroad was

increasingly after portions of the property so they had a ready buyer on tap.

Other counties were not brought on to the District Home bandwagon for a variety

of reasons. For example, the tidewater county of Caroline, population 15,954, had given

up using its almshouse in the early 1900s, but still maintained the 150-acre farm property

for a nominal cost of $25.00 per annum. No need for consolidation there. Then there

was the Appalachian county of Highland with a population of only 4,931. The county

maintained a 130-acre farm valued at $10,000. There were only four inmates in 1926,

354 Ibid., 16. 355 Ibid., 63-71.

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but at the same time, the farm cost the county nothing to maintain since the

superintendent’s salary was derived from his use of the farm itself or “self sustaining

from the farm” as he reported to the board. Highland had no real incentive to close an

institution that was not a drain on the county and that did provide for its inmates, several

of whom were long term residents.

Mecklenburg County and Rockbridge, however, might be persuaded. At the time

of the 1926 survey, Rockbridge supported a farm of 380 acres valued at $20,000. The

county had a population of about 27,000, but only nine inmates at the poor farm. While

the cost wasn’t too bad on the prosperous farm, only $1,334 per annum, the value of the

property offered a tempting opportunity to divest the county of an institution which had

become a hold over from an earlier era. Rockbridge joined with Albemarle, Augusta,

Alleghany, Bath and the city of Charlottesville to form the second group of counties to

consolidate in 1927.356

By contrast, Mecklenburg’s institution had only two inmates for a county of some

31,000. It’s financial position fell far short of Rockbridge. All of its 365 acres were

valued at a mere $5,000. The cost to maintain the place was $768 per annum. County

officials had no compelling reason to maintain the poorhouse that served so few. But

consolidation offered few advantages to an institution dying on the vine. Again, a

predominantly black county akin to Caroline not in the habit of providing for its black

citizenry, would simply save money by shutting the facility.

356 Ironically, the choice of a site in Waynesboro for the District Home proved costly for the county. The projected cost of construction,$40,000, grew to $83,000 of which Rockbridge owed $15,185 for its portion consuming the funds secured from the sale of the almshouse property.

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Shenandoah County was another case entirely. The 260-acre facility was valued

at $35,000 in 1926. In a population of about 21,000, the almshouse had only 10 inmates

at the time of reporting costing $1800 per annum to maintain. The institution, however,

seems to have generated a fair share of community pride over the years. One long-term

overseer, R. D. Funkhouser presided at the farm from 1894 through the early twenties.

He was a well-regarded citizen and a more than capable farmer. Under his guiding hand,

the farm had increased the stock, planted an orchard and sold wool, dairy products and

wheat as well as extra stock, all this in his first six years. His 1899 report glowed, “The

•3 c 7 Paupers unusually hearty and healthy this year. Only one death.” Over the years, this

pride in the institution remained intact causing the county to rebuff the state’s arguments

for closure while at the same time to accept other of its modern improvements such as the

addition of a county public welfare office when they were established by the 1922

legislation.

If the closure process seemed to produce mixed results, Mastin and his dedicated

early social workers were spread pretty thinly to devise the orderly, efficient state system

of services they envisioned. That they were able to establish the foundations for a system

of social services to meet the needs of Virginia’s poor was a testament to their

reformative zeal and Mastin’s dedication to public welfare. Upon his retirement, one

admirer listed his many accomplishments:

He has attacked the problems of feeble-mindedness, crippled children, institutional management, prison reform and the development of a State wide system of social organization for preventive and remedial work among the dependent, delinquent and neglected classes, and has achieved steady, sure scientific advances.. .colonies for the feeble-minded are his;

357 LV, Annual Reports, Ledger 1899-1907, Shenandoah County, November 30, 1899.

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orthopedic work is his; newer ideals of institutional care of children.. .and many other reforms in our social system.. .In the words of a distinguished, social authority, Dr. Mastin is the “South’s greatest social worker.”358

These glowing accolades echoed across the commonwealth applauding a career and job

well done. Even Mastin would acknowledge, however, that the work had really just

begun. The ongoing efforts to provide for the “dependent, defective, and delinquent”

challenged their stewardship.

Progressive reformers of social welfare like Dr. Mastin responded to the very real

needs of poverty stricken people that they had observed first hand. Many grounded their

impulses for humanitarian service in an abiding Christian faith, rather than what would

become professional training in the field. They turned their talents to helping the

impoverished by devising efficient centralized programs meant to address what they saw

were the causes of their poverty.

On the one hand, these southern reformers embraced the promise of new scientific

discoveries to alleviate suffering and government to provide the means. At the same

time, the entangling threads of race and inheritance complicated their achievements. The

desire to bring order and efficiency to a system of managing the poor built new

institutions characterized by their rigidity and repressive controls. Inmates were

powerless once inside. The feeble-minded, gathered in racially segregated colonies, were

therefore sterilized to protect the public from their menace.

Segregation policies that led to the establishment of separate institutions for

African Americans had the consequence of hardening racial lines rather than ameliorating

j58 “Dr. Mastin Resigns,” The X-Ray, Vol. 3, No. 9, May 1926 (Richmond, VA: State Board of Public Welfare): 1.

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them. Blacks and whites at the county poor farm shared a fluid mutual relationship that

was impossible at the strictly segregated District Home. The gap between the races

would continue to widen as programs for blacks were developed and staffed by blacks,

but under the control of the white state administrators of public welfare.

The old and infirm were likewise segregated and removed from their

communities. Gathered together in widely dispersed district homes, the aged received

sanitary hospital style care in strictly segregated facilities. No opportunity for the

development of communal life would avail itself in these new facilities. Interaction

between the farmer’s family and the variety of inmates that sometimes created a

community on the poor farm was replaced by proper nursing care alone.

These major shifts in thinking about who the poor were and what kind of

treatment they deserved inevitably affected the poorhouse itself. The institution

originally designed to take in all sorts defined the poor by the fact of their poverty alone.

By the end of the nineteenth century, when reformers redefined paupers according to

their condition, the poorhouse was seen as not doing enough to alleviate those conditions.

Rather than accord the institution some value within its local setting, reformers

denigrated the place for supplying merely custodial care to a motley group of often

morally reprehensible people. Their rhetoric both vilified the poorhouse and harshly

judged its inmates, reducing them to humanity’s dregs.

Ironically, the centralized programs devised on the state level by many dedicated

and well meaning people often suffered from the same old affliction. The balance

between quality of care and the funds to maintain it teetered precariously. Demand on

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the new institutions almost immediately led to overcrowding. Within ten years a wing

had to be added to the Manassas facility costing an additional $7, 452. Even then,

crowded conditions often prevailed.359 Wrestling with their own obligations to fiscal

responsibility, the new social welfare professionals could not meet all the needs of the

poor they knew existed. The indigent, without the familiar poorhouse to turn to, simply

fended for themselves.

359 Robert H. Kirkwood, ‘Fit Surroundings’, 57.

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REMAINS OF THE POOR HOUSE

“But there ought to be some way of caring for sick and crazy people without

sending them to the poorhouse. And now with all the poorhouses going, there soon

won’t be any place for them but the gaol.” So laments Mrs. Stout, wife of the local

doctor, in Ellen Glasgow’s 1925 novel Barren Ground set in a rural tobacco growing

o/:a county an hour’s trainride west of Richmond, Virginia. Mrs. Stout gives voice to the

stark realities facing the rural poor in 1920s Virginia. While the poorhouse was an inn of

last resort in most communities, the institution offered some semblance of care, certainly

more than that of the local jail.

Just as Rev. Mastin’s campaign to close the almshouses was making inroads, Mrs.

Stout voiced the question that rarely appears in Progressive reformers’ accounts of the

development of social services in Virginia. Where were the pauper inmates of these

institutions to go? To her notation of the “sick and crazy” may be added the dependent

and delinquent children, the feeble-minded, the idiots, the blind, the crippled, the indigent

mothers with infants, and the families temporarily fallen on hard times. The two District

Homes established in the late 1920s took care of some of the aged poor in their respective

counties. What happened to the remaining poor for whom the poorhouse had been, not

simply a last, but an only, resort?

360 Ellen Glasgow, Barren Ground (New York: Modem Library, Random House, 1933): 498.

194

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The public welfare theory was that a reduction in institutional care or “indoor

relief’ would be compensated for by a judicious development of “outdoor relief.” In

many counties that eliminated their poor farms, the state had aided them in finding

appropriate placement in other community institutions, usually private, for their few

remaining long-term inmates. Those eligible for state institutions such as the tubercular

sanatoria or the Feeble-Minded Colony could be sent there if room was available. Other

cases were to be handled locally by a form of outdoor relief either monetary or material.

Presumably county funds would be available for such relief from the savings accrued

through the closing of the local poorhouse.

