Archive for the ‘Ray County Poor Farm’ Category

20
Dec

A School is born

   Posted by: Rod Fields   in Ray County Poor Farm, Schools, Winner/Nelson Murder

The following is taken from the county court minutes.  This is the birth of that was less that 2/10’s of a mile from the old county and was about ½ mile away from the future Winter/ murder cabin.

County Court May 7th 1861
Ordered that the trustees of School District No 3 of School Township No 7 of Range 27.  You are hereby authorized to erect a building to be used for school purposes on the W ½ of the SW ¼ of Section 4 Township 52 Range 27 the ground to be used and occupied for School purposes aforesaid is included within the following boundaries to with Beginning at a point 9 Rods South of the half mile corner. Thence 2 Rods South thence 22 Rods east thence 11 Rods North thence 13 Rods west thence 9 Rods South thence 9 Rods West to the place of Beginning containing one acre and one Square Rod the said piece of ground to be held used and occupied by said School District No 3 for the purpose of a public school and that When the same ceases to be occupied for that purpose then it is to revert to the County of and this order to be void and held for naught

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This is a follow up to the People of the . This article is from the Richmond News dated March 2, 1932 Section B page 1.

The County Home Is Run Efficiently By The Ballards, Grand Jury Finds.

The grand jury was so impressed with the excellent condition of the county home when they made their inspection recently that they recommended an increase in salary for , superintendent.

and his wife watch every penny’s expenditures and try in every way to save money and at the same time make the comfortable.

All meat used at the home is pork, produced on the premises. The county court purchases vaccinated, certified stock hogs which are fattened from the table scraps. Some corn is fed the hogs. In the last few days thirty-seven hogs have been killed, each weighing on an average of 380 pounds. cures the meat and in all of his nine years at the Home he has never lost any of the meat prepared. This is verified by the county court.

Five cows give plenty of milk and furnish butter. A large flock of chickens supplies all the eggs used at the home. A garden is maintained each season from which a large supply of eatables are canned to be used during the winter. The supplies are put up in gallon cans. Everything grown in the garden that is eatable is canned except the tops of turnips, and as one member of the county court laughingly said, is thinking of canning them this next season to be used as greens.

Two hundred and fifty bushels of potoes are used annually. Recently purchased fifteen sacks of potatoes, a month’s supply; one hundred and sixty-eight loaves of bread are used each month. Light bread is used at the noon and evening meals. For breakfast every day in the year biscuits are served. It requires 250 of them to satisfy 54 . Twelve pies are consumed at the noon meal every Sunday. During week days for dinner and supper either cake or some kind of cobbler is served. It takes 100 pounds of navy beans during the year.

There is no need of skimping, nor is there any, as the county court pays for all supplies and instructs the superintendent of the home to give the plenty to eat. Always on the tables are jellies, preserves, honey, syrups, etc. No one leaves the table hungry.

Each inmate has certain duties to perform and is very happy in carrying them out.

They all insist that they be given some of the employment required to maintain the

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RICHMOND CONSERVATOR
RICHMOND, MISSOURI, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1896
vOLUME #-NUMBER 33

HORRIBLE TRIPLE MURDER

MRS JESSIE WINNER AND HER TWO CHILDREN BRUTALLY MURDERED.  ONLY RIVALED IN ITS SICKENING DETAILS BY THE MEEKS MURDER IN LINN COUNTY

Coroner’s Jury Ask That the Husband and Father be Held for the Murder.

The crowd with the sheriff after the murder at the cabin

A horrible , rivaling in all its sickening details that of the Meeks family in Linn county a year or two since, was perpetrated in a small log cabin on the E.T. Watkins farm, eight miles northeast of this city, some time during Monday night.
For four years past Jesse has rented a few acres of land from Mr. Watkins and each year has raised a crop of corn.  is a coal miner and when work was to be had in the mines in this city he has accepted it.  It has been his custom to work in the mines during the week and go to the farm and spend Sunday with his family.  Last Sunday he was out as usual, coming back to town Sunday evening.  On Monday he cleaned up his room at Mine No.11, where he had been employed and prepared to go home Tuesday morning to gather his corn.  Tuesday morning while he was sitting on the court house fence a messenger arrived in town and brought the startling news that his wife and two children had been murdered.

Click the link just below for a lot more, full details and (warning) very graphic photographs

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TEA TIME!

What better way to relax and run away from all the problems and the hectic pace of your lives?
A formal , your best friends, served with and a tour of our grand old museum?
October and November are Special Tea in the Parlor Months.
Grandmothers, bring your to and enjoy an afternoon to remember.
The atmosphere of the 1900’s along with the rest of the museum, a complete with playing dress up if you like plus a tour of the museum.
Complete with our 1800’s Costume room, , , Grandmother’s kitchen and more!
The water is on the fire
The is out
We’re in our to serve you
We’re just waiting for your reservation.
A nominal fee will bring you a maximum of pleasure and .
Come and join us!
Contact- Karen Windsor Bush, Curator/manager/-mistress
816-776-2305, Wednesday through Saturday
email- raycountymuseum@yahoo.com

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            I hear one of two questions a lot while giving tours, “What is a ?” or “Why were the people here?” or some form of the two questions.  Both of these questions are very good questions and will answer one of them in this article. 

