Before the days of welfare. Social Security or other similar programs, there was a ring of truth to the angry taunt, “You’re going to put us in the poor house!” A spouse might have a real dread of becoming a public charge, and my own views of the county poor farm as a child made me very aware that there were people who, for a variety of reasons, wound up living at the poor farm. Big cities had their houses of charity, much like the homeless shelters of today, but the rural areas had the county poor farm, and these attempted to become well run farms that were self-sustaining.

During the expansion period of the 19,b century, there was a general belief that personal initiative and effort were all that was necessary to achieve material success. The traditional belief was that indigence equaled incompetence, and any governmental aid given to the financially unfortunate carried with it the taint of pauperism. People survived any way they could until their resources sank to a level where their only recourse was to accept or petition for residence at the county poor farm.