Poor Farm: Travis County's First

See County Farm. 1898 Travis County Clerk Records: Road Book, Precinct 2, p.346

Before the social safety nets to which we are accustomed today – food stamps, unemployment benefits, homeless shelters – there were “poor farms”. The Texas Constitution of 1869 directed the responsibility for the care of its indigent and poor residents to counties. Based on the tradition of the almshouse, many counties established poor farms, a means for destitute inhabitants to live and work in an agrarian-based institutionalized setting.

Michael Barnes at the Austin American Statesman has written about a Travis County Poor Farm that was north of Windsor Road in what is now Tarrytown, but it was not the first. The very first poor farm for Travis was east of Spicewood Springs. George Washington Davis, an early settler of this area, received a land grant of 3,154 acres from the Republic of Texas for his service at the Battle of San Jacinto. A good chunk Northwest Hills Civic Association's (NWACA) neighborhood is from that old grant, and in 1879 Travis County purchased land from the Davis grant east of MoPac for its first poor farm that would eventually expand to 303 acres. It was roughly bounded by today’s Mopac, Anderson Lane, Burnet Road and Greenlawn, and was in operation until it’s closure ca. 1905 when the poor farm was relocated south to around today’s Tarrytown.

Not part of the poor farm proper, the county also purchased a roughly .16 mile wide strip of land in NWACA south of Spicewood Springs Rd that extended from the farm northwest to near Mesa. This was “timberland” used to provide timber and other resources for the farm.

From a number of sources we are able to get an idea of the layout and life on the poor farm. Travis County Clerk Records include a ledger from 1890 to 1900 with an inventory of property belonging to the farm, resident paupers, hired hands, and county convicts sent to the poor farm to work off fines they were unable to pay. Resident pauper information includes names, dates, sex, ethnicity, and date and reason for discharge.

The main buildings appear to have been located on about a 9+ acre tract where today's Lucy Read School is now located, with a main entrance off today’s Burnet Rd aligned with Richcreek Rd.

Mrs. Edna Carpenter’s husband was superintendent of the poor farm from 1903 to 1904; her memoir Tales from the Manchaca Hills (1960) provides a wonderful look at life on the farm. The superintendent and family lived in a one-story, five-room house that included a kitchen, two large porches and a large store room for groceries, clothing and supplies. A cook was employed who prepared three meals a day for the residents and convicts. The house also included a washroom and dining room where the residents ate at one table. Convict dining was confined to a side porch at a separate long table.

There were numerous outbuildings, a barn, a dozen two-room cottages for the resident paupers, and a separate guard house for the convicts. By this period of 1903 - 1904 the farm even had a telephone powered by battery.

In their stay she noted there were about 20 residents and usually about 15 convicts; as convicts worked off their fines they departed to be replaced by other offenders who lacked cash to pay their penalties. Convict labor supported the farm by raising wheat, oats, corn, cotton and vegetables; these were for consumption but also cash crops. The elderly and or disabled residents not able to do farm work did other chores: laundry, making butter, helping with cooking and serving meals, raising chickens, tending to live stock. Overall the picture she paints of everyday life is much like one of a commune (albeit with convict labor) and not quite as dismal as one might imagine.

County records document deaths on Travis County’s first poor farm. As one study statewide noted, the high death rate on poor farms made establishment of cemeteries on the property common. There is some evidence for a cemetery on this poor farm in an Austin news article from1886: “ ‘Ras Scott, a white pauper, died at the county poor farm day before yesterday of consumption, and was buried yesterday. Friends, he had none, but for all that, he was given decent burial in the graveyard on the farm.” (Austin American-Statesman 3 Dec 1886, Fri · Page 5)

If there was a cemetery where was it located? No official record of location has yet been found, including THC’s record of lost cemeteries. Also, at some other poor farm cemeteries bodies were reinterred when development encroached; as of yet no evidence has been found this occurred. The location of a cemetery if it existed, and the disposition burials, remains a mystery not yet solved for this, the first of Travis County’s poor farms.

Maps, Photos

from 1898 Travis County Roads Map

Snippet from 1885-86 General Directory of the City of Austin

Wilbarger referenced the "poor farm" in his classic Indian Depredations of Texas

 

Plat of Travis County Poor Farm and Timberland from sale by Travis in 1905. Travis County Clerk Records Commissioners Court Minutes J, p.537

1905 sale of by Travis. Travis County Clerk Records Commissioners Court Minutes J, p.537

 

 

Notes

Thanks to Christy Costlow, Travis County Archivist; and Bob Ward and Lanny Ottonsen, Travis County Historical Commission, for help in researching this article.  

Tales from the Manchaca Hills: The Unvarnished Memoirs of a Texas Gentlewoman, by Mrs. Edna Turley Carpenter. Published by The Hauser Press, New Orleans, LA, 1960