OCONEE COUNTY POOR FARM CEMETERY, Oconee County, SC A.K.A. Lakeview Rest Home, Westminster, SC Version 2.3, 10-Jan-2002, C220.TXT, C220 **************************************************************** REPRODUCING NOTICE: ------------------- These electronic pages may not be reproduced in any format for profit, or presentation by any other organization, or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. Paul M Kankula - nn8nn Seneca, SC, USA Oconee County SC GenWeb Coordinator **************************************************************** DATAFILE INPUT . : Paul M. Kankula at (visit above website) in Nov-2002 G.P.S. MAPPING . : Gary Flynn at (visit above website) in Jan-2003 HISTORY WRITE-UP : KTWU Channel 11, Washburn University, Topeka, Ks. 66621 TRANSCRIPTION .. : Gary Flynn at (visit above website) in Jan-2003 CEMETERY LOCATION: ------------------ Locate intersection of Highways 76/123 and 183 in Westminster. Drive NE 3.9 miles on Highway 183. Turn left on Rock Crusher Road and drive NE 1.5 miles. Turn right on Hesse Highway and drive NW 1.1 miles. Turn right on TU-122 and drive NW 0.4 miles. Turn left on Camp Road and drive to 320 Camp (Lakeview Rest Home). The cemetery is located on the Rest Home property. As you face the Rest Home, the cemetery is located its left. A 15' high pear tree approximately marks the center of the cemetery. Approximately 15 sunken graves can be seen within 100' of this tree. It's located near a sharp bend in the road, but it can not seen from the road. Usually, if relatives or friends did not arrange to pay for burial elsewhere, inmates of Poor Farm were buried at this cemetery. It was often called the "pauper" or "Potter's Field" section. When Dennis Hamby was superintendent of this Poor Farm, he removed all the field-stone grave markers from the cemetery area and plowed the land. This was done because it was impossible to keep the weeds trimmed in this area, because of the stones. Over the years, many of the grave shafts/cavities have collapsed and can be readily seen by the visitor. Latitude N_34 43.623 x Longitude W_83 05.921_ CHURCH/CEMETERY HISTORY: The 19-bed Lakeview Rest Home is a state-licensed, non-profit "residential care" facility that houses the county's elderly and disabled people. Somewhere along the line, a 9 bed addition was added to the original 10. However, Lakeview is not a nursing home and does not house residents with acute health needs. Initially, the building that the Rest Home now uses was called the Poor Farm. Then it became part of the County's prison system. A nearby cattle barn is currently being used by the Oconee County Humane Society. The old jail is still located behind the Rest Home and a sign above it door says 1911. In 1994, Cynthia Sweney was the Home's administrator. In 2003, Karol Martin is the administrator. 320 Camp Road, Walhalla, SC 29691, 864-638-5212. WHAT WERE POORHOUSES: The matter of how to deal with the poor, how to treat them, has been an age-old problem. Questions about the poor were constantly before the public officials. Society seemed to always have a certain number of people that were not able to make it on their own. The blind, the lame, the elderly. "What to do about the poor?" is a question that has baffled mankind for thousands of years. How can you best care for those, who can't care for themselves? and this usually raises another question. "who's responsibility is it?" In Kansas, in the early days of statehood, the responsibility of caring for the poor usually fell to the individual counties. And the most common way of dealing with those less fortunate, was to send them to the poor farm. Mary Douglas, Genealogist, Salina: And that system lasted in England and part of the United States for 250 years. We're getting poor farm legislation in Kansas in 1859. It's written into the constitution. You get enabling legislation about 1862 and by the mid 1870's, most counties had some kind of poor relief. When county populations were still relatively small, the poor were often housed by local families who were then reimbursed by the county for their expenses. But as populations grew, so did the number of needy individuals. at some point the county would usually purchase a farm complete with house and outbuildings. later, those homes were often replaced by the more familiar, institutional style buildings. It was a catch-all for society. First off, it was the forerunner of our hospitals and insane asylums. A lot of people were here that were passing through. A lot of them were railroad workers, single men that had been injured and didn't have anyplace else to go. And a lot of them were people that were blind or retarded or deaf and the family didn't know what to do. You have widows, you have unmarried mothers you had the elderly and you had the poor. Families were not required by law to take care of their families. Narrator: The residents of poor farms were usually referred to as "inmates", and abuse was not uncommon. The poor farms were actual working farms, and inmates were expected to work if they were able. Sometimes even if they weren't able. Mary Douglas: You have to understand that the farm was leased out to a farmer and his wife who had no training in dealing with exceptional people. That they're there to make a buck off the farm. The county commissioners wanted to make the farm a paying proposition. The law said it was people who couldn't support themselves. So you have a clash going on right from the beginning of people who are not able to work being forced to work and then the insane were frequently tied to their beds. The blind, the deaf, the dumb were left pretty much to their own devices. They were fed, they were clothed, when they got sick they called a doctor. But there was no provision for training them, and the mentally ill particularly, because they were hard to get along with, hard to deal with, hard to manage, were abused. Of course, poor farm conditions and operating procedures varied from county to county. Not every superintendent was abusive to the inmates. In the early nineteen hundreds, attitudes towards the poor began to change. At some point, people began calling poor farms "county farms" because of the negative connotations of the word "poor". Then in the 1930'S, the poor farms began to disappear. The reason that they closed down is because of President Roosevelt and his "New Deal" incentives that set up a Social Security, set up new ways. And so counties started finding reasons to deal with people that needed to be in the poor farms such as nursing homes, insane asylums, schools for the poor, schools for the blind. So the poor farms kind of just died out because there was no need for then anymore. Some of the poor farms buildings are still around today. In fact, some are still being used to provide community social services. But unfortunately, many of the poor farm records haven't survived.....records that could provide a wealth of information to genealogists. You run into brick walls. And sometimes the brick wall comes down when you do poor farm research, because somebody may have been put in the poor farm for a season, or a year. And the registers, when we can find them, say where they came from and where they went. By: KTWU Channel 11, Washburn University, Topeka, Ks. 66621 ---------- WHAT WERE POORHOUSES: They were often called Poor Farms -- and several similar terms -- or referred to with the older term - Almshouses. Poorhouses were tax-supported residential institutions to which people were required to go if they could not support themselves. They were started as a method of providing a less expensive (to the taxpayers) alternative to what we would now days call "welfare" - what was called "outdoor relief" in those days. People requested help from the community Overseer of the Poor ( sometimes also called a Poor Master) - an elected town official. If the need was great or likely to be long-term, they were sent to the poorhouse instead of being given relief while they continued to live independently. Sometimes they were sent there even if they had not requested help from the Overseer of the Poor. That was usually done when they were found guilty of begging in public, etc. [One misconception should be cleared up here; they were not technically "debtors' prisons." Someone could owe a great deal of money, but if they could still provide themselves with the necessities for remaining independent they might avoid the poorhouse.] BEFORE POORHOUSES: Prior to the establishment of poorhouses the problem of what to do with paupers in a community was dealt with in one of three ways: 1. Outdoor Relief provided through an Overseer of the Poor: When people fell upon hard times and members of their family, friends or members of their church congregations could not provide enough assistance to tide them over, they made application to an elected local official called the Overseer of the Poor. Within a budget of tax money, he might provide them with food, fuel, clothing, or even permission to get medical treatment to be paid out of tax funds. 2. Auctioning off the Poor: People who could not support themselves (and their families) were put up for bid at public auction. In an unusual type of auction, the pauper was sold to the lowest bidder (the person who would agree to provide room and board for the lowest price) -- usually this was for a specific period of a. year or so. The person who got the contract got the use of the labor of the pauper for free in return for feeding, clothing, housing and providing health care for the pauper and his/her family. This was actually a form of indentured servitude. It sounds a lot like slavery -- except that it was technically not for the pauper's entire lifetime. And it had many of the perils of slavery. The welfare of the paupers depended almost entirely upon the kindness and fairness of the bidder. If he was motivated only by a desire to make the maximum profit off the "use" of the pauper, then concern for "the bottom line" might result in the pauper being denied adequate food, or safe and comfortable shelter, or even necessary medical treatment. And there often was very little recourse for protection against abuse. (See scan of an authentic record of an