Virginia public welfare officials touted the virtues of the District Home as a

modern, efficient, and caring institution that supplanted its draconian forebear effectively

quashing its unsavory image. Arthur James as the state’s representative to the cities and

counties presented the ideal scenario of the District Home program in combination with

judicious outdoor relief practices:

The completion of this program will.. .result in a proper classification and segregation of the almshouse population. It will.. .restore an inmate to self-support and self-respect by medical and mental care and rehabilitation, it will take children out of the almshouses and place them in good foster homes...it will by social investigation and planning, relieve the necessity of many persons who formerly went to the almshouses coming to the district homes, and will so reduce the number of persons “on the county” that the total cost of their care will be less by half in some instances...361

James’s idea of ‘proper segregation’ meant according to the individual’s physical

disability as well as by gender and race. All inmates were to receive thorough physical

examinations to determine the cause of their respective disabilities. A person with

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epilepsy, for instance, would be better placed in the colony for epileptics rather than a

District Home. This sorting of individuals in order to provide targeted services extended

to contemporary understandings of gender and racial segregation. The new homes had a

wing each for white men, white women, black men and black women. This arrangement

solved the haphazard rooming conditions found in many rural poorhouses where making

do with available space took precedence over ‘proper segregation.’

Equally important for James, proper gender segregation would reduce the

instances of pregnancy among female inmates as well as control the spread of venereal

disease. Both of these conditions were attributed to the vulnerable condition of feeble-

362 minded women. Practical reformers linked promiscuity with feeble-mindedness.

Since the condition was understood as hereditary, they envisioned an explosion of feeble

minded children destined to be wards of the state. Their solution to this looming problem

was isolation or segregation of the woman. Ideally, she would be sent to the Colony for

the Feeble-Minded in Lynchburg. If no place was available, she would be better watched

in a District Home by trained staff until an opening in the state institution occurred.363

In addition to such custodial care, each District Home would provide the

appropriate nursing care needed according to each inmate’s ailment. Early bills in the

state assembly presented the physical plant at the new institution:

J<51 James, The Public Welfare Function of Government in Virginia, 25th Anniversary Bulletin, 66. 362 Ibid., 36. “Under this supervision the feeble-minded woman would not annually bring forth a new illegitimate child for the State to care for, nor would the venereal spread contagion therefrom, as is now too frequently the case.” 363 On the association of feeble-mindedness and promiscuity see Steven Noll, Feeble Minded in Our Midst, especially Chapter Four, “The Promise of Sterilization,” 65-80.

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.located on large farms with a hospital for the sick, a home for the aged, a workhouse for the custodial care of vagrants and those convicted of non support, and a separate building for low-grade feeble-minded inmates.364 The outlines of this image vary little from the original early nineteenth-century

Alexandria facility with the exception of a separate building dedicated to the care of the

feeble-minded. However, personnel presiding at the institution would be professional.

Whereas most small county almshouses depended primarily on the farmer and his wife to

provide nursing care for the inmates, qualified medical personnel would take over in the

consolidated institution. Since the District Home was a large farm, farm productivity

would be overseen by a reputable man or family who had no direct role in the care of

indigents. His job was to make the farm a going concern so as to be self-sufficient, the

ideal for the poor farm of old. Staff would consist of a superintendent, a nurse, and two

attendants. A doctor would be on call but not in residence at the institution. The high

quality of care in the Manassas facility pointed out in a later study was directly attributed

to its superintendent, a registered nurse, who ran the facility for its first seventeen

years.365

The District Home in the end was for the qualified few, those worthy aged

citizens unable to manage on their own. Other poorhouse occupants would presumably

find aid through a system of outdoor relief. James’s sunny picture of how this system

would function was dependent on two elements: having the trained personnel to do the

appropriate ‘social investigations’ and having the financial means to not only relieve their

‘necessity,’ but also effect the rehabilitation he envisioned. The latter fiscal issue

’64 Virginia General Assembly, Senate Journal, 1912, Bill N o.224, p. 189; House Journal, 1912, Bill No.327, pp. 249, 449,462 as quoted in Robert Hudson Kirkwood, ‘Fit Surroundings’, 40. 365 Kirkwood, ‘Fit Surroundings’, 57-58.

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appeared simple. Ostensibly the counties would be saving so much money through the

closing of their inefficient poorhouses and through thorough case studies that they would

have the wherewithal to accomplish these goals. The former would be achieved by

establishing county departments of welfare that would oversee the administration and

development of case studies. The dispensing of charity would no longer be in the hands

of well meaning overseers of the poor who, despite their community prominence and

good hearts, were not properly trained in modern social service practice. Underpinning

this plan for the counties was a corresponding belief that through these professional

management techniques, demand on the entire system would be reduced. By weeding

out those simply seeking a handout, social investigators would be aiding the truly needy

whose numbers would diminish as the causes of their poverty were addressed.

As is often the case, the rosy picture proffered by James hit the reality of rural

county life. Some of the inherent local problems were documented in one study

published in 1929 that looked at the accomplishments, and the failings, of the relatively

new programs Mastin’s efforts had secured. Frank Hoffer’s Counties in Transition

examined both public and private programs for poor relief. His findings help to explain

what happened to some of those rural indigents who had turned to their county poor farm

in the past and why some counties were reluctant to close their institutions in spite of the

state’s push to do so.366

366 In 1923 the University of Virginia established an Institute for Research in the Social Sciences which sponsored Hoffer’s work.

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Hoffer, an associate professor of public welfare at the University of Virginia,367

looked at a number of counties around the commonwealth to see how the new public

welfare initiatives were progressing. One such was Albemarle that had joined with

Rockbridge and four other Valley counties to build the Waynesboro District Home in

1927. Examining this county would give Hoffer a basis to assess the relative merit of the

district home program as a whole. Albemarle had contributed 26%, or $19,730 out of a

total $83,125, of the financing for the district home based on its population and presumed

use of the institution. Operating funds for the year cost the county $3, 107.50.368 Of the

forty-eight inmates in the home at the end of the first year, approximately half were old

and in need of medical attention on a regular basis. This picture matched the original

intent of the program to aid Virginia’s aged indigents.

While the general policy was not to admit children, children appeared on the rolls.

Two were placed in foster care, but three, “two colored children and one white child”

ages “two, five, and eight” remained waiting for placement. With no other county

resource for indigent children, the only place for them was the district home even though

“it is not advisable to have children mingle with old persons usually found in this type of

institution.”369 The District Home found itself for all its modernity in much the same

position as the old poor farm when administering poor policy. Real necessities

compromised the ideal prospects of the district home.

Albemarle County maintained a program of outdoor relief as well providing for

approximately 1640 families from 1924 to 1926. Hoffer selected 232 of these and

367 This graduate study program was relatively new, just six years old at the time of Hoffer’s publication. 368 James, The Public Welfare Function of Government in Virginia, 25th Anniversary Bulletin, 70,72.

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analyzed the reasons they gave for applying for relief along with those supplied by an

additional 348 families from four other counties. What he found was that the majority

claimed either ‘old age’ or ‘sickness’ as the precipitating condition. However, other

categories complete the picture of events and conditions that put a family in a precarious

state. ‘Tuberculosis,’ a separate line item from ‘sickness,’ effected 27 Albemarle County

families while another 27 claimed ‘desertion and non-support.’ The remaining categories

had seven or fewer families each: dependent children, blind, crippled, feeble-minded,

unemployment, imprisonment, insane-hospital, maternity (unmarried mothers), death or

accident/disaster. Any one of these conditions could send a family temporarily over the

edge so that they made application for assistance.

In the past, approaching an Overseer of the Poor for help was difficult enough, but

at least he was a known county person. Coming hat in hand to new county welfare agents

was not easy for many applicants, especially when they would now be investigated to

prove their needs were legitimate. Hoffer, however, pointed out the larger context of

pride in fending for oneself. Independent Virginians eschewed charity. He observed that

many more nondependent families “prefer to make all sorts of sacrifices rather than seek

aid.”370 Significantly, a large number of applicants were women who for a variety of

reasons lacked a traditional “bread winner” to sustain the family unit. They had come to

the end of their sacrifices and were seeking aid to keep the family going. As such, these

women were members of a larger group that social workers called the “dependent

classes.”

370 William Frank Hoffer, Counties in Transition, 58.

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As an academic, Hoffer took care to define that term. One reason he did so was

to explain the high incidence of sickness researchers found in those coming to the county

for aid. He found three significant factors that characterized the “dependent classes.”

The first was heredity. The applicants were of the “weaker type, physically, mentally or

both.” The second was selection both social and biological by which he meant to rule out

hereditary factors. Rather, circumstances such as accident could leave a person in a

disadvantaged state. “Selection and competition force them to less favorable

opportunities,” he concluded. The third was environment, those “conditions under which

they live and work.” Lack of adequate food, clothing or housing could lead to sickness

and dependency.371 Hoffer’s assessment of the causes of poverty was couched in the

‘scientific’ language of Social Darwinism as his categories make clear. Much of the

work of the social scientists of his era employed the imposition of scientific methods on

social conditions to find what they believed were objective solutions to heretofore

intractable problems. As Hoffer pointed out, these “dependent classes” remained

stubborn social dilemmas for the new social service professionals.

Defining conditions, however, did not immediately change the circumstances.

Rural communities still had their share of dependent children, the physically and

mentally disabled, single mothers, and the tubercular continuing to seek assistance. In

essence many poor who had often sought temporary refuge at the poor farm when unable

to make ends meet on their own were searching for where to go. Their difficulties did not

disappear when the county almshouse did. The option for temporary relief that required

371 Ibid., 61.

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shelter especially for the sick and injured was significantly reduced when the poor farms

closed. Institutions that might serve this group were not plentiful in country settings.

