A Palace for the Poor: The Knox County Infirmary and Nineteenth Century 
Social Reform in Rural Ohio 
 
 
 
 
 
by 
 
Aubrey E. Brown 
 
 
 
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements 
 
for the Degree of 
 
Master of Arts 
 
in the 
 
History 
 
Program 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
YOUNGSTOWN STATE UNIVERSITY 
 
May, 2013
A Palace for the Poor: The Knox County Infirmary and Nineteenth Century 
Social Reform in Rural Ohio 
 
Aubrey E. Brown 
 
 
I hereby release this thesis to the public.  I understand that this thesis will be made 
available from the OhioLINK ETD Center and the Maag Library Circulation Desk for 
public access.  I also authorize the University or other individuals to make copies of this 
thesis as needed for scholarly research. 
 
 
Signature: 
     
  Aubrey E. Brown, Student  Date 
 
 
 
 
Approvals: 
     
  Dr. Martha Pallante, Thesis Advisor Date  
 
 
 
     
  Dr. Donna DeBlasio, Committee Member Date 
 
 
   
 
     
  Dr. Diane Barnes, Committee Member Date 
 
 
 
 
     
  Bryan DePoy, Interim Dean of School of Graduate Studies and Research Date 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
© 
 
Aubrey E. Brown  
 
2013 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Abstract 
 During the nineteenth century, middle- and upper-class citizens often viewed 
poverty as a form of moral delinquency among members of the working class rather than 
as an economic imbalance influenced by the rise of industrialization.  The poorhouse, 
sometimes called an almshouse, poor farm, poor asylum, and later infirmary or 
city/county home, is one among a small variety of formal, legal institutions of social 
reform created to manage those individuals who consciously or unconsciously digressed 
from the “normal” social order of the working class.  The Knox County, Ohio welfare 
system of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries stands as an exemplary model of 
rural self-reliance and community preservation.  The Knox County Infirmary served as a 
centralized location to provide relief and general care to the poor, physically disabled, 
elderly, widowed, orphaned, and even mentally ill of the county.  What may have started 
as a means of separating the social classes, by the mid-nineteenth century it functioned 
more as a means of unifying citizens of Knox County in combatting the threat of 
industrialization to its traditional, agricultural roots.  It was also a struggle between self 
and collective identities. 
Acknowledgments 
 
 A huge thank you goes to my entire thesis committee for their great patience as I 
struggled to bring this project to its finish.  To Dr. Diane Barnes as one of my thesis 
readers, thank you for assisting me in the extremely last-minute formatting and editing, as 
well as making connections between poorhouses and other similar social institutions.  To 
Dr. Donna DeBlasio as my other thesis reader, thank you for your guidance in exploring 
the relationship between the built environment and community, which helped lead me to 
the conclusion the poorhouse is a reflection of local ideals more than regional and 
national social trends.  Thank you to my thesis director, Dr. Martha Pallante, for sharing 
my interest in the largely unexplored social classes such as the poor, especially in rural 
regions such as Knox County.  Her enthusiasm for this subject and her constant 
reassurances were essential in guiding me through this undertaking, helping to develop 
this project into a study with regional significance beyond a single institution. 
 I would also like to thank Janet Wacker, reference librarian at the Public Library 
of Mount Vernon and Knox County, for her guidance and willingness to retrieve 
newspaper articles at the last minute that I needed to illustrate the Knox County 
Infirmary’s story.  Jim Gibson, museum director of the Knox County Historical Society, 
along with rare photographs of the Knox County Infirmary, also provided me with 
guidance and motivation to explore the institution’s history.  I would like to thank him for 
being available to answer questions even outside of museum hours. 
 Finally, I would like to thank my family.  My grandparents provided me with the 
yearning to explore the past beyond written history by taking me to historic sites, 
cemeteries, and museums.  I would like to thank them for generating my strong attraction 
to the lesser-known stories that have contributed to the growth of the American culture.  I 
never would have known the Knox County Infirmary existed if my father had not decided 
to take the scenic back road instead of the main route all those years ago.  I would like to 
thank him for that fleeting introduction, which sparked my imagination and desire to 
understand this magnificent structure.  I would like to thank her for giving me the writing 
skills that have allowed me to convey my passion for this institution to the world.  More 
importantly, I would like to thank my mother for her infinite encouragement and support, 
especially during the final days of this project when I needed it most.  My family’s 
unceasing strength and perseverance are a powerful, eternal inspiration.
Table of Contents 
 
Introduction: Welcome to the Poorhouse      viii 
 
Chapter One: For the Relief of the Poor      19 
 
Chapter Two: Rise of the Institution       41 
 
Chapter Three: A More Convenient Style of Architecture    64 
 
Conclusion: Preservation of Community Identity     86 
 
Bibliography          93 
viii 
 
Introduction: Welcome to the Poorhouse 
 Slowly crumbling under the weight of its own decay, the Knox County Infirmary 
stands nearly hidden by the deep shadows cast by overgrown landscaping.  For a select 
few, this soaring edifice and the two, small remaining outbuildings, are the only 
connection to the long-forgotten past, to family and friends once housed within its walls, 
or even a place filled with fond childhood memories.  For many others, it is nothing more 
than a spooky old building filled with mystery and endless possibilities for the thrill-
seeking adrenaline junkie.  Similar to this once majestic monument to nineteenth century 
American welfare, the significance of its humble function as a place of genuine care for 
the outcasts of society has been misconstrued and misinterpreted by generations of Knox 
County residents.  More importantly, the former occupants of the Infirmary—the 
superintendents, matrons, servants, and above all the inmates—have been denied what 
scant dignity they carried with them in life by the countless urban legends that have 
perpetuated the general ignorance surrounding this institution. 
 During the nineteenth century, middle- and upper-class citizens of a community 
often viewed poverty as a form of moral delinquency among members of the working 
class rather than as an economic imbalance influenced by the rise of industrialization.  
The poorhouse, sometimes called an almshouse, poor farm, poor asylum, and later 
infirmary or city or county home, is one among a small variety of formal institutions of 
social reform created to manage those individuals who consciously or unconsciously 
digressed from the “normal” social order of the working class.  Ohio’s early welfare 
system is illustrative of Midwestern practices that the state and local governments 
implemented throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to care for the 
ix 
 
