Erath County Poor Farm Cemetery
Stephenville, Erath County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1869, the Texas Constitution directed counties to establish a “Manual-Labor Poor-House” to care for “indigent and poor inhabitants” and provide work for “all persons committing petty offences.” Erath County Commissioners started a poor farm in 1881. For $650, they purchased a farm from J.B. Hill four miles from the county courthouse in the Smith Springs community. The farm included homes for paupers and a superintendent, a water well, and a building with bars for convict laborers. John Zimmerman, the first superintendent, received $40 per month to manage and oversee the farm. The poor farm operated for more than fifty years. The farm produced cotton, peanuts, and other crops. Area doctors provided medical care, usually without a fee, and county funds paid for medicine. The county also provided a coffin upon death, and dedicated a cemetery on the property. No records have been found to identify residents or those interred at the poor farm cemetery. In the 1930s, federal new deal programs improved living conditions for many Americans, and the need for poor farms ended. When the Erath County Poor Farm closed, Mr. and Mrs. Sam Swanzy, the last caretakers, took several remaining residents to live on property they owned near Huckabay. In 1935, a tornado struck the site and destroyed most of the buildings. In 1939, county commissioners deeded the 260-acre site to Texas A&M as an experimental agricultural station. Restoration of the cemetery and the marking of unidentified gravesites with crosses, begun by boy scout troops in the 1980s and continued by the Erath County Poor Farm Cemetery Association, commemorates these unknown citizens.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Acting on a state mandate to care for the destitute, Erath County opened a poor farm in 1881, where paupers and petty offenders lived and labored raising cotton and peanuts, with a cemetery set aside on the grounds. The farm ran for more than fifty years until New Deal relief programs made it obsolete, and its unnamed dead lay unmarked until Boy Scouts and volunteers began restoring the graves in the 1980s.
Why it matters
Poor farm cemeteries like this recall how nineteenth-century America cared for its most vulnerable, honoring forgotten citizens whose names the records never kept.
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Related people
- · John Zimmerman
Themes & tags
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