A hospital would seem a likely candidate. For example, what became Lynchburg

General Hospital evolved from the almshouse itself, highlighting the acute care needs

that often brought the poor to the almshouse in the first place. Moreover, early hospitals

served the lower classes as charity institutions remaining close to those almshouse roots.

Middle- and upper-class patients were still seen in their homes by local doctors well into

the twentieth century. In 1897 the Lynchburg institution began its transformation to a

city hospital with the addition of an operating room. Some thirty-five years later, it was a

143-bed facility serving a wide radius and gaining respectability as more doctors referred

patients to its services. 372 Lynchburg, however, was a city. Few rural counties had a

hospital, relatively new institutions themselves. Country doctors continued to visit

patients in their homes when required. Those people in such reduced circumstances that

they sought the shelter of the local poorhouse in times of sickness remained. Faced with

the problem of how to care for these needy, rural counties were often reluctant to give up

their local almshouses for the consolidated facility.

Nor was the new district home, if opted for, necessarily equipped to aid many

who had come to the county poor farm in the past. The new edifice had been designed to

accommodate approximately sixty-five people pooled from five to six jurisdictions.

Those spaces were for long-term ‘unplaceables,’ not those seeking temporary refuge or

acute care. State social workers promoted a vision of the worthy aged residing in a clean

j72 Blanton, Medicine in Virginia, 220.

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well-lighted place. Single mothers, the feeble-minded, dependent children and

consumptives were not necessarily in that picture.

Even if they had been, getting there would have been an issue. State social

workers had often complained that county poor farms were located in remote corners of

any given county. Ironically, district homes were even more removed for the poor

sometimes well outside their home county. While roads had improved, the location of

the district home some distance from county centers created yet another barrier for the

needy. The poor would find the trip a formidable undertaking even if the institution

could find room for them. The burden of temporary shelter remained with each local

county under the aegis of outdoor relief, since with no ‘place of general reception’, a

given county had no physical means to care for those needing temporary refuge.

Then again Hoffer was aware that the District Home itself was likely to be

plagued with the same problems the local poorhouse had faced, attributable to inadequate

personnel and to the condition of the inmates themselves.

While the consolidated district home marks an advance over the county almshouse, its failure.. .will arise, in part, as a result of its administration and in part to the type of inmates received.. .a motley group— the aged, the feeble-minded, the epileptic and the chronically sick— are sent to the district home.

Hoffer’s short list points to an inherent weakness in James’ promising analysis of the

state system. The feeble-minded and epileptic were still on the rolls. His notation

implies that the state institution for these dependents was unable to accommodate

everyone. In point of fact, the waiting list for that institution was a long one. Given the

373 Ibid., 231.

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concerns of professionals for the hereditary nature of mental disability, females of child

bearing age headed the list waiting for space in the Colony for the Feeble-Minded.

Males with varying degrees of retardation remained in their respective county

institutions. Mastin’s query in 1915 about placing the most severely retarded in state

insane asylums had been met with the attorney general’s dictum. Those institutions were

not legally custodial for ‘idiots”; therefore, the county almshouses had to bear the

responsibility for their care. As a follow-on institution, the District Home would have to

house the feeble-minded and provide custodial care for idiots. The existence of the state

run Epileptic Colony and Colony for Feeble-Minded was often cited by reformers as a

plus in the social welfare fabric and a reason to close local almshouses. The fact of its

finite capacity remained muted. If these people had not been sent to the District Home,

where indeed were they to go? And what of the groups not specifically mentioned by

Hoffer? Where were the children, the single mothers, the tubercular? Where would they

all go?

Tuberculosis more commonly known as consumption was very much a fact of life

in the early twentieth century despite the growing understanding of how the highly

contagious disease was transmitted. As William Rothstein has pointed out Koch isolated

the bacillus in 1882. However, the gap between medical science and medical practice

was a real one. He argues that such discoveries had no direct application to a general

medical practice based on therapeutics. Therefore, bacteriology while adding much to

the prevention of disease had not done much for “the drug treatment of the disease.”374

However, Koch’s discovery changed the way people thought about the disease. Since the

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disease had been thought hereditary, the understanding that it was communicable led to

the push for sanatoria where tuberculosis sufferers could be isolated.375

Deaths from the disease reached a peak in Virginia urban centers in 1896 and then

witnessed a gradual falling off by 1930, but not eradication.376 The decline in numbers

could be partially accounted for by a concerted statewide effort mounted against the

disease. Concerned citizens working to educate the public in the prevention of

tuberculosis formed by 1910 the Virginia Anti-Tuberculosis Association for the “study,

prevention, and treatment of tuberculosis.” The group maintained a three-pronged

approach to the problem. An educational campaign would alert the citizenry to the latest

medical advice on the “nature and treatment of consumption.” Secondly, a hands-on

effort with local health authorities would “work for the alleviation of consumption.” In

other words, those already stricken with the disease would receive proper treatment.

Concrete results of the campaign were the development of municipal sanatoria in both

Richmond and Petersburg. Third and finally, the association would operate a central

information bureau to link local and state authorities. 377 Across the state in cities such as

Lynchburg, Norfolk, Winchester, and Charlottesville local tuberculosis groups cropped

up. Worthy as these efforts were, they remained necessarily an urban phenomenon in

their development. Nor were they aimed initially at the illiterate indigent population.

374 Rothstein, American Physicians in the Nineteenth Century, 266. 375 Ibid. See particularly Chapter 14, pp.261-281, for Rothstein’s assessment of the relationship between bacteriology and the practice of medicine. j76 Ibid., 270. Richmond had “275 in 1886, when the population was about 75,000. In 1930 deaths from tuberculosis had fallen to 176, although the population was greater by 100,000.” 311LV, Second Annual Report of State Board of Charities and Corrections, (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent o f Printing, 1910): 183.

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Alexandria provides a case in point. The Alexandria Anti-Tuberculosis League

was active in the city by 1910. In addition, the city had one of the early charity hospitals

in the state, founded in 1871 for the working white poor. Tubercular blacks had no

0 7 0 municipal institution other than the almshouse available to them. Therefore, despite

the signs o f a rising awareness of the disease and the need for sanatoria to accommodate

the victims, the poorhouse remained a repository for tubercular inmates. In an attempt to

get at the depth of the tubercular problem in almshouses, the state board initiated the

gathering of data in 1910. Superintendents of the Poor who had heretofore filed an

annual report with the office of the General Auditor were required to submit population

and financial information to the State Board of Charities and Corrections. Among the

categories was one for contagious diseases divided into sections for tuberculosis and for

syphilis. These were further broken down according to inmates having the disease and

0 7 0 those who had died of the disease during the year. While the syphilis category

disappeared the following year absorbed by the ‘other diseases’ category, the individual

tuberculosis lines remained as testament to the persistence and pervasiveness of

consumption in the poorhouse population.

The state, however, had no remedies and could only caution on the appropriate

handling of such cases. Since segregation was the main instrument of prevention, state

inspectors advised isolation. In 1912, for example, Alexandria’s almshouse was cited by

378 These conditions existed despite the common knowledge that blacks were particularly hard hit by respiratory ailments such as tuberculosis. Todd L. Savitt notes what doctors called “Negro consumption or Struma Africana” in his study “Black Health on the Plantation: Masters, Slaves, and Physicians” inScience and M edicine in the O ld South, 335. 379 LV, Second Annual Report of State Board of Charities and Corrections, (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Printing, 1910), 156.

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the State Board of Charities and Corrections for its need to provide a separate building

for such contagious inmates. Records indicate that the Alexandria poorhouse

continued to receive between one and three tubercular inmates annually into the 1920s.381

The indigent poor remained the commonest victims of the wasting disease despite well

meaning efforts at prevention.

Likewise, rural poorhouses took in those suffering from consumption. In 1913,

Shenandoah County’s Poor Farm received an admonition similar to Alexandria’s from

the state inspectors.3 82 They needed to provide a separate building to house such

infectious paupers. In one sense, the citation was a practical acknowledgment by the

state that the presence of consumptive inmates was a fact that must be dealt with

appropriately. Nor was the problem likely to go away soon even with suitable

segregation. Farther down the Valley, the death rolls from the Rockbridge County Poor

House regularly listed those who died of consumption up to the time of its closing in

1927.383 Clearly, the local rural poorhouse served that sector of the populace, however

inadequately from the state’s perspective. Where were these people to find relief when

the almshouse closed? Would the county find a private home as had been the practice in

Caroline County or other private facility to care for them and at what expense?

380 LV, Fourth Annual Report of State Board of Charities and Corrections, (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Printing, 1912): 67. j81 These statistics gleaned from the Annual Reports of the State Board of Charities and Corrections from 1909 to 1927. 382 LV, Fifth Annual Report of State Board of Charities and Corrections, (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Printing, 1913): 75. 38j LV, Rockbridge County Records, Register of Paupers at the Rockbridge County Poor House, 1881-1924, 204-207.