auction in 1832 in Sandown NH.) 3. Contracting with someone in the community to care for Paupers: In this situation the care of a group of paupers was delegated to the person(s) who would contract to provide care at, again, the lowest price. This system allowed the opportunity for somewhat better supervision as indicated in the terms of the contract -- which might specify what minimum standard of care must be provided and that community officers would do inspections, etc. There were still often the same opportunities for abuse that were noted above. Note: In some cases (before state laws began to require the establishment of County Poorhouses) local communities had already discovered that a place to house paupers helped reduce the cost of poor relief. These small town poorhouses were the prototypes for the later state-required county poorhouses. Those earlier poorhouses often instituted the use of an adjacent farm on which the paupers could work to raise their own food, thus making the houses more self- sufficient (relying less on local tax funds). That is how the term "poor farm" came into being. THE BEGINNING of the COUNTY POORHOUSE SYSTEM: During the second quarter of the 19th century, as the industrial revolution had its effect on the United States, the importation of the factory system from England was followed almost immediately by the full scale adoption of what seemed to be an inherent component of that system -- the Poorhouse System. These poorhouses were built with great optimism. They promised to be a much more efficient and cheaper way to provide relief to paupers. And there was a fervent popular belief that housing such people in institutions would provide the opportunity to reform them and cure them of the bad habits and character defects that were assumed to be the cause of their poverty. THE DISILLUSIONMENT: By mid-century, people were beginning to question the success of the poorhouse movement. Investigations were launched to examine the conditions in poorhouses. They had proven to be much more expensive than had been anticipated. And they had not significantly reduced the numbers of the "unworthy poor" nor eliminated the need for "outdoor relief". [ This was public assistance given to those living outside the poorhouses. It was given somewhat grudgingly to those considered to be (perhaps!) more "worthy" poor --who might only briefly and temporarily require assistance to procure food or fuel or clothing when they fell on very short-term hard times.] THE CIVIL WAR: But the Civil War was the major preoccupation of American society during the third quarter of the century. Major systematic changes in social welfare policy had to await calmer times. Ironically, the faltering poorhouse system was sheltered from the impact of the poverty produced by the war itself. The war created widows and orphans; and it deprived elderly members of families of the support they might have had in their old age, had their sons and grandsons lived or remained able to work. While many looked forward to the time ... "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again"... many soldiers limped home to be disabled for the rest of their lives. However, a relatively small proportion of these casualties of the war ever wound up living in poorhouses. The poorhouses were spared this circumstance for two reasons. Special laws were passed requiring that any needed assistance to veterans and their families had to be provided as outdoor relief -- specifically prohibiting placement in the poorhouse. And the Civil War Pension Plan provided -- although belatedly and awkwardly and controversially -- for soldiers and their family members. (An entire book could be devoted to this -- and it has been!) THE TRANSITION: By 1875, after the regulation of poorhouses in most states became the responsibility of the State Board of Charities, laws were passed prohibiting children from residing in poorhouses and removing mentally ill patients and others with special needs to more appropriate facilities. The poorhouse population was even more narrowly defined during the twentieth century when social welfare legislation (Workman's Compensation, Unemployment benefits and Social Security) began to provide a rudimentary "safety net" for people who would previously have been pauperized by such circumstances. Eventually the poorhouses evolved almost exclusively into nursing homes for dependent elderly people. But poorhouses left orphanages, general hospitals and mental hospitals -- for which they had provided the prototype -- as their heritage. By: Unknown Author ---------- TOMBSTONE TRANSCRIPTION NOTES: ------------------------------ a. = age at death b. = date-of-birth d. = date-of-death h. = husband m. = married p. = parents w. = wife HARDIN, Mariah, b. 24-feb-1837, d. 24-may-1925, h. t.w. land, large stone grave marker that was placed next to the pear tree, someone has pushed the top section off its mounting base SIZEMORE, Thomas, b. 17-may-1810, d. 3-jun-1916, thought to be buried here, contributed by missy smith at melissasmith1@charter.net, 200 mc cue, easley, sc 29642, 864-855-1482