underprivileged, poverty-stricken classes.  Examination of the Knox County Infirmary 
demonstrates the impact of social reform movements within rural communities of central 
Ohio through the organization of formal institutions established for the relief and 
regulation of the poor and other socially neglected classes, such as the elderly, disabled, 
orphaned, widowed, and mentally ill. 
 Mention the term poorhouse, and it inevitably conjures images of colonial New 
England workhouses or recalls the harrowing tales of the debtors’ prison and workhouse 
has popularized by the novels of Charles Dickens.  Even in the realm of academia, the 
American poorhouse of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries has received little 
attention, and those institutions established in rural communities of the Midwestern 
United States even less.  Many rural regions like Knox County, Ohio, created at the time 
of their incorporation a means of caring for the less fortunate of society, whether enacted 
through state laws or local institutions.  The relationship between the poorhouse and other 
social institutions such as insane asylums, orphanages, old age homes, homes for 
unmarried mothers, the “feeble-minded,” prisons, and rehabilitation facilities for 
alcoholism and drug abuse, is vague, and yet so deeply enmeshed that the poorhouse 
served multiple purposes of social reform and charity at any given time.  Why, then, is 
the poorhouse narrative lacking from the historiographical record? 
 Social historians have cursorily explored the American poorhouse system 
primarily as a stepping-stone to understanding contemporary models of public welfare.  It 
was not until the 1970s that the subject matter received serious academic scrutiny outside 
of social work, and was perhaps a product of the sudden increase of welfare demands 
beginning in the 1960s.  Most notably, David Rothman in his 1971 book The Discovery 
x 
 
of the Asylum, was in many ways the first to explore American institutions of social 
reform (not poorhouses specifically) as a means to treat individuals of their social 
deviancy rather than merely as a product to corral paupers, criminals, and insane persons 
away from the public eye.
1
  Throughout the book, he discusses the asylum, whether it be 
a poorhouse, mental institution, orphanage, or prison, in terms of being an alternative to 
traditional methods of “warning out” social deviants from the community or contracting 
them into indentured servitude.  While he acknowledges the shifting social attitude of the 
time, what Rothman fails to include is the impact of economic factors, both prior to 
widespread institutionalization beginning in the early-1800s and immediately following.  
Rothman presents the asylum as more of a phenomenon of a rise in paternalistic thinking 
than as an outgrowth and continuation of prevailing seventeenth and eighteenth century 
attitudes of proper social order. 
 Authors Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward,
2
 writing at the same time as 
Rothman and likely in direct reaction to the 1960s welfare upsurge, utilizes the nineteenth 
century poorhouse as an example to show the long history of Americans striving to 
control lower-class citizens.  The first half of this study explores the development of 
nineteenth century indoor and outdoor relief for the poor, leading into the first major shift 
away from direct relief to work relief at the onset of the New Deal era.  The book as a 
whole was designed to critique contemporary welfare policies as little better than a 
                                                 
1
 David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic 
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1971).  Also by this author and as a sequel to the former study, Conscience and 
Convenience: The Asylum and Its Alternatives in Progressive America.  Boston: Little, Brown, 1980.  The 
latter book does little to expand upon Rothman’s earlier work, aside from scrutinizing the beginnings of the 
end of institutional reform rather than its beginning. 
2
 Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Coward, Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (rev. 
ed., New York: Vintage Books, 1993).  This book was originally published in 1972. 
xi 
 
bandage to age-old problems of poverty.  Similarly, Michael Katz’s work
3
 brings 
attention to contemporary American welfare as an outgrowth of the earlier poorhouse 
system, with little improvement thereof.  He divides his book into three categories, 
stretching from the reform movements of the early-nineteenth century to the development 
of Progressive Era welfare programs, to the struggles of maintaining a feasible system of 
welfare in contemporary society.  Rather than examining poorhouses as products of a 
place, time, and shared national mentality, the role of these institutions in his study are 
primarily to demonstrate to the reader the incompetency of the American welfare system, 
historically and contemporarily, in its ability to wholly manage those living below the 
poverty line. 
 Of all the three pioneering books mentioned above, Katz’s work is by far the most 
comprehensive, and has therefore been the most referenced source for all subsequent 
studies.  However, Katz places too much emphasis on the role of urban societies as the 
driving force of social reform.  Many urban poorhouses were assembled on the outskirts 
of the city, situated on small farms, as a means of rehabilitation and to teach the inmates 
proper work ethics, even though many who were sent there were unfamiliar with farming.  
Rural communities, though vastly different from urban centers, are included by Katz only 
as part of the crusade to remove indigents from the streets, and scrutinized almost entirely 
in relation to the nearest urban centers.  Katz’s work marks the beginning of serious 
research into the issue of social welfare, and establishes a strong foundation for future 
research into the development of welfare movements within the United States, both urban 
and, to a far lesser extent, rural, but does not provide guidance in understanding 
                                                 