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Again, state officials offered the presence of state sanatoria as a solution. While it

is true that advances in science and education helped those suffering from tuberculosis

during these years, that disease remained a force to be reckoned with that the District

Home was not meant or fully equipped to handle. State welfare agents argued that

indigent consumptives would be transferred to the state sanatorium at Catawba in the

same way that the feeble-minded would go to the colony in Lynchburg. Statewide

legislation passed in 1910 directed counties to appropriate whatever amount necessary up

to $75 “to convey to and to help to maintain” indigents known to have tuberculosis to the

-3 o 4 state institution at Catawba. This bill addressed the financial responsibilities of the

local community for the poor white population. It would be up to the county to

determine if it were more fiscally feasible to maintain the consumptive in the county or

send them to the state facility. That is, if the state facility even had room. Many more

sufferers existed than these state institutions could accommodate. 385 While private

sanatoria emerged in some cities, expense was also an issue in sending an indigent there.

Again the local almshouse often made the most sense to pragmatic Overseers of the Poor

for caring for tuberculosis victims. Catawba was a whites only institution as well.

Where were blacks afflicted with the disease supposed to go?

Not until 1916 did Virginia create a state institution for the care of African

American sufferers of tuberculosis despite statistics that fully half the resulting deaths

emanated from the black community. Miss Agnes Randolph of the Anti-Tuberculosis

384 LV, Second Annual Report of State Board of Charities and Corrections, (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Printing, 1910): 223.

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Society explained the critical need for such a facility in her statement to the Board of

Charities and Corrections that year:

The 1,981 deaths among the negroes is a startling figure, since the disease is spread chiefly through ignorance and among the very poor. Probably adequate segregation is today the only means of controlling the disease among the negroes and preventing its spread in the white homes in which they work. $40,000 will enable the State to equip only from 50 to 60 beds. This is a frail bulwark against the inroads of the disease from 15,000 to 18,000 infected negroes.386

Miss Randolph’s concerns highlight the enormity of the problem both in terms of

numbers and the dollars allotted to stem the tide. The impetus for a state supported

sanatorium for the African American population seems to have reached a critical mass,

not because of the alarming numbers alone, but because of the potential of spreading the

disease to the white community as Miss Randolph suggests.

As Todd L. Savitt has shown, tuberculosis took a particularly swift and harsh toll

in the antebellum slave community.387 African Americans seemed particularly

susceptible to respiratory ailments in general. However, despite the ‘startling’ number of

deaths in the early twentieth-century black community, not until the disease was seen to

migrate from black workers to white employers, were officials disposed to provide a

measure of relief. While some state response to the prevalence of tuberculosis in the

black populace was preferable to inaction, the ‘bulwark’ was indeed a frail one. Many

more sufferers existed than a fifty-bed state institution could accommodate. Poor blacks

385 LV, Fifth Annual Report of State Board of Charities and Corrections, (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Printing, 1913): 44. The report references “the long waiting list” which Catawba “continually has.” 386 LV, Eighth Annual Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Printing, 1917): 6. 387 Todd L. Savitt, “Slave Health and Southern Distinctiveness,” in Disease and Distinctiveness, 120-153.

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simply carried the disease with them until total debilitation sent them to the poorhouse

seeking some measure of relief.

Private sanatoria emerged in some cities, but offered no real option for

consumptives in rural counties where the path of the disease was as convoluted as it

seemed intractable. While most Virginia cities saw a falling off of deaths from the

disease during the early twentieth century, rural counties did not always follow suit.

Wyndham Blanton’s medical history of the era cites evidence of such an urban pattern

repeated in Nelson and Elizabeth counties, but exactly the opposite in the more remote

Lee and Greenville counties where mortality held steady or actually increased between

1896 and 1930. 388 The local county almshouse was often the only institution able to

receive the poor, black and white, afflicted with the disease. There, at least the tubercular

would be seen by a doctor, nursed when required, and buried if the disease overtook

them.

State welfare reformers were aware that tuberculosis victims continued to appear

in the rural almshouses as this census from 1921 attests:

Our agent’s report of one of our county almshouse.. .showed sixteen old and infirm, three idiots, two consumptives, one feeble-minded, two prostitutes, four physically afflicted, and seven children, ranging from a TOQ few months to sixteen years of age.

388 Blanton, Medicine in Virginia, 270. Nelson County abuts the southern border of Albemarle County in the Blue Ridge while Elizabeth City County was across the James River from Norfolk. Lee and Greenville are sparsely populated counties along the North Carolina border. Lee creates the westernmost tip of the state angling between Tennessee and North Carolina in the mountainous mining country of southwest Virginia. Greenville slips between Brunswick and Southampton all the way to the east in southside Virginia tobacco growing and pig farming country. 389 LV, Thirteenth Annual Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Printing, 1922): 11.

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At the same time that county almshouses continued to report tubercular inmates and

deaths, the numbers were steadily climbing in the state facilities as more urban victims

were identified. Residents at Catawba and Piedmont jumped by 300 in 1919 from 679

people to 998. The following year, the census rose by more than 400 to 1,429. In 1921

the number was 1,707 having more than doubled in just three years. Clearly the state was

well aware of the severity of the public health problem and worked to meet the rising

demand as cases were identified.

However, with state institutions filled to overflowing, local almshouses out of

necessity remained as places of refuge for consumptives. That role could be a double-

edged sword if the poorhouse had no adequate space to isolate the victim. However,

poverty stricken victims in the throes of the disease had few options when they could no

longer manage on their own. As the almshouses closed, relief options for these rural

county indigents diminished.

The poorhouse replacement, the District Home, should have been a logical option

for county officials needing a place for tubercular inmates. However, state social

workers had portrayed the District Home as a more appropriate environment for

Virginia’s aged infirm, not those suffering from infectious diseases like tuberculosis. The

design of the new facility reflected that aim addressing the need for segregation in terms

of gender and race, not contagion. No specific arrangement, no isolation ward, existed.390

If the counties were unable to place these indigents in state facilities, they were simply

390 See Robert H. Kirkwood, ‘Fit surroundings This text includes architectural drawings for the first District Home in Manassas.

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out of luck. The tubercular in rural counties were a segment of the population that fell

through the cracks of an ambitious new social services system.

If the tubercular were given short shrift in the District Home plan, poor pregnant

women lost what had often been tacit acceptance of their condition. Of the seven

children cited in the above example from 1921, the youngest, just a few months old was

probably born at the institution. Possibly one of the ‘prostitutes’ was the child’s mother.

Poorhouse records regularly cited the presence of women in the poorhouse giving birth.

Some were married, some widowed, but many were unwed women both black and white.

The state’s response to these facts was a curious mix of indignation and feigned

ignorance. Tellingly, state records rendered this segment of the poor a nonentity.

Whereas consumptives were a specific category on forms used to annually report the

almshouse population, pregnant women or new mothers were nowhere to be found.

Their babies would be noted in the ‘children under sixteen’ section emphasizing their

dependency separate from their mothers. However, pregnancy as a condition had no

place. Being with child did not fit under ‘contagious disease’ or ‘old age’ certainly. Nor

were the ‘defective’ categories of blind, cripple, deaf and dumb, epileptic, or feeble

minded applicable descriptors. That left the catchall category of “Other diseases and

unknown causes of destitution.” In effect, these women, somehow unworthy of their own

designated column, remained invisible. However, their circumstances were anything but

as local almshouse records indicate.

The presence of young women with new babies at the poorhouse was common

knowledge. Of the nine inhabitants of the poorhouse in Ellen Glasgow’s 1926 Barren

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Ground, one is an “indigent young mother” and her “week-old infant.”391 Much earlier,

during the Civil War, the Alexandria Keeper of the Poor noted in his ledger, “Jany 5

1863, $3.00 paid for delivering Pool Gains of her child who ought not to be here nor

hardly anywhere else according to my opinion.”392 Whether his opprobrium was directed

at the child or the mother is open to conjecture. Certainly, illegitimacy stigmatized the

child and rendered a mother a “delinquent” in the terminology social workers employed

thirty years later. However, the Keeper noted the woman by name and knew her well

enough to have an opinion about her and her new offspring. Nor did he turn her away

when her time came.

When early twentieth-century Virginia social workers acknowledged these

women, they painted a worst-case scenario of condemnation that provided yet another

reason to close local almshouses.

Receiving such women free of cost, and allowing them to go away after their confinement and leave their children to be cared for by the institution, is not only an unjust burden upon the community, but it encourages this kind of vice by aiding the women to cover their wrong, and it often results in the death of the child. Unfortunately, the concern of the writer here emphasizes the moral lassitude of the

mother and the subsequent fiscal responsibility laid by her on the county. While some

mothers no doubt did leave their children, that circumstance was not so common as the

social worker portrayed in the rural counties. Not all young mothers at the poorhouse fell

into the category of unwed. When they did, they were accepted regardless of the private

j91 Glasgow, Barren Ground, 499. 392 As quoted in Ruth M. Ward, “The Alexandria Alms House and Work House,” Arlington Historical M agazine, V.6, No.4, October 1980, 65. j93 LV, Third Annual Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Public Printing, 1911): 59.

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opinion of the Keeper. Certainly, Glasgow’s description of the young mother remains

morally neutral. Nor were the numbers of pregnant women always few or occasional.

Significantly, and more likely, these mothers, like Pool Gains, were generally known

members of their rural communities defined first by their poverty.

