Thank God, they were nothing like the Work House of Charles Dickens’ Victorian England. There, according to Dickens, inmates would receive “periodically small quantities of oatmeal; and [were] issued three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll on Sundays.”
In Kansas, they were called poor farms, county farms, and almshouses. Other means were created to care for children, the blind and mentally ill. Not to be confused with a potters field to bury the indigent. A typical Kansas poor house at the turn of the 19th century should contain “bottom land of 160 acres, good agricultural land with plenty of water and enough timber for practical use.” Osage County. Not all poor farms were so large.
Chase County Poor Farm
The Chase County Poor Farm was located a mile south of Elmdale and a mile east of the Santa Fe Railroad. Its 160 acres straddled the Cottonwood River. The river has cut a path along the hills to the east. It is on top of this hill that Hixson took his photograph.
A clipping from the Chase County Leader on Oct 12, 1915 reports 3 horse, 3 cows, and 6 hogs. The number of “inmates” was six. They were Charley Klusman, Fred Aulthouse, George Fergerson, Mary Beckman, and Nelson and Olla Burkhead. Eight years earlier, the same paper reported the Christmas Eve arrival of 83 year old Nelson Burkhead, his wife and two small children. Chase County Leader, 1907. Fred Aulthouse died in 1919 at the age of 80. Genealogy Trails, Topeka Daily Capital newspaper.
Follow the Chase County Leader News.
Hixson’s photo reveals a couple of barns, a large residence and a secondary one, plus additional structures. In the background, the Santa Fe train steams along.
For further study, see A Study of Kansas Poor Farms, 1935.
Abandoned, old, and interesting Kansas 