3
 Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York: 
Basic Books, 1986). 
xii 
 
poorhouses situated communities where agricultural is the predominant occupation.  The 
social structure of rural communities is much different from that found in urbanized 
localities, making it difficult to draw upon the foregoing works as a strong point of 
reference. 
 It has not been until recently that scholarship on the subject of the American 
poorhouse system has surfaced as an individual institution of reform.  In his book, The 
Poorhouse: America’s Forgotten Institution,
4
 David Wagner strives to augment the 
previous works by Katz and Rothman by taking a more intimate approach toward the 
subject matter.  Wagner does not limit his research to the laws, regulations, and reform 
movements that shaped poorhouses and general public sentiment regarding these 
institutions.  He analyzes the political, social, and economic trends that motivated cities 
and counties to establish poorhouses in their communities, but more importantly, he 
strives to demonstrate the relationships among all individuals associated with the 
poorhouse, from the overseers to the staff to the inmates.  Through newspaper articles, 
government documents, and various poorhouse records, he examines the day-to-day 
experiences of affiliated parties, augmenting his tale with first-hand accounts through a 
handful of oral history interviews with surviving individuals connected to the poorhouses 
he uses in his study.  Wagner focuses on New England, using six different poorhouses as 
case studies.  Only two of these institutions are located in rural locations.  Despite his 
efforts at a more intimate narrative of the poorhouse system, Wagner does little more 
than reiterate what previous scholars have already said, and completely ignores the 
importance of understanding the relationship between the poorhouses and the larger 
                                                 
4
 David Wagner, The Poorhouse: America’s Forgotten Institution (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 
2005.) 
xiii 
 
communities that they served.  The last chapter of The Poorhouse stresses the continuing 
poverty crisis in the United States, using the poorhouse both as a metaphor and as a literal 
construction of the contemporary state of welfare institutions. 
 Inquiry into the social history of communities that remained rural throughout the 
height of industrialization and the demographic shift toward an urban lifestyle rather than 
agricultural leaves much to be desired.  Hal S. Barron
5
 has managed to condense many of 
the major issues of what he calls the “Second Great Transformation” into a single 
volume.  Barron’s approach to understanding the rural north as it developed alongside the 
rise of an urban consumer culture emphasizes how many farming communities created a 
distinct agrarian subculture in reaction to the rising reform movements, including general 
programs of institutionalization.  The rural north was challenged during this second great 
transformation to either adapt the statewide improvement plans for their own benefit, or 
crumble under the pressure to conform and lose all of their traditional agrarian values.  
The wide geographical area under examination here, stretching from New Hampshire to 
North Dakota, is far too wide to accurately group together in a single study, but what 
Barron does is to offer new avenues to approach the study of rural societies during 
America’s great social reform movements. 
  Social historians such as those mentioned above have conducted their respective 
studies in an attempt to understand the poorhouse as it existed in an urban setting, while 
very few historians have delved into gaining insight respecting its rural counterpart.  The 
Knox County Infirmary’s story, when began in 1842 with the establishment of the 
Poorhouse Farm and ended in 1977 with the termination of the County home, is similar in 
                                                 
5
 Hal S. Barron, Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North 1870-1930 (Chapel 
Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997). 
xiv 
 
some ways to the conventional urban poorhouse, but also deviates from the stereotypical 
notions of what these institutions were and how they operated.  The Knox County welfare 
system of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries stands as an exemplary model of 
rural self-reliance and community preservation.  What may have started as a means of 
separating the social classes, by the mid-nineteenth century it functioned more as a means 
of unifying the citizens of Knox County in combatting the threat of industrialization to its 
traditional, agricultural roots.  This pattern of exclusion and inclusion of the financially, 
physically, and mentally infirm was repeated at least twice through the course of the 
county’s history.  The present study will concentrate on a period of thirty-five years, 
between 1842 with the purchase of the Knox County Poorhouse Farm and 1877 the 
completion of the four-story Knox County Infirmary building that stands on the site 
today. 
 The Knox Count Infirmary’s story is not unique, but it does reveal much about the 
way in which communities throughout rural Ohio implemented the early American 
welfare system as constituted by local and state governments.  The Infirmary, a 
poorhouse by any other name, served as a centralized location to provide relief and 
general care to the poor, the physically disabled, the elderly, the widowed, the orphaned, 
and even the mentally ill of the county.  Here, the inmates, so called because of the 
stigma attached to these unfortunates of society due to their supposed delinquency and 
deviation from the social norm, were able to reside in some small comfort.  In the case of 
the Knox County Infirmary, it was not a place to keep the indigent out of sight and out of 
mind, as the public frequently assumes.  For a rural community such as Knox County, 
with small towns, villages, and hamlets loosely scattered within its borders, having a 
xv 
 
poorhouse was more efficient and cost-effective than sending overseers of the poor into 
the countryside to provide outdoor relief. 
 The first chapter of this thesis provides an historical overview of the development 
of the American poorhouse system in the larger context of reform movements and the 
development of poor laws in general.  It will define the recurring themes of the “worthy” 
and “unworthy” recipients of poor relief, and the primary qualifications a person had to 
meet to receive public aid.  Poor laws as they developed in the United States were 
strongly influenced by those established in Great Britain during the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries.  The ways that Americans adapted English poor laws to suit the 
needs of a budding nation are explored in the first chapter. 
 Chapter two provides the framework for the major social institutions that 
developed in nineteenth century Ohio, including mental asylums, prisons, general 
hospitals, orphanages, public schools, and of course, poorhouses.  This framework is used 
to demonstrate how the state poor laws of Ohio influenced the care of the indigent 
populations at a localized level, including both indoor and outdoor mechanisms of relief.  
This chapter emphasizes the significance of institutionalization in American society as a 
means of social control.  This chapter also provides an abbreviated social history of Knox 
County and its early welfare system. 
 The third chapter explores the physical space—the buildings, the landscaping, the 
farmland—as an integral part of Knox County’s approach to social reform.  Architect 
William Tinsley’s use of the Kirkbride Plan demonstrates how the county poorhouse 
adapted the state poor laws and social reform movements at local level.  Examination of 
the architectural style, floor plan, landscaping, geographical setting, and general 
xvi 
 