Rockbridge County provides a most compelling case in point. Between 1887 and

1910, forty-three women delivered at the almshouse. Of that number eight women

returned to birth a second child, and in three cases, a third infant over the time period.394

These women remained at the poor farm after delivering to recover and to work off the

debt incurred. The status of the women varied as well. Many mothers were unwed,

others married, and, in at least one case, widowed. Some stayed only several weeks, but

the average was several months. When they left, their children—if they lived—went

with them. Clearly these women had come to rely on the county institution for lying-in

and birthing. Where were poor pregnant women to go when the poorhouse closed? The

options were limited and often unsavory.

A young woman “in trouble” provides the common scenario. Ellen Glasgow’s

heroine in Barren Ground finds herself jilted and pregnant. Her response to this

wretched predicament is to escape the local community for the anonymity of the city, in

her case New York.395 Many young Virginia women, poor and quite otherwise, sought

out maternity hospitals when they found themselves in similar circumstances. When

394 LV, Rockbridge County Records, Register of Paupers at the Rockbridge County Poor House, 1881- 1924. 395 Glasgow, Barren Ground. The train provides her escape route and presumably she had enough money to live in the city and pay for the child’s delivery. The question of whether or not to keep the child is side stepped by Glasgow having the baby die in childbirth, a not uncommon circumstance. The subsequent

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discretion was tantamount these facilities offered no questions asked. At the maternity

hospital, a fee—however minimal—was required. If a poor woman could scrape together

the necessary cash, what she received for her effort was often minimal if not downright

dangerous treatment. Often, many of these reluctant mothers abandoned their newborns

presumably giving them up for adoption.

These institutions came under the scrutiny of Dr. Mastin and the Board of

Charities and Corrections soon after the Board’s inception in 1908. Mastin, in addition to

visiting jails and almshouses, also inspected these homes. What he found could be

disheartening. Young women anxious to preserve their reputations would birth the child,

pay the fee, and then abandon the baby to its fate. In reputable institutions, the child

would be well cared for and then placed in foster care or brought to the attention of such

agencies as the Children’s Home Society of Virginia known for its caring placing-out

practices for white children from its inception in 1900. However, many maternity

hospitals were decidedly squalid. If a doctor presided during labor, that was his major

contact with the institution. Nursing staff provided aftercare for women and babies, if

there was any to be had. The children consigned to their care were treated offhandedly at

best. More likely abuse occurred through understaffing which resulted in poor child-care

and consistent malnourishment. No figures for infant mortality rates in these places

seems to have existed for Virginia, but a New York study found a rate as high as 40%,

presumably the tip of the iceberg, by all accounts.396

psychological response of the mother suggests that she would indeed have cared for the infant had the child survived. j96 James, Virginia’s Social Awakening, 35-50.

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While the city had many such homes, so did the country. Women fled the city for

the rural countryside where these isolated “baby farms” provided anonymity of a sort for

them. However, the abandoned babies were no less secure for their living in the healthy

country air. Mastin approached one such county place presided over by a woman he

“judged to be a high-grade moron” who had six children under the age of two that she

claimed were her own. Pretending to be in need of a place for his own illegitimate child,

Mastin was able to dupe the woman into revealing the nature of her business.

Subsequently, he appealed to the county Board of Supervisors to close the place down

and remove the children to “a properly kept institution.”397

Mastin’s investigations of maternity hospitals led to Virginia legislation in 1910

for licensing of such establishments. Such a licensing procedure required an annual

inspection of all known institutions by a qualified member of the Board of Charities and

Corrections or appointee. Subsequent annual reports listed the results of each

institution’s inspection. This early legislation and rudimentary oversight points to the

Board of Charities and Corrections growing emphasis on the care and welfare of children,

the most vulnerable members of society. Since the mothers themselves were often long

gone, state social workers focused on their abandoned offspring whom they hoped to

shape into useful citizens. Mastin’s commitment to this endeavor was evidenced in the

-5Q0 willingness of such a slimly funded advisory body to take on even more work.

397 Ibid., 35-36. j98 Ibid., 35-36. James’s account which is highly laudatory of Mastin, often colors the offending places in the very worst light. However, the fact of their existence and the fate of the abandoned children was indeed real under the rhetoric.

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Unwed mothers, often prostitutes, did have a champion in Kate Waller Barrett and

her work with the National Florence Crittenton Mission. These homes were aimed at

providing a safe place for the girl who had strayed to birth her child and raise the baby

while learning some sort of trade that would provide support for mother and child when

they left the institution. While the homes were located across the country, they were a

predominantly urban phenomenon with the exception of Ivakota Farms established in

1915 in Clifton, Virginia. That facility targeted white girls, often suffering from venereal

disease. At its inception, the farm accommodated about thirty women rising to a high of

137 in 1923. Many other women came for medical treatment at the clinic established at

the three hundred acre facility in Fairfax County.399

Florence Crittenton homes in the North were generally integrated institutions, but

not so in the South. When Barrett attempted to build a cottage for black women at

Ivakota, she was unable to secure funding or even interest in the plight of unwed black

women.400 In the long run Ivakota Farms was a country retreat for urban white women

more than an opportunity for rural women to find an alternative to the local poorhouse

when they found themselves pregnant and without support.

Seeking alternatives, poor and pregnant country women would have been aware if

a maternity farm might be available in their county. Such a place would not have been a

first choice. The almshouse appears positively benign next to these under the table

operations where the health of mother and child may have been at risk. Again, baby

farms charged a fee. Even a few dollars often would have been beyond a poor woman’s

J" Kathi Ann Brown, “House of Another Chance: Kate Waller Barrett’s Ivakota,” Northern Virginia Heritage (October 1988): 3-6, 19-20.

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reach. Furthermore, the Rockbridge records indicate that most new mothers at the

almshouse seem to have left the poor farm with their children. Whenever possible, they

seem to have wanted to keep their children. Abandonment undoubtedly occurred, but

was more unlikely in a rural county where the mother was known. Adoption or placing

out was a much more probable fate for poor farm children when mothers were unable to

care for them. However, reputable or not, these maternity hospitals may have become a

more viable option for indigent women when the local almshouse closed its doors.

Other possibilities for birthing would have been to negotiate something with a

local doctor or midwife if the poor woman were able. Again, the fee would have been a

big hurdle. Even if some arrangement could be worked out, that would mean birthing the

child alone. These women were already managing on their own. Childbirth was a time

when they were at their most vulnerable and unable to care for other small children.

Surely, one attraction of the poorhouse was not to be alone at such a time and a tacit

admission of a need for help. Fear of childbirth itself and for the life of the newborn

cannot be discounted either. The return of so many women to the Rockbridge facility

suggests that these mothers felt some measure of safety there. In an odd tribute to their

sense of independence despite their meager circumstances, most were willing to stay to

work off the debt they incurred for the services the county provided. The obstetrical

facilities of the Rockbridge County Poor House did not transfer to the newly created

District Home in 1927; that facility was simply not an option for poor pregnant women

close to term. The closing of the poorhouses placed these rural poor women in more

dismal circumstances.

400 Ibid., 6.

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If poor mothers found their options limited, their children were equally

vulnerable. While the poorhouse was no fit place for children according to reformers, the

local jail was even less so. Destitute children had become of particular concern to state

officials especially as their numbers seemed to be growing. In addition to being without

a parent or other family to provide for them, many children in almshouses were identified

as feeble-minded, others as crippled. Contemporary thinking by social workers

emphasized rehabilitation for adults and a concomitant emphasis on education and

training for children as a means to prevent them from becoming delinquents or dependent

as wards of the county or state.

Overseers of the Poor were in agreement that children ought not to be in the

poorhouse. Therefore, local institutions traditionally farmed out the children over the age

of five whose parents or parent were unable to support them. For example, Lou

Montgomery, a twenty-four-year-old black woman, came to the Rockbridge Poor House

with her two children, Jane (6) and Roy (4) in the winter of 1888. On December 28th, she

died of consumption. In January, Jane was “Taken by Rev. C. Stokes” and in April, Roy

went to the home of Willis Effinger.401 Lou was no stranger to the institution. She had

previously come to the poor farm in December of 1887. After spending the winter, the

family was broken up when Jane was taken in early March by “Geo. McCutcheon to

raise.” Roy “left with his mother” who went to S. T. Thompson’s at the end of March.

Circumstances must have changed for Lou with the warmer weather so that she was able

to reclaim Jane since she had both children with her when she returned on December 10th.

401 LV, Rockbridge County Records, Register of Paupers at Rockbridge County Poor House, 1881-1924, 2.

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The progression of the disease, however, was taking its toll. Only her death at such a

young age led to the separation of her children who were placed in different homes.402

The seeming casualness of these arrangements for destitute children was of

particular concern to state officials after the creation of the Board of Charities and

Corrections in 1908. While Reverend Mastin was a champion of foster care rather than

institutional care for children, he was also cognizant of potential abuse of such children.

He wanted some sort of system in place that would assure the quality of the home to

which the children were going and subsequent oversight of the care they received there.

The fate of Lou Hues’ two boys provides a case in point.

