Sometimes when I’m researching I make discoveries and I want to ask, “Does everyone else know about this?” Those are often topics for these blogs. And such is our subject today – The Poor House.

Of course, I’ve always known there were establishments such as a poor house or a work house. However, I never realized they were so close to home – close as in Fentress County and Cumberland County and Overton County. It turns out that just about every county had a poor house.

I made this discovery while perusing the census record – a name I was looking at was listed as “inmate” which of course let me to ask whether he was a prisoner. That was just a term used by that particular county or maybe just by that census-taker. The 1910 census record for Fentress County lists the residents as “dependent” and sadly the ages of those dependents range from 6 years old to 80 years old. I am further saddened to see several ages entered as “unknown”.

The Fentress County Poor House was located on Taylor’s Turnpike. The next road was Glenouby Road so I assume what we now call Taylor Place Road was originally this Taylor’s Turnpike. In 1910 there were 13 dependents there along with the caretaker’s family which consisted of parents and 4 children. Of personal interest to me, there are 3 children (one aged 6 years old and 2 with unknown ages) of the Stepp family. That is my father’s family and we have no stories of any children being left at the poor house or raised there. So there is a family mystery I must unravel!

I was reading some articles that many of the county poor houses had cemeteries on their property where residents would be buried in homemade caskets in graves dug by the caretakers. Sadly, there are no grave markers or only unmarked field stones on these graves.

I’ve you’ve had a novel signed by me, you will no doubt have noticed that I tag them with Deuteronomy 32:7 “Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.” We can’t ask the fathers or elders for those folks who died in the poor houses and were laid to rest in unmarked graves. Isn’t it sad to think that we lost their stories?