organization of the Knox County Infirmary’s campus alongside the legislation, local, 
regional, and national trends, make apparent the role of social institutions such as the 
poorhouse had within a given community.  The transference of larger themes of social 
reform onto agricultural communities such as Knox County at the onset of widespread 
industrialization served to unify these rural communities rather than divide.   
 Some scholars have taken a top-down approach, others a bottom-up, and some a 
combination of the two for a well-rounded study of the poorhouse system within the 
United States.  Few have ventured to study social institutions like the poorhouse, mental 
asylum, orphanage, or public school for the disabled, as the physical representations of a 
society’s core values within the parameters of state and national legislation created to 
control and regulate “proper” social order.  While many communities chose to set apart 
poorhouses from the greater public, they are in essence a reflection of the ideal society 
that all communities desired.  The student of historical social welfare can view the 
philosophy behind the poorhouse system as a type of utopian scheme, where everyone 
lived and worked together for the greater good of all.  From the farm to domestic work, 
from blacksmith shops to food processing, from religious services to tuberculosis 
hospitals, the poorhouse was essentially a miniature model of all the surrounding 
communities, a type of fringe society within itself.  The Knox County Infirmary was, in a 
sense, a way for the hoi polloi to begin anew.  It was a means to divert attention away 
from the prevailing faults within the greater community and focus its efforts on recreating 
the social order and harmony that began to fade with the persistent chiming of progress. 
 The relationship between the general citizenship of Knox County and those 
residing in the Infirmary is to some extend anachronistic with the social reform 
xvii 
 
movements that occurred within more urbanized centers of the United States throughout 
the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.  The difference, in part, lies in the stronger 
sense of community found within rural societies where agriculture is the main industry 
than in larger cities reliant on production and trade for their subsistence.  Though more 
dispersed across the landscape, farming communities tend to have closer kinship ties, 
through blood or marriage, and the economic capital is distributed more evenly among all 
members of society.  In urban centers, though more densely populated, an individual is 
easily lost in the anonymity of the hustle and bustle, and the social hierarchy created by 
an uneven distribution of wealth is more prevalent.  Kinship is often limited to a small 
handful of relatives rather than an entire community.  In addition, those living in agrarian 
societies are aware that, by the nature of their vocation, one day they may be in a position 
seeking aid.  Because of this and the kinship ties mentioned above, rural inhabitants tend 
to be more willing to assist their neighbors with the prospect of receiving the same 
kindness in return in their time of need.  Those living in urban environments, where it is 
less common to have shared experiences because of the heterogeneous character of high 
concentration populations, are more likely to concentrate their efforts on their own 
survival. 
 The mid- to late-nineteenth century was a period of progressive social reform 
throughout the United States and Europe, which saw an increase in the erection of 
various social institutions for the rehabilitation of inmates to proper work ethics, a return 
to proper moral standing, and a stabilization of the proper social order.  When the new 
building for the Knox County Infirmary reached completion in 1877, the pride that the 
xviii 
 
county felt in this new facility was a mixture of genuine compassion for the indigent 
population and the need for self-commendation. 
 
 
 
 
Figure 1.  Cornerstone of the Knox County Infirmary.   (Courtesy of the author.) 
19 
 
Chapter One: For the Relief of the Poor 
 Early politicians of Ohio were not responsible for independently creating the 
legislation regulating the distribution of and qualifications for receiving aid within the 
state, but utilized the laws developed by the United States government for the original 
states of the union.  The American laws were largely fashioned after the English Poor 
Law, introduced to the people while under British rule prior to their independence at the 
close of the American Revolution.  The early leaders continued to add to and modify the 
preexisting law to develop or create a system of poor relief that was best suited to this 
country and its unique socio-economic circumstances.
1
  Even so, policy makers 
continued to look to England for guidance, and many of the laws were identical to or 
closely paralleled those of England as both policies evolved to meet the needs of the poor 
and appease the general public.  Poverty had an extensive presence throughout the young 
nation, especially within cities with limited employment for the unskilled laborer.  The 
onset of the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the late-1780s and 1790s led to the rise of 
a capitalist market, which widened the economic divide between the social classes and 
hardened the hearts of the wealthy toward the working poor.  The upper classes felt 
threatened by their social inferiors, who began to possess more independence from their 
one-time overlords.  The symbiotic relationship between lords and tenants became all but 
obsolete, and the wealthy felt less compelled to support the working class whom they saw 
as now emancipated and capable of making their own way.  Many among the wealthy 
thought that assisting the poor only contributed to their moral delinquency and eradicated 
                                                 
1
 Billy G. Smith, “Poverty and Economic Marginality in Eighteenth Century America,” Proceedings of the 
American Philosophical Society 132, no. 1 (March, 1998), 113. 
20 
 
all sense of proper work ethic.
2
  The full effects of the Industrial Revolution did not 
arrive in the United States for several more decades.  When it did, America’s economic 
growth in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries created a philosophical shift 
away from the egalitarian concepts outlined within the Constitution of the United States.  
Formalized legislation concerning the poor lagged behind its European counterparts by as 
long as a quarter century as a consequence.  It was only natural that Americans should 
look abroad for effective models of poor relief, where many of those governments had 
already successfully confronted issues of poverty. 
 Historians of social welfare generally concede that the Statutes of Labourers of 
1349-1350 mark the beginning of what later would become known as the English Poor 
Law.  The government created these statutes as a direct response to the devastating 
effects of the Bubonic Plague.  Between the years 1348 and 1349, nearly an entire third 
of England’s population died from the Plague, leaving the country in a severe economic 
crisis.  With fewer laborers available to fill the extensive vacancies within the skilled and 
unskilled trades, the workforce was in the prime position of being able to negotiate with 
potential employers for higher wages.  The working poor were able to remove themselves 
from their former dependence under a lord and perhaps one day be rewarded with upward 
social mobility.
3
  Not only did the working poor demand higher wages within skilled and 
unskilled trades, but also stressed the need for higher wages in the agricultural sectors of 
the workforce and for reasonable prices for necessities, such as food and shelter.  The 
shift from feudalism to capitalism, where lords no longer controlled production, also 
                                                 