A poor black woman, Lou died of cancer at the Rockbridge Poor House in June

1896 leaving two sons, Charles and Arthur Clarence. Sometime during the summer they

were taken to Texas “by Mrs. M E Mallicote” as was Serena Red, a relatively new black

baby girl born at the poor farm on March 13th.403 Texas was not only far away, but a

relative frontier in the 1890s.404 The fate of these children can only be surmised. They

could have been consigned to a hard life working on a frontier farm. The county would

have had no ability to follow through on their care over such a great distance. The only

clue to the potential respectability of the woman and her good intentions is the deference

the Keeper accords her by noting she is a “Mrs.” In accordance with the common

parlance of the day, that title would indicate the woman was likely white, not black.

What would a white woman want with three black children in Texas? Was the

402 Ibid., 1. 403 Ibid., 7 and 200.

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disposition of these children sanctioned because they were black? Since Lou Hues’ body

was claimed for burial rather than left for interment on the farm, relatives or close friends

must have been in the county. Perhaps Mrs. Mallicote was one such, a benefactress

seeking a better life for these orphans. Presumably, the Keeper would not knowingly

place these children in harm’s way, but it was his job to see them removed from the

poorhouse. The potential for abuse, however, given the circumstances was all too real.

Rev. Mastin would have imposed stringent requirements on the entire process insisting

on a documented investigation of Mrs. Mallicote and perhaps not letting her take the

children given the destination of Texas.

Local rural county arrangements were simply too casual. Concern for the welfare

of destitute children led the state to initially take on the guardianship of a number of

children across Virginia. Mastin recalled in later years the state of affairs in 1908, “The

dependent children were taken into families, without supervision, or sent to the

poorhouse, or the jail, or shifted for themselves.”405 Mastin’s initial surveys of the jails

and almshouses had found many such children. Some were “delinquent,” that is,

consigned to the jail or the poorhouse by the court. Their crimes were various from

serious infractions such as assault to truancy or vagrancy. Virginia did not institute a

Juvenile and Domestic relations Court until 1920, so children under eighteen were

brought before the circuit courts and treated as adults. Even after the new system was in

404 Newly developed land in Texas attracted cotton farmers in the uplands and rice farmers in the southeast. See, for example, Edward L. Ayers,The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992): 6, 193. 405 “Dr. Mastin Reminisces,” Public Welfare Volume 8, No. 8, August 1930(Richmond: Dept, of Public Welfare): 2.

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place, many circuit court judges regarded younger miscreants as incorrigible and

sentenced them accordingly.

Hoffer was specifically critical of the inconsistency and lack of guidelines to

enable overworked circuit court judges in rural counties to pursue a rehabilitative

approach toward younger offenders rather than send them to jail to consort with drunks

and more hardened criminals. The alternative was to dismiss the case entirely. Hoffer

attributed this state of affairs to an understandable period of transition from one way of

doing things to another:

One has the feeling that the variation in practice of the various courts is largely due to the newness of the work and to the lack of standardized principles to guide the judges. Each judge is largely a law unto himself.

While some of the judges are sympathetic and conscientious in their efforts on behalf of children, they are dominated too much by the methods of the civil and criminal courts.406

The problem of children consigned to jails was that the options of where to put them were

limited. If they did not belong in jail and there was no poorhouse, where were they to

go? How were they to be rehabilitated? Hoffer cited the lack of detention centers or

other suitable county facility for children awaiting foster care placement. Very often in

this time of transition, the county almshouse was the only, if disagreeable, option.

One consequence of the realities facing rural counties was a growing number of

children designated as wards of the state. In addition, some forty to fifty private agencies

existed in Virginia for the “care and training of destitute children.” All were ostensibly

monitored by the Board of Charities and Corrections via annual on site visits and

406 Hoffer, Counties in Transition, 160 and 162.

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licensing. A number worked in concert with the Board to place children and were well

regarded. The 1908 report offered a typically optimistic view for the future:

When the society for the placing of colored children in family homes, mentioned elsewhere in this report, shall have been chartered, children’s agencies in this state will be able to adequately provide for all destitute children, and their commitment to almshouses will not be necessary.407

Almshouses, however, continued to report children under sixteen on their rolls. The

magnitude of the problem for state social workers was acknowledged five years later and

laid out in the 1913 report. On the one hand, some 2827 children had been cared for

during the past year. However, the Board of Charities and Corrections estimated that

“[t]here are at least 10,000 children in the state who need to be provided for.”408 To

address this pressing issue, the Board made a number of recommendations in hopes of

receiving funding from the state legislature that would mitigate the “whole problem of

juvenile dependency.” Worthy mothers ought to be able to keep their children, therefore

some form of mother’s aid would need enacting. The Board also called for better non

support laws since desertion was a primary cause of dependency.

Children with mental and physical disabilities needed to be identified through

medical examinations and then provided for by the state. Dr. Mastin had been pushing

for an orthopedic hospital for the care of crippled and deformed children. In addition, he

proposed that delinquents should go to industrial schools for appropriate rehabilitation

rather than linger in local jails picking up even more bad habits. It would take another

five years before these recommendations were supported. In 1917, orthopedic care was

407 LV, Second Annual Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Printing, 1910): 154.

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provided on a limited basis in Richmond. Two years later, an average of twenty children

per day were treated at the Richmond Hospital for Crippled and deformed Children.

The year 1918 was somewhat of a watershed for social legislation in response to

Dr. Mastin’s persistent lobbying. That year, a Mother’s Aid law was passed, non-support

and compulsory education laws were strengthened, school children received physicals

and $2500 was designated for the prevention of blindness in infants. While these

measures were positive ones, almshouses and jails continued to take in dependent

children.409

Among these dependent children, those labeled “defective” were a thorny

problem beyond their dependency. What to do with blind and deaf children? Typically,

they would come to the local almshouse. As state institutions for the training of the deaf

and blind were established, these children would be transferred to them when they

reached school age. As the 1910 report of the Board of Charities and Corrections

indicated, “for a number of years it has not been necessary to place deaf or blind white

children over eight years of age in our almshouses.”410 The school for black children

who were blind or deaf was founded in 1908 and began to slowly draw down that sector

of the almshouse population. However, the early years of these children’s lives would be

spent in the rural county institution. Where were these children to go if the county closed

its almshouse?

408 LV, Fifth Annual Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Printing, 1913): 40-41. 409 LV, Tenth Annual Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Printing, 1919): 8. 4,0 LV, Second Annual Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent o f Printing, 1910): 153.

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Also among the “defectives” were those children with mental rather than physical

disabilities. Feeble-minded children were a growing concern for Mastin and other state

officials. Early initiatives by reformers targeted feeble-minded mothers in hopes of

preventing the births of more such children who would become wards of the county or

state. The 1912 Report of the Board of Charities and Corrections in the article “The

Menace of the Feeble-Minded” plainly laid out the issues for social workers:

The socially unfit have been classified as follows: First, feeble-minded; second, paupers; third, inebriates; fourth, criminals; fifth, epileptics; sixth, insane; seventh, constitutionally weak; eighth, those disposed to specific diseases; ninth, deformed; tenth, those with defective sense organs.

Feeble-mindedness is acknowledged by experts to be the most expensive and dangerous. It multiplies as rapidly as normal stock and from it springs, by inheritance, all other ills affecting the socially unfit.411

In addition to the understanding that feeble-mindedness was an inherited condition, social

workers believed that the feeble-minded were the source of many other societal ills.

These conditions, specifically, “imbecility, the criminalistic tendency and the tendency

toward pauperism are inherited.”412 Following this logic, social workers did not ascribe

crime or dependent idleness to environmental conditions, but to a genetic trait. All

ensuing conditions began with their inherited feeble-mindedness. Prevent the birth of

more feeble-minded children and one would go a long way towards the prevention of

crime and pauperism as well.

The same report bolstered this view by providing data from twenty-five

almshouses that showed feeble-minded women giving birth in each. “Thus the

411 LV, Fourth Annual Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections (Richmond: Davis Bottom, Superintendent of Printing, 1912): 21. 412 Ibid., 21.

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inefficient, the sexually immoral and criminal classes multiply, and venereal disease is

scattered broadcast.”413 These seemingly entrenched problems would be mitigated first

by preventing the woman from conceiving and secondly, by training and educating her

offspring to be the most useful member of society that he or she was capable of being.

The same survey found 122 children under sixteen in the almshouses in 1912. While

they were not sorted according to their mental abilities, the strong suggestion of the

report was that many of these children were the feeble-minded children of women

identified as such.

The persistent lobbying on the part of the Board of Charities and Corrections

officials about the feeble-minded led to legislation in 1916. The first charge was for the

Board to identify just who were the feeble-minded in Virginia. They reported

approximately 6,000 persons across the state identifying 2,000 “in urgent need of

custodial care.” However, only 4,206 persons were actually registered as feeble-minded.

That year 54 people were committed to the State Colony for the Feeble-Minded. Only

one private institution existed in Virginia to train or care for such persons. Even though

the state board was charged with the care of feeble-minded children turned over to the

state by the courts, as with delinquent children, the problem of where to place them

remained. Even with a state institution dedicated to the purpose, too few institutions for

the feeble-minded actually existed. The gap between 2000 in need of custodial care as

opposed to 54 receiving that care clarifies the problem. Overcrowding in the existing

facility meant that the local almshouse was often the only place on the rural county level

to provide for such children when their families could not.