        Why were people placed at the County ?  The simple answer is because they could not for whatever reason take care of themselves and became a ward of the county.  Some people think the was just for the “insane”, this is far from correct.  If you were judged to be insane then you were sent to one of the four state hospitals and it didn’t take much, by today’s standards, to be judged insane. I have found one person that spent time in St Joseph because he lost all of his property.  The people can be broken up in to two major groups, medical and hard times.

        People placed at the for medical reasons are no different than people being placed in nursing homes today.   The main group of people that would fall into this category would be simply old age and the person didn’t have any family around that could support them.  There are also cases of people that were blind and/or mute.  The most noted person that falls in this group is Riser.  A deaf mute little girl that saw her father kill her mother and sibling, one of biggest crimes in County at the time, the / murders.  She was at the from 1910 to her death in 1941, but that is another story in of itself.

        People placed at the for hardship is a little more complicated.  For a person or family to be allowed to stay at the farm the County Court had to approve you in court.  You had to prove to the court that you did not have the means to take care of yourself and you did not have family in the area that had the means to support you. 

        Once the person was placed at the room and board was provided, BUT it was not free.  The county wanted the farm to be as self sufficient as possible; since this was money they had to spend.  Everybody that could work was required to work on the farm one way or another.  Females did a lot of the cleaning and sewing, I have found receipts for yards of dress, flannel, bed sheeting material.  The men had to help with the garden, hogs, cattle (both diary and meat), chickens, and general repairs around the farm.

        There was a very small third group that needs to be added but not very much information has been found on them.  The Farm was at times used as temporary housing for which the County Court needed to place someone or a family until regular housing could be found.  Orphans sometimes stayed here waiting on the Orphan Train.  Have found one case where the father of a family was arrested and then sent to St Joseph State Hospital but between being arrested and sent to St Joseph the wife and kids stayed at the Farm for a few days.

        I hope that this little article helps you better understand who the people where that stayed at the .  They were not crazy or insane; they are no different than the people that are in rest homes today. 

       

Creative Commons License
People at the by Rod Fields is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.raycountyhistoricalsociety.com.

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15
Oct

Ray County Poor Farm

   Posted by: Rod Fields   in Miscellaneous, Ray County Poor Farm

The County Museum is located in the old County /House, County Home, Alms House, and I am sure a few other names but those are the major one. Most people within County know this is the old , but how many people know that this is not the original or even the original location? The original was located on the corner of Hwy B and Hwy F, the farm had 126 acres of land. To this date we don’t have a date of when county started the , but do know that it was around in the 1860’s.

In my research the first Superintendent I have been able to find is David Rimmer and in his care he had his own family but had six people that the county felt could not care for themselves for one reason or another. The six were Polly Higgins, Nancy Hutchins, Pamelia Brown, Cynthia Brown, Sarah Andrews, and Casse Albert. If this was not the beginning it was very close as this small number grew to the 20’s by the 1900’s.

The superintendents of the must have really loved their job because the pay was not the greatest, David up to George Cook (who was the last superintendent at the old ), was paid a grand total of $25 a month and room and board for them and their family. When the county built the new they upped the pay to $75 a month and room and board, first superintendent was Sexus T Simms, but the job required more from the person, still not a lot of money. In 1928 the Board for the Visiting of Corrective Institutions made a visit to the for their semi-annual visit and after giving Andy Ballard, current superintendent, very high marks recommended “’s salary should be increased, members of the committee terming it ‘inadequate.’ receives at the present time $100, from which he must pay an assistant.”

Within County we have two Potter’s Fields, one is behind the museum and the other currently we do not currently know the location. Currently I know of six people buried at the original Potter’s Field and thirty buried at the new location. I will say this, I am FAR from complete on either location but of the total of 36 names I currently have I know for a fact they are buried in one of the two Potter’s Fields. Will I come up with more? I am sure I will as I go thru more and more of the old records.

Anyone know where the name Potter’s Field comes from?

The term comes from the story Matthew 27:7 in the New Testament of the Bible, in which Jewish priests take 30 pieces of silver returned by a repentant Judas. “The chief priests picked up the coins and said, ‘It is against the law to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money.’ So they decided to use the money to buy the potter’s field as a burial place for foreigners.

When will all of my research become public? I will give you a hint, the second grand opening. Now if between now and then someone needs some help and I have the information I will be more than willing to help. I am not going to hide anything as I love helping people try to find away thru that brink wall.

I do want to give the County Historical Society a special Thank You for let me go thru your records and newspapers to where a lot of my information came from or added to information I already had but just gave me a second source and a very special Thank You to you Karen your the best and I do have something for your here soon :)

If anyone reading this thinks they might have any information on the that might help me please let me know, and I don’t care if it was “Grandma Jones said that so and so was there” I will take it because it might be a clue and clues are where you start. If I can take the clue Mrs. and find her in the home I hope I can find most other clues.

Rod Fields

Creative Commons License
County by Rod Fields is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at hhttp://www.raycountyhistoricalsociety.com/2008/10/15/ray-county-poor-farm/.

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