The Poor House

Built in 1877 with an addition in 1904, this house grew out of an earlier Illinois system for caring for the poor that began as early as 1819, when the Illinois General Assembly required county commissioners to appoint overseers of the poor for each township. Families of paupers usually received aid to care for household members who could not care for themselves, but by 1839 the almshouse method of public welfare had been introduced, with a building erected on county land and worked by pauper labor so that one person could oversee the operation. This farm originally contained 175 acres and operated under the Almshouse Law, using log buildings for many years until the brick building was constructed. The belief that people would willingly work for their subsistence soon met reality, and the poor farm became an orphanage, a jail, an insane asylum, and a refuge for people cast out and deplored. It came to represent a way of dealing with social problems in a time of very little public investment in social welfare, and what began as an effort to help the county poor became another good idea that did not work. The farm ceased operation sometime after 1950.

Harrisburg, Illinois · United States