2
 Anthony Brundage, The English Poor Laws, 1700-1930 (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 25. 
3
 William P. Quigley, “Five Hundred Years of English Poor Laws, 1349-1834: Regulating the Working and 
Nonworking Poor,” Akron Law Review 30, no. 1 (Fall, 1996), 83. 
21 
 
resulted in shifting social attitudes toward the poor.  Clearly defined in the 1349 Statute 
of Labourers was the fear that “the rise of this class of free labourers presented for the 
first time its modern shape the problem of the pauper—the man who cannot or will not 
maintain himself by his work.”
4
  The nonworking poor, unless disabled or over the age of 
60, were required to work on their own accord, and if they refused or took to begging in 
the streets, they would be forced to work involuntarily.  The statute regulated the working 
poor by making work compulsory, imprisoning anyone who left their job prior to the end 
of their contract, and strictly controlled wages.
5
  
 The social categories of “worthy” or “unworthy poor” did not come into 
widespread use until the seventeenth century, congruent with the emergence of laws 
concerning the distribution of relief.  While the English Poor Law of 1597, amended in 
1601, was not the first act of legislation created in England and Wales for the provision 
of furnishing relief to the poor, it was the first act at the national level to stipulate that 
publicly financed relief was mandatory, and was the catalyst for all subsequent legislative 
reforms.
6
  It brought attention to the importance of place, both where an individual 
resided (law of settlement) and where administration of relief should occur.  As a result, 
the government established two different institutional systems of indoor relief in the 
early- to mid-seventeenth century.  Indoor relief refers to an individual receiving aid 
while living in an institutional facility such as a workhouse or a poorhouse.  Its 
counterpart—outdoor relief—refers to the distribution of assistance by overseers of the 
poor or township trustees, whereby the recipient maintains residence in their own home, 
                                                 
4
 Ibid., 84. 
5
 Ibid., 85. 
6
 Brundage, The English Poor Laws, 9. 
22 
 
or lives with family, friends, or neighbors.
7
  The rise of the workhouse, “a device for 
harnessing idle labour and reforming character,”
8
 was most prominent in urban centers, 
where there was greater financial support for the construction of these facilities, and more 
use for menial labor, such as breaking rocks and crushing bones to pave roadways, which 
had more practical applications in the city than in agricultural settings.  The poorhouse 
system, along with a greater advocacy for outdoor relief, was the preferred system in 
rural communities.  The poorhouse as it was used in England and Wales was reserved for 
the poor who were genuinely unable to work, such as the elderly and the disabled, 
whereas the able-bodied poor continued living on the scheme of outdoor relief, where 
they could be “farmed out” to work to cultivate the fields.  The 1601 law was also 
responsible for solidifying the idea that parishes should not distribute relief freely, but 
that an individual must work in order to receive assistance.  By making work mandatory 
for all welfare recipients regardless of age, gender, or ability, the parishes hoped to deter 
the lazy and idle citizens of the working poor from seeking aid from the government.  In 
theory, this would reduce the total amount of money spent on the poor throughout the 
year.
9
 
 Outdoor relief was the preferred system of assistance in England by the mid-
eighteenth century in urban centers as well as rural communities.  It was cheaper for 
parishes to administer this mode of assistance than to operate a workhouse, though the 
workhouse continued to be a vital tool in maintaining social control over the poor even in 
                                                 
7
 David Wagner, The Poorhouse: America’s Forgotten Institution (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 
2005), 7-8. 
8
 Ibid., 11. 
9
 Brundage, The English Poor Laws, 11; Michael E. Rose, The English Poor Law, 1780-1930 (New York: 
Barnes & Noble, 1971), 17. 
23 
 
a largely outdoor system.  The Gilbert’s Act of 1723 gave parishes the right to refuse 
relief to any able-bodied poor who refused to labor on public works projects.  This act 
also gave local governments the power to send the working poor to the nearest 
workhouse, where they would be forced to work to earn their room and board.  The 
horror stories surrounding the workhouse were enough of a threat to most that made 
localized outdoor relief so successful.
10
 
 Localization of outdoor relief did have a downside when it came to determining 
eligibility for assistance, and led to great debates over an individual’s legal place of 
residence.  No single parish wanted to pay relief to more paupers than was required of 
them.  The fewer poor families or single persons that the parish was legally responsible 
for, the lower poor rate the parish officials would have to charge its citizens.  The poor 
rate was a separate tax generated on the amount of real property that an individual owned.  
Parish officials took possession of most, if not all, of the person’s real and/or personal 
property to augment their care beyond of the poor rates.  Parliament ratified the Act of 
Settlement in 1662 to define a person’s proper place of residency, so that the parishes 
would spend less time and taxpayer money arguing over which local government would 
take the burden of providing aid to a certain person or family.
11
  The number of days, 
months, or years an individual had to reside in a certain parish before gaining legal 
settlement changed several times, largely dependent on social and economic 
environments.  Under the 1662 act, a person retained their former place of residence until 
forty days had passed since moving into their new home, or if they resided on a piece of 
                                                 
