Scott County Poor Farm

The Almshouse

The eighty acres the Scott County Poor Farm sat on was purchased in 1847 for $875. The Almshouse, where the poormaster and the SCPF inmates would live, was completed by 1850, providing a social safety net for the impoverished, aged, orphaned, sick, and mentally ill of Scott County. The documentation and reporting on the SCPF gives many perspectives, but ultimately raises more questions. At the time the SCPF was established, it was the main resource for the most at risk in our community. As the prairie evolved from the outskirts of the frontier, to the neighbor of the State Hospital for the Insane in Jacksonville, to the home of the first Illinois Director of Public Welfare, the SCPF was both a home and a prison to the people that lived there.

Of all the topics I have explored in Scott County, this one has really exercised my ability to hold two truths at once. There were times that the SCPF is described as a loving home for the needy. There are also reports of people being treated in the most inhumane ways, even for the time. Scott County’s proximity to Jacksonville, and the available services at the State Hospital, make it hard to reconcile the treatment of some of the people that ended up in the care of the Scott County Poor Master.