Ohio History Journal

edited by

FRANK R. LEVSTIK

 

Life Among the Lowly:

An Early View of an Ohio Poor House

 

 

The care of the poor in Ohio during the early nineteenth century was

largely based on English legislation of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and

eighteenth centuries. In 1795 statutes of the Northwest Territory provided

a means whereby the poor could be employed through a system of annual

farming-out to the lowest bidder. The "farmers" were thus authorized to

keep the poor at moderate labor. For the next two decades, various

modifications on this plan were used for the care of the destitute. By virtue

of an Act of February 26, 1816, Ohio counties received authorization to

establish poor houses wherever it seemed "proper and advantageous." The

creation of the county poor house, or indoor relief system, moved with the

tide of immigration, general economic conditions and the rise in the

numbers of the helpless and destitute.'

In one Ohio county, Greene County, implementation of the 1816 act did

not take place until 1827. During that year. county officials purchased a

hundred acre tract, a mile and one-half west of Xenia. where a brick

building sixty feet long and eighteen feet wide, and one story tall was

erected to provide for Greene County's indigent populace. Less than two

decades later, the county's needs required replacement of the structure. In

1840 Greene County built a two-story brick structure forty-by-one hundred

feet to replace the older building. Subsequently, a wing was added to the

building, and then a structure for the confinement of the mentally ill.²

Records of conditions in Ohio poor houses prior to the Civil War are

rare so that a letter on the Greene County Infirmary and its conditions

addressed to Governor Salmon P. Chase is extraordinarily enlightening.

The following letter, reproduced in its entirety from the Salmon P. Chase

Papers in the Archives-Manuscripts Division at the Ohio Historical

Society, provides a fresh look into the loathsome state of the poor house

 

 

 

Frank R. Levstik is the State Archivist of Ohio.

 

1. Aileen E. Kennedy, The Ohio Poor Law and Its Administration (Chicago, 1934), 19,

20. 32.

2. R. S. Dills, History of Greene County (Dayton, 1881), 305.

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where the sick, aged, disabled, orphaned, insane, and idiots were common- ly confined. The author, Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, was born November 16, 1806, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the daughter of Nathaniel and Elizabeth Peabody. Her sisters were Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Elizabeth Peabody, reformer and educator. Growing up in Salem, Massachusetts, she left home at eighteen to teach school in Maine. She returned to Boston to assist her sister Elizabeth in the operation of a school for young children. In 1832, while living at the boardinghouse of Rebecca Clarks, Mary met Horace Mann, a fellow boarder, attorney, widower and state legislator. She continued to teach and by 1839 assisted Mann in educational reform, writing letters and copying statistics. They were married May 1, 1843, honeymooning with Samuel Gridley and Julia Ward Howe. Upon their return they settled in Boston and later West Newton, Massachusetts.

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In 1853 Horace Mann accepted the presidency of Antioch College in

Yellow Springs. Ohio. Mrs. Mann moved the family west, ably filling the

role of president's wife and confidant. The monotony of life in small town

Ohio no doubt gave impetus to the necessity of investigating the human

condition at the nearby county poor house. Following her husbands' death

in 1859. Mary and the family returned to Massachusetts where she became

associated with kindergarten education, later authoring several books.

including the three volume Life and Works of Horace Mann. She died

February 11, 1887, in Boston, Massachusetts, of chronic bronchitis.3

The spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure are presented as they

originally appeared.

 

 

*      *       *

Dec. 16, 1858

Yellow Springs, Ohio

His Excellency

Governor Chase

Dear Sir

Perhaps I should make an apology for intruding upon your special

notice a subject that has been given into the hands of a commissioner by

your authority.⁴ My apology must be my conviction that I can give you

more precise information than any such commission as this for obvious

reasons, the chief of which is that I am a woman, and women understand

best the interests of houses and household arrangements and I allude to the

subject of County Poor Houses or Infirmaries as they arejustly called, and

as they should be considered. In company with other ladies, I have visited

the Infirmary of this County several times this fall, and my repeated

observations induce me to pronounce a disgrace to a civilized community. I

am told, however, that this is as good as such houses genrally are in Ohio!