10
 Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (New 
York: Vintage Books, 1993), 24-25; Brundage, The English Poor Laws, 35. 
11
 Brundage, The English Poor Laws, 10. 
24 
 
property worth less than £10 in a single year.  A woman’s legal place of settlement was 
dependent on that of her husband, and a child’s on that of their father.
12
   
 Overseers of the poor were to remove all persons receiving public assistance to 
their place of settlement.  The law went so far as to include the removal of all persons 
likely to become county charges, meaning any individual or family living at or below the 
poverty line who did not possess legal residence in that parish, to reduce the number of 
poor within the parish.  Local officials had the right to remove these people even if they 
did not seek aid, simply because their low economic status posed a potential threat to the 
financial stability of the government.  It was not until parliament passed an act in 1795, 
over 130 years later, that it became unlawful for overseers to remove an individual or 
family until they had actually petitioned for relief.  Additionally, this law stipulated that if 
an individual were too sick or otherwise infirm to move without risking their life, 
overseers could not remove them to their legal place of settlement until they were well 
enough to make the journey.  The parish of legal settlement was required to reimburse the 
parish providing care to the individual during their time of illness.
13
  By the end of the 
eighteenth century, England began to strengthen its regulatory practices over relief 
administrators as well as over the poor.  In earlier years, parish officials appointed 
overseers of the poor.  They would conduct their selected duties alongside their regular 
means of employment, without gaining anything in return for the time and money they 
put into caring for the poor.  This led to a system of lackadaisical enforcement of the poor 
law.  Many magistrates, such as Patrick Colquhoun, advocated for a greater centralization 
of poor relief administration, where paid assistants of the overseers with no ties to the 
                                                 
12
 Ibid. 
13
 Rose, The English Poor Law, 19. 
25 
 
parish under their supervision would be better able to determine the worthiness of the 
poor, and make clearer distinctions between a person living in indigence, and a person 
living in poverty.
14
 
 Understanding the differences between poverty and indigence were integral, 
according to Colquhoun, in maintaining proper social order, which in turn benefited the 
advancement of civilization.  In his 1806 publication, A Treatise on Indigence, 
Colquhoun provided the following definitions which reformers adopted for the creation 
of future legislation in England and the United States: “Poverty is that state and condition 
in society where the individual has no surplus labour in store, and consequently, no 
property but what is derived from the constant exercise of industry in the various 
occupations of life;” indigence “is that condition in society which implies want, misery, 
and distress.  It is the state of any one who is destitute of the means of subsistence, and is 
unable to labour to procure it to the extent nature requires.”
15
  In other words, an 
individual who was able to and did work but had little or no prospect to earn extra 
income to provide anything but the basest necessities was simply poor; an individual who 
was unable to work as a consequence of mental and/or physical handicaps and therefore 
had no source of income was indigent.  Both the indigent and the poor were valued 
components of the social order, but only those who lived in poverty possessed the faculty 
to move the nation toward a more sophisticated model of civilization, when “the 
advancement of the individual man has reached a limit forbidding the hope of further 
progress.”
16
 
                                                 
14
 Ibid., 46. 
15
 P. Colquhoun, A Treatise on Indigence (London: J. Hatchard, 1806), 7-8. 
16
 Isaac Taylor, Ultimate Civilization and Other Essays (London: Bell and Daldy, 1860), 1. 
26 
 
 Colquhoun outlined four conditions of ability to which a person could belong.  
The first two, the “utter inability” and “inadequate ability” to provide material goods or 
otherwise survive without assistance from others made an individual indigent.  The third, 
a person with “adequate ability” lived in poverty, but retained an otherwise respectable 
existence.  The fourth and final condition, where an individual possessed “extra ability,” 
a state that Colquhoun considered the standard circumstance among humanity, was the 
most laudable and was the “source of wealth.”  Those with extra ability were not 
necessarily the wealthiest of society, but were responsible for innovations and refinement 
of culture through their surplus ability, and it was those living in poverty that provided 
the manpower needed to move the engine of progress forward.
17
  Without poverty, there 
would be no incentive to work; without a sufficient labor force, there would be no source 
of material or financial gain; without prosperity, there could be no social refinement or 
innovation; and without improvement, civilization would become stagnant and cease to 
evolve. 
 Britain’s thirteen American colonies, stretching along the coast of the Atlantic 
Ocean from New Hampshire in the north to Georgia in the south, developed for many 
reasons.  Many British expatriates came to escape religious persecution, while others 
immigrated to benefit from the growing economic advantages of transatlantic 
mercantilism and the exploitation of North America’s abundant natural resources.  Some 
arrived with the prospect of obtaining large tracts of land to make a better living for 
themselves than they had abroad.  The British government distributed most of the land in 
the American colonies through “headrights” to accelerate the population growth of 
                                                 
17
 Colquhoun, A Treatise on Indigence, 8. 
27 
 
colonial settlements.  These land grants, typically averaging between 50 and 100 acres 
per person, were given to nearly every male immigrant, as long as they paid their own 
expenses to get to the New World.
18
  Others, such as the severely impoverished, the 
orphaned, and the criminals that placed a burden on the Crown’s treasury, were 
transferred to the British Colonies as indentured servants to alleviate the cost of their 
maintenance and as an alternative to the exceedingly overcrowded the workhouses and 
prisons.  An individual could sign a contract of indenture at their own discretion, though 
more often than not, particularly in the cases of those charged with criminal activity, 
removal to the colonies as an indentured servant was involuntary.
19
  Orphaned children 
(historically those without a father, even if the mother survived) or the children of 
impoverished parents were often sent to the colonies as apprentices.  While the colonies 
were accountable to the Crown as vital economic assets, they existed more as an 
extension of the British government when it came to legal matters and administration.  
Not only did the laws that allowed transportation of paupers to the colonies remove these 
individuals from the custody of the workhouse superintendents and overseers of the poor, 
alleviating the strain of inadequate funding through the poor rates, but also served to 
eradicate Britain’s financial obligation toward these parish charges entirely. 
 The only reference within the English poor law concerning the British colonies is 
the statutes that allowed for the removal of paupers and criminals to the colonies as 
                                                 