4,3 Ibid., 24.

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The continuing reality of the role of the almshouse with particular respect for the

circumstances of children was noted by public welfare officials fourteen years later.

While the law limits the residence of children in almshouses, when committed by the Juvenile and Domestic Relations courts, without the consent of the Department of Public Welfare, the practice of admitting any child, except an idiot or imbecile, is frowned upon by the better social agencies and usage. It is found that resort must be made to almshouses in emergencies, but in no case, perhaps, should the almshouse be used for long-time care of a normal child.414

Emphasis here was on the fate of placeable or otherwise normal children as opposed to

the severely retarded who were understood as a custodial burden. However, the dilemma

facing state welfare workers hinged on that qualifying “perhaps.” When a county had no

other options for care of a dependent child, feeble-minded or otherwise, the county

poorhouse would have to do. Despite the efforts of state officials, children under sixteen

remained a presence in the rural county almshouse until the doors were completely

shuttered denying entrance to all, not just children.

Mrs. Stout’s lament for the “sick and crazy” can be expanded to include pregnant

women and dependent children, both delinquent and defective, as well as the tubercular.

Almshouse rolls continued to cite their presence through the 1920s. For those rural

counties with few institutional resources, the local poor farm continued to play an active

role in relief for the poor by providing a place for these displaced to find shelter and some

measure of care.

414 “Let’s Keep Children Out of the County Almshouse,”Public Welfare Volume 8, No.4, page 4 (Richmond: Department of Public Welfare).

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CONCLUSION

Placing the poorhouse within the rural Virginian landscape of which it was so

much a part sheds light on the values and life of these farming communities. Opening the

poorhouse doors furthers contemporary understanding of the “hidden poverty” found in

the countryside. Examining the needs of these poor not only explains the nature of rural

poverty, but also illuminates how late nineteenth-century Virginians responded to the

poverty-stricken in their countryside communities.

The affluent continued to accept their obligations to those less fortunate among

them. First as vestry members of their Anglican parishes and then as elected Overseers of

the Poor, these men persisted into the twentieth century in a tradition of responsibility

that valued providing for those unable to help themselves. Temporary relief in times of

sickness, accident, or other calamity worked itself out in a delivery of groceries or a load

of firewood known as “outdoor relief.” The poorhouse provided “indoor relief’

sheltering those paupers who lacked resources or family and who required longer-term

care. Tax paying citizenry provided the pool of funds that these stewards used to supply

the needs of the poor. This template was so often repeated that most rural counties and

small cities in Virginia established some variation on this theme of public poor relief by

1870 as the state’s “reconstruction” drew to a conclusion.

228

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Location and variation created a crazy quilt pattern of county charity across the

state. The system—if it could rightly be called that—was loosely held together by the

common thread of the poorhouse itself. As befit its agricultural setting, the local

almshouse was a farm. As an institution, the poorhouse provided shelter and sustenance

to county indigents. However, so as not to be a drain on the county coffers, the poor farm

was meant to be self-sustaining. In addition to growing its own food, the farm offered

opportunities for the able-bodied to work and repay the county for services rendered.

The success or failure of these seemingly modest goals relied heavily on the farmer in

charge and his family. In his capacity as Keeper of the Poorhouse or Superintendent of

the Poor, this man ran the daily operations of the farm while his wife usually was charged

with seeing to the needs of the inmates. Counties valued their poorhouses according to

the dual criteria of how well the farm was run and how well local taxpayer’s dollars

accommodated the county poor.

However, since the image of the poorhouse in the public consciousness causes

general shudders of revulsion, just how well the institution performed its charitable tasks

has been hidden under clouds of opprobrium that spilled over from the large urban

institutions. Overcrowding and unsanitary conditions in the Richmond Poorhouse served

to tar all such institutions with the same brush. Progressive Era social welfare reformers

seeking to abolish the poorhouse continued the disparaging appraisals that may or may

not have been based on fact. Therefore, a central theme of this dissertation is that the

pejorative image masks possibilities of real service within less populated southern rural

communities.

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Coupled with the unsavory image came an understandable reluctance to even

mention the county facility. While the needs of the poor had to be managed, they simply

were not discussed. Local county historians filled with New South booster spirit would

not choose the poorhouse as an institution to applaud. By the turn of the twentieth

century, state welfare reformers who saw the poorhouse as a Dickensian relic they wished

to replace continued the pejorative rhetoric. If the poor had once been objects of pity,

they became the “dregs of humanity.” The poorhouse became a stopping place for

indigents whose condition had been brought about through their own moral laxity.

Alcoholism, venereal disease, insanity, and feeble-mindedness topped the list of sins

inmates carried and could spread to the innocent—such as children—if given the

opportunity.

Navigating these fogs is further complicated by what records do exist. The life of

the Virginia rural county poorhouse emerges only reluctantly from overseers’ ledgers,

bills of lading, and annual reports. Rarely are the voices of the illiterate poor heard.

Occasionally, however, a first hand account pierces the haze to illuminate a given time

and place. Loudoun County’s Poorhouse in the 1920s and 1930s offers glimpses inside

by way of a boy raised on the farm.

Loudoun County was one of the last counties in Virginia to close its almshouse in

1946. A recent article in The Washington Post touting its present transformation as a

stylish bed and breakfast paints an almost idyllic picture of its former life. In marked

contrast to the overcrowded facility in Richmond, local historians claim the records

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indicate that “the farm was well maintained and comparatively comfortable.”415 Adding

to the bucolic ambiance of the place are the recollections of Bob Barton, the now eighty-

year-old son of the last superintendent. “He liked to sit out on the big porch that wrapped

about the main house.. .talking to the inmates, or paupers, ...when they came by for

tobacco or snuff,” the article notes.416 Glimpses into the last days of poorhouse life come

as Barton remembered inmates by name indicating their distinguishing characteristics.

One woman “lived there with her handicapped grown daughter.” Another woman

stuttered, an old man was “mostly blind,” while Aunt Lucy would “go outside every night

and call for her husband, who was long gone.”417 Each of these inmates seemed to have

some physical or mental impediment that would make living on the economy at mid

century difficult if not impossible.

In addition to these reminiscences of personalities, Barton detailed the uses of the

extant buildings and exactly how the segregated institution functioned in that capacity.

Blacks were housed in what had been slave quarters on the former plantation that the

county purchased in 1822. During Barton’s time from the late 30s to 1946, black women

“had the most crowded conditions.. .with as many as 18 or 20 living together at one time,

with their children.” Whites had better and newer dormitory housing with women, very

few ever, on the second floor and men below. However, he recalled that everyone

415 Michael Alison Chandler, “Paying to Stay in the Poorhouse,”The Washington Post, August 4, 2005, LZ01 416 Ibid., p.7. 417 Ibid., p.7.

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worked and ate together “sharing the same five outhouses and common

circumstances.”418

From the picture presented by Bob Barton and the general tenor of the article, the

county poorhouse does come across as a kind of refuge, if spartan accommodation, for

those who lived there. Racial segregation as a fact of southern life existed there as it had

in Rockbridge and other counties in the nineteenth century. However, the communal

work of the farm takes precedence in Barton’s recollections. The rural county poorhouse

doesn’t seem so forbidding. Certainly the stigma so often associated with the poorhouse

is muted here. Barton’s evidence from the Loudoun County institution recalls the 1883

account of the Alexandria City Almshouse published in the Alexandria Gazette. The

latter eyewitness also painted the institution as a refuge indeed for community members

whom misfortune had overwhelmed. That the Loudoun facility lasted until 1946

suggests that by virtue of its longevity, it had served the county poor reasonably well

providing shelter, food and medical care from its 1822 inception to its closing.

Since poor relief varied from county to county, concluding that all county

facilities offered a haven to their poor is questionable. However, the angle of vision

applied to the evidence is critical as well. Crandall Shifflett gave poor marks to Louisa

County, its poorhouse, and its system of relief practiced from 1870 to the century’s

closing in a brief account included in Patronage and Poverty in the Tobacco South419

His negative analysis is found within the larger context of “patronage politics.” He

418 Ibid., p.7. When Loudoun County closed the poor farm in 1946, it did so to join Alexandria and other counties in supporting the District Home in Manassas. See Robert H. Kirkwood, ‘ F it S u rro u n d in g 58-s’, 59. 419 Crandall A. Shifflett, Patronage and Poverty in the Tobacco South, 75-80.

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therefore catalogs the rising administrative costs of the poor relief system in the face of

“diminishing amounts” given to the country poor themselves.

Even though Louisa County continued to allocate a quarter of its tax revenue for

the poor, by the end of the nineteenth century, it chose to eliminate outdoor relief

maintaining its poorhouse solely. Shifflett’s assessment of the Board of Supervisor’s

justification for this move in the fall of 1900 damns them and the system they represent.

With his eye on county politics, Shifflett determines that “Louisa County’s political

leadership felt secure enough by 1900 to eliminate most assistance to the poor, except the

poorhouse itself... .”420 But why would they want to do so? According to Shifflett’s

analysis they would be cutting off the goose that laid the golden egg. Without recipients

of charity, why pay administrators of that charity?