We found not a single able bodied, & scarcely a single able-minded person

in this infirmary, except one old lady who has been thrust into it by her

sons, who have wronged her out of property & driven her there by cruel

treatment. The care of this old lady has excited our sympathy to such a

degree, that we are making arrangements to remove her into a private

family in this place, & support her by private charity, all appeals to her

children being utterly disregarded. The poor old lady, of good benevolent

character & well respected by all her neighbors, now 86 years old. & only

 

3. The biographical data on Mary Mann was obtained from a sketch in Edward T. James.

Janet W. James and Paul S. Boyer's Notable American Women 1607-1950: A Biographical

Directory (Cambridge, Mass.. 1971), I1, 488-89.

4. An Act of April 17. 1857, asked the Governor to appoint a Commissioner to examine

the reports of county infirmaries and prepare a bill for their better regulation. Ohio House

Journal 1858. LIV. 71.

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longing to die is thrust into a very small room where there are three beds, & where inbeciles of all descriptions are her roommates-& the room situated within two rods of a frightful mad house, occupied by insane people and idiots where howling, imprecations assail her ears by night & by day. In the madhouse are confined unfortunates who might all be made comfortable and orderly by proper care and arrangements, but they are taken care of by another inmate of the Infirmary who is the only person physically able & willing to do the work and she is hardly able, & very tyrannical. We had visited and talked with these unfortunates and made some happy by giving them employments-but the superintendents family who are well intentioned are so ill paid that they cannot afford to take proper care for the aged, insane or sick-The attending physician gives sad accounts of evils he cannot remedy, & I am told by good citizens of Xenia that former physicians have also complained and remonstrated in vain, & some have declined attending, because they could not cause any changes. They now prepare to build another infirmary,5 nearer to the city, where the citizens can easily visit it & make some reforms but in the State of Ohio, County Infirmaries ought to be not less than good Hospitals, with sufficient attendance and expenditure to meet the case-a good tranquil home to the destitute aged, a hospital for the sick, a school for the children. Here the meals are but two a day & those scanty & weighed out-no milk ever finds its way to the table, the Superintendent owns seven cows-but he makes butter to eke out his own scanty salary, which is but $400.00 for all   5. The new infirmary was not built until 1870.

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the care of a farm of one hundred acres, which he must stock himself,

unaided, for the maintenance of fifty or sixty people. A stagnant marsh

close by causes much illness & almost yearly deaths. Children base-born

and ignorant run wild & untaught, & listen to the worst of language &

sights of tyranny & oppression to the unhappy insane. I have been there

many times & staid many hours, & have lost happiness and sleep by it. Such

things ought not to be. I wish women could have some part in arranging &

directing such places. Why cannot visiting committees of county poor

houses be composed of women? There are a dozen here & in Xenia who

would willingly serve on such a committee-The physician says the

commissioners go down there and see only the outside of things-and think

chiefly of doing the thing in the cheapest manner. They farm out the

stewardship but the present occupants, who have done better than former

ones & who ought to be retained on generous terms for all the efforts they

have made, tell me they cannot renew there engagement there on such

terms. And they ought not.⁶ 1 am told that Judge (name indecipherable) is

the special commissioner appointed for this work, and that something is to

be done about it in the next Legislature. I do not know the gentleman, but I

wish he would interest ladies in all the counties to visit the respective poor

houses, & give him the fruit of their observations. I have thoughts of

writing & insisting in some wide spread paper an appeal to the women of

the state to interest themselves voluntarily in the matter during the next

month, & to present a condensed memorial to the legislature at the next

session. Do you think this would be judicious?⁷

We hope to see you some day or days when you can escape again & give

up a little time to friendship. It would refresh us amazingly.

 

With much regard,

Mary Mann

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. An Act of the General Assembly in 1882 created a Board of County Visitors to examine

and inspect county institutions. The Judge of the Court of Common Pleas could appoint five

members, three of them women to visitjail, prison, infirmary, and children's home. The Board

was to file reports and make recommendations as to the quality of care.

7. On January 23, 1858, Governor Salmon P. Chase deferred appointment on the

expectation of returns from counties, Ohio House Journal(appendix), LIV, 39. On January3,

1859, Governor Chases' message to the General Assembly noted ". . that the Commission-

er appointed under the act of your predecessors. . has as yet been unable to fufill the duty

imposed by his appointment." Ohio Executive Documents 1858. pt. 2. 87.

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