18
 John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 (Chapel Hill: 
The University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 222; Richard Middleton, Colonial America: A History, 
1585-1776 (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 60. 
19
 Colquhoun, A Treatise on Indigence, 108, n. 210. 
28 
 
indentured servants.  Once indentured,
20
 the guardian or master was responsible for 
providing the proper care and necessities, including the cost of their conveyance.  The 
masters received an additional fifty acres of land for each dependent, making this type of 
arrangement beneficial to all.  The indentured were guaranteed transport and 
employment, while the masters were guaranteed additional land rights.
21
  Upon arrival to 
the colonies, indentured servants were only entitled to room and board, and anything 
beyond that was at the discretion of their master.
22
  The result of the statues on transport 
was that once an individual’s time of indenture terminated, typically ranging anywhere 
between seven to fourteen years, often they were nearly as destitute as before their 
conveyance to the New World, despite rights to “freedom dues.”  Indentured male 
servants received a single complete set of clothing from stockings to overcoat, an average 
of fifty acres of land, a small collection of tools, and grain at the end of their contract.
23
  
They did not earn wages while indentured, nor did they have many personal possessions 
prior to their journey across the ocean.  Freedom dues helped to compensate for this, but 
without money in hand or other commodities to sell to pay the surveyors or to purchase 
the proper farm equipment to cultivate their land, the formerly indentured were stranded 
in unfamiliar territory with few options to support themselves or their families. 
 Many continued to live as general laborers, utilizing the skills they brought with 
them from abroad.  Some worked as tenant farmers or remained employed as domestic 
servants until the time that they could provide the land surveyors their dues and become 
                                                 
20
 Unless otherwise specified, this term is used to identify the poor who were indentured as an alternative to 
indoor or outdoor relief, not other classes of self-indentured servants such as artisans who sought to 
immigrate to the American colonies but lacked the means. 
21
 Middleton, Colonial America, 69. 
22
 Quigley, “Five Hundred Years,” 85. 
23
 Middleton, Colonial America, 112. 
29 
 
freeholders in their own right.  The nature of the colonial economic system, predicated on 
maximum export, meant that unskilled labor was in great demand and wages high, so 
most indentured servants acquired their land within a few years.
24
  Nonetheless, poverty 
continued to plague nearly a quarter of the population, primarily in the cities, where 
transients and non-agricultural laborers gathered in search of work.  Poverty in the 
American colonies resulted, in part, from the use of a free market system, where the 
supply and demand of exported goods was in constant fluctuation.  In addition, the high 
taxes on imported and exported goods, and quitrent on headrights that the British 
government imposed on its colonies further aggravated the economic divide between 
wealthy landowners and everyone else.  Many employers continued to pay their workers 
in kind or in back wages at the end of their term, whether a month or several years.  This 
unstable system, in addition to an increase in population of non-indentured English 
citizens reliant on steady economic exchange to maintain their existence, meant that 
many individuals and families subsisted at or below the line of poverty.
25
 
 To combat the growing number of working poor, the colonists utilized many of 
the principles of poor relief established in England to regulate the movement of, and the 
means and amount of support given to, the poor.  Most counties, cities, and rural 
communities had little to no contact with the colonial capital, let alone England, even 
though they remained subjects of the Crown.  Many of these communities developed a 
system of local government that was a mixture of “the Bible, common law, and 
individual whim”
26
 to maintain and safeguard their social ideals from external influences, 
                                                 
24
 Ibid., 112. 
25
 Smith, “Poverty and Economic Marginality,” 116. 
26
 Middleton, Colonial America, 96. 
30 
 
such as the increased number of vagrants, men who were strangers and who posed a 
potential threat to local customs.  Most towns held annual elections for offices such as 
land surveyors, tax assessors, law enforcers, and overseers or guardians of the poor, to 
ensure that.  Like the English system, a man’s eligibility to hold office was highly 
dependent upon property ownership, length of residency, and social standing.  The 
colonists, particularly those in the New England settlements, closely followed the statues 
of the English Poor Law to stave off economic deterioration caused by the high taxes and 
monopolistic nature of the types of goods they were allowed to produce to send abroad to 
England.  They made minor alterations according to what was the best for the 
preservation of their town.  The statute most heavily relied on throughout the colonies for 
regulating poor relief was the law of settlement, especially within rural communities. 
 By the 1730s, the colonial economy took a drastic downturn, in part because of 
the turmoil caused by the several European powers that fought for exclusive control of 
the American continent, and thereby for the control of its abundant natural resources.  
The American colonies never fully recovered.  The large death toll of able-bodied, 
working-class men resulted in a sizeable population of widows and orphaned children 
without a means of support.  As a result, many communities created public and private 
almshouses to assist the destitute, as well as workhouses to counteract the growth of 
unemployed laborers.
27
  The English Poor Law and its approach toward social institutions 
remained in use long after the American colonies gained their independence.  
Independence brought the end of indentured servitude, only to replace it with a system of 
                                                 