Given his angle of vision within the framework of the Louisa County political

structure, Shifflett interprets that the dollars spent translate to insufficient care. However,

his conclusions about county poor policy in that context are not convincing. He

discounts services rendered, preferring cash allotments as a marker of aid. Rather than

examine what the money bought and supplied the indigent, his focus remains firmly fixed

on the dollars themselves. However, pushing the budget numbers alone only goes so far

in telling the story of rural poor relief.

Mecklenburg County local historians, approaching the numbers from a decidedly

different angle of vision, suggested that decreasing appropriations were actually a sign of

increasing prosperity. As poverty decreased, the county did not need to spend as much

on the poor. Citing a Board outlay of $2200 for the poorhouse in December 1872, these

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writers concluded that when the sum dropped a thousand dollars five years later it was

“an indication that the economy was slowly reviving because of hard work and self

help.”421 The county didn’t need to spend as much on the poor because poverty itself was

declining in Mecklenburg. The plausibility of this conclusion collides with that of

Shifflett in the absence of a fuller context beyond the financial record.

What this dissertation makes clear, however, is that county governments during

this time were willing to make significant appropriations for poor relief. Responsibility

to the poor within rural Virginia counties also manifested itself in the continued support

of the poorhouse itself and the observation of its management. From this perspective,

these counties achieved a satisfactory balance between providing care and maintaining

fiscal responsibility for the period from 1870 to 1910 when the state began to make

inroads in local poor policy. Even Caroline County, the first to eliminate its almshouse,

boosted appropriations in the 1890s in response to increasing need. These rural southern

communities paid attention to the poor among them.

Within this context, the poorhouse itself was able to offer the county poor some

measure of refuge. For the aged and infirm, but also the crippled, blind, feeble-minded,

and orphaned, the local almshouse farm brought shelter when there was no other place to

go. For some the relief was temporary. For others, the poorhouse became a home of

long-standing and the farm, their final resting-place. If the rural southern poorhouse

carried the stigma of shame, the many who sought its shelter remained undaunted.

421 Jeffrey St. John and Kathryn St. John,Landmarks, 1765-1990: A Brief History o f Mecklenburg County, Virginia (Boydton, VA: Mecklenburg County Board of Supervisors, 1990): 75.

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In its role as a nascent hospital, the rural poorhouse provided the necessary

nursing care and medical services the sick and injured required. Indigent pregnant

women in these Virginia counties had a place to bear children in the company of women

rather than frighteningly alone. Sufferers of fearful contagious diseases like smallpox

could be isolated to stay the spread of contagion. Those weak from the ravages of

consumption could be nursed to a modicum of health or buried when they finally

succumbed to the disease.

Additionally, as a not intentional consequence of supporting a poorhouse,

counties created a physical space where racial relations were marked by fluidity and

openness. Blacks in the turn-of-the-century poorhouse certainly performed farm labor

and domestic chores, but so did their white counterparts. While they slept in segregated

quarters, they ate and worked in common just as the Loudoun County inmates did forty

years later. In a society marked by stiffening racial lines, this neglected freedom arose

out of necessity. Superintendents had to work the farm with the labor provided.

However, the circumstance of poverty does seem to have trumped race allowing both

blacks and whites entrance to the poorhouse environs.

The services to the rural southern poor provided from within their own

communities had value as the comparative longevity of the rural Virginia poorhouse

attests. Ironically, the well meaning efforts of Progressive Era reformers in the early

twentieth century to create a statewide system of social welfare services targeted the

poorhouse as a symbol of the worst in poor policy. Men such as Dr. Joseph T. Mastin

envisioned a system that would not only meet the needs of the poor, but also get at the

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roots of their poverty to lift them beyond it. Accordingly they worked to provide foster

care for children, orthopedic surgery for the crippled, sanatoria for the tubercular, and

other programs based on sound casework principles. Within this enlightened network of

social welfare measures, the wretched draconian poorhouse had no place.

Painting the institution as a crowded and filthy place serving the refuse of

humanity, Virginia social welfare reformers encouraged counties to close their

poorhouses. When custodial care was required for the aged, counties could pool their

resources and build District Homes to serve those needs. At the same time state

institutions for the insane, epileptic, and feeble-minded would draw down the poorhouse

populace to the point they were no longer needed. These efforts served to perpetuate the

stigma of shame and unsavory reputation so long attached to the poorhouse.

At the same time, state welfare reformers imposed their solutions to heretofore

intractable social problems. Feeble-mindedness would become obsolete through their

program of isolating and sterilizing women they designated as morons. Racial tensions

would be diffused by adhering to strict segregation policies. If the poorhouse allowed

racial mingling, the new District Home would apply proper segregation techniques to

assure separation of the races. The imposition of these measures indicated that even the

most well-meaning of these reformers believed that certain human beings were much

lower on the evolutionary scale of development. These poor needed to be managed and

controlled by those who had the interests of the larger society firmly in hand.

Unintended consequences followed as well. State welfare workers created a

vacuum into which the rural poor fell when the local poorhouse shut its doors. Since the

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public welfare system was in its infancy, it was a work in progress itself. Few counties

established bureaus of welfare to replace their poorhouses and provide some measure of

outdoor relief. State institutions simply could not accommodate all the “dependent,

delinquent, and defective.” What became the Children’s Bureau found itself

overwhelmed by the number of children, black and white, in need of placement. In this

time of transition, the rural poor had even fewer options when the poorhouse closed.

Many poorhouses, therefore, did not cease operations. While Alexandria and

Rockbridge counties joined the District Home movement in the late 1920s, other counties

like Highland and Shenandoah felt the poorhouse served a viable purpose within their

communities. However, even as these counties clung to their institutions, they effectively

obliterated their pejorative reputation by effecting a name change. Rural Virginia poor

sought out the “County Farm,” rather than the poorhouse, in times of distress.

Because the poorhouse was so intricately woven into the community fabric of

these rural southern counties, the institution became almost invisible to later twentieth-

century generations. The facility has survived only in the names of roads or oral

expressions such as the exasperated parent’s chiding “You’re driving me to the

poorhouse!” The reality of its role in southern country life and the significance of that

role for the many whom it served has been sadly lost. The poorhouse in its form of rural

Virginia farm often provided a refuge from want for many country poor. Illiterate, sick,

often mentally or physically disabled, the indigent poor had a place to go that was as

familiar as it was near at hand.

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While the Virginia system of poor relief that included the poorhouse was far from

perfect, it embodied that sense of responsibility to kith and kin so embedded in southern

values. Community and family on both sides of the racial divide were the ties that bound

country counties together. The poorhouse served as a place where those values were

demonstrated in the obligations of the well off to the poor, of the strong to the weak. Nor

were the ministrations offered as the “kindness of strangers,” but rather the hard work

from the hands and arms of neighbors who had fared better in life.

Within the institution itself, the poor and those who cared for them molded a

communal life. Many of the feeble-minded spent their entire lives on the poor farm. If

they were in one sense abandoned, they were also, like Billie Boo in Rockbridge, loved

by the other members of the poorhouse community. Work was the order of the day.

When physically able, everyone participated in the farm’s maintenance. Older single

women found shelter, but also work as cooks, nurses, and washer women for their fellow

inmates. Families in times of crisis joined the community for a year or more. Single

mothers sought safe haven for childbirth. Children variously stayed with parents or were

taken by county folk willing to raise them. The Superintendent, his wife, and family

oversaw the needs of this varied assembly, but also participated in that communal life of

the poor farm.

The stigma and shame long associated with the poorhouse has prevented

historians from seeing the institution’s actual relationship to the communities in which it

functioned. In the rural South as these Virginia counties show, the poorhouse was not

simply a place to fear or shun. Rather it was a communal public response and

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acknowledgment of the needs of the poor. Never the happiest of places given the often

debilitated condition of its inmates, the poorhouse served the county by providing care to

those, both black and white, unable to help themselves. In counties where this function

held value, the poorhouse remained often to mid-twentieth century and beyond.

The poorhouse deserves more in depth study and analysis. Just as the difficulties

and problems facing the poor are various and complicated, the institution that came to

symbolize poverty’s barrenness and depravity was also complex. Depending on its

location and size, the poorhouse was fully capable of living up to its daunting reputation

or conversely providing a real measure of refuge. Appreciating the variety and

complexity of the poorhouse in its rural southern setting is a further key to understanding

the many levels of poverty at work in the countryside. If the ability to assuage the

poverty-stricken is ever to be found, then opening the poorhouse doors is one concrete

means to that end.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources and Manuscript Collections

Lloyd House Manuscript Collection, Alexandria City Library

Minutes of the City Council, City of Alexandria, Office of the City Clerk

Randolph Macon College, Archives and Special Collections

Dr. J. T. Mastin Collection

Southern Methodist Conference Records

The Library of Virginia, Archives and Special Collections

Reports to the General Auditor from Overseers of the Poor

Reports of the State Board of Charities and Corrections

Caroline County Records

Highland County Records

Mecklenburg County Records

Rockbridge County Records

National Library of Medicine Archives, National Institutes of Health

Rockbridge County Court House

Shenandoah County Library Archives

240

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University of Virginia, Alderman Library, Special Collections

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The Alexandria Gazette

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