27
 Smith, “Poverty and Economic Marginality,” 89. 
31 
 
free labor that threatened the status quo of the paternalistic society.
28
  Poverty was a 
common, natural state, but a state that needed to be strictly monitored and controlled as 
the United States began its expansion westward. 
 The young nation had a handful of large cities, but primarily consisted of 
numerous small farming communities loosely scattered throughout the country.  America 
adopted a system of highly localized poor relief that would last well into the twentieth 
century in most states.  Prior to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the United States 
declared all the lands north of the Ohio River, south of the Great Lakes, and east of the 
Mississippi River reserved for Native Americans.  Congress prohibited [Euro-
Americans?] from settling within the Northwest Territory until an official survey of all 
the land was made and territorial claims negotiated with the Native Americans.
29
  The 
Ordinance of 1787 was a tool for the American government to maintain control and order 
in the wilderness of the Northwest Territory.  The governor appointed to oversee this 
frontier, with the assistance of three judges, “were to adopt and publish in the district 
such laws, criminal and civil, of the original states as were necessary and suited to the 
territory;”
30
 this included legislation regulating the poor.  Many of the settlers to the 
Northwest Territory came in an attempt to begin a new life, to remove themselves from 
the impoverishment they faced and the harsh scrutiny of their peers.  “The ideal of the 
West was its emphasis upon the worth and possibilities of the common man, its belief in 
the right of every man to rise to the full measure of his own nature, under conditions of 
                                                 
28
 Ibid., 108. 
29
 Aileen E. Kennedy, The Ohio Poor Law and Its Administration (Chicago: The University of Chicago 
Press, 1934), 6. 
30
 Ibid., 7. 
32 
 
social mobility.”
31
  When pioneers settled Marietta, Ohio in 1788, this town became the 
first Euro-American settlement within the Northwest Territory, and blazed the trail for 
future communities.  Even though these settlers arrived with the notion of making their 
own way, they could not escape entirely the burgeoning economic structure of the 
original states in the union.  By 1790, despite the few isolated settlements within the vast 
wilderness, Governor Arthur St. Clair enacted the first legislation within the Northwest 
Territory that required the appointment of an overseer of the poor.
32
 
 Early settlers found an abundance of land ripe for the taking, but a lack of 
material possessions or the ability to take large farming implements into the Ohio 
wilderness created difficulties for many settlers to rise above a hand-to-mouth existence.  
The 1790 act reveals that poverty continued to be a problem in the frontier as much as it 
had been within the rest of the Union.  Governor St. Clair overextended his duties in 
creating this act, as the Ordinance of 1787 only gave him the power to adapt and alter the 
preexisting laws outlined in the Articles of Confederation as necessary to the unique 
circumstances of the Northwest Territory, not to create new legislation.  The 1790 act 
was not far removed from pre-existing legislation requiring overseers of the poor and 
other managerial officials, but the main difference was its extreme localization beyond 
the level of the township.  Earlier New England legislation required township officials to 
report directly to the county.  The 1790 act removed this requirement, acknowledging 
that the settlements within the Northwest Territory were widely scattered and 
                                                 
31
 Frederick Jackson Turner, Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1906), 68-
69. 
32
 Kennedy, The Ohio Poor Law, 216; Northwest Territory, Laws Passed in the Territory of the United 
States North-west of the River Ohio, from the Commencement of the Government to the 31
st
 of December, 
1791, (Philadelphia: Francis Childs and John Swaine, 1792), 47. 
33 
 
demographically diverse that it was impractical to install a more centralized government 
to regulate the population.  These small, close-knit communities were often formed from 
a small handful of families from the same region with the same religious background.  
The kinship ties and shared experiences produced highly independent and individualistic 
social attitudes that “preferred to limit the power of the larger administrative group, and 
entrust more and more to the local unit.”
33
  This also resulted in a paternalistic approach 
to the protection of the poor living within the Northwest Territory, where poor relief was 
a matter of public responsibility rather than private charity.  
 Five years later in 1795, the Northwest Territory adopted “A Law for the Relief of 
the Poor,”
34
 inaugurating a system of social welfare that would act as the foundation for 
such legislation when Ohio earned its statehood in 1803.  Taken from legislation created 
in Pennsylvania, the 1795 law further outlined the duties of overseers of the poor in 
supporting those individuals and families in need of relief.  Tax assessors established a 
poor rate of two cents on the dollar for the total value of real and personal property.  
From these funds, the overseers of the poor were instructed by justices of the peace to 
distribute necessary relief according to need.  Overseers provided the able-bodied poor 
who were “proper objects of relief” with contracts with persons who were willing to 
provide them with board and lodging, as well as a means of employment.
35
  Justices of 
the peace held public auctions to guarantee that the poor, the able-bodies as well as those 
unable to work due to age, infirmity, or disability, received relief that was appropriate to 
                                                 
33
 Robert E. Chaddock, Ohio before 1850: A Study of the Early Influence of Pennsylvania and Southern 
Populations in Ohio (New York: Columbia University, 1908), 77. 
34
 Northwest Territory, Laws of the Territory of the United States North-west of the Ohio, (Cincinnati: W. 
Maxwell, 1796), 127 
35
 Ibid., 129. 
34 
 
their needs.  The lowest bidders, persons who were willing to take the poor into their 
homes for a minimal cost, were compensated through the poor rates, but if they failed to 
fully provide for the poor or mistreated them, overseers of the poor could refuse to pay up 
to half of the entitled bonds.
36
 
 The law of settlement played as significant a role in the Northwest Territory as it 
did in the preceding decades of poor relief legislation in the American colonies and in 
England.  The frontier, with limited tracts of cleared land that was suitable only for small 
farms consisting of a few acres, existed by the meanest subsistence.  There were few 
opportunities for commercial enterprise outside of the Ohio River port cities such as 
Marietta and Cincinnati.  The majority of inhabitants living in the Northwest Territory 
survived by individual and community efforts to conquer the wilderness and carefully 
regulate its resources.
37
  The hand-to-mouth existence left little enough funding for 
communities to assist their own poor, let alone to care for wanderers who had contributed 
nothing to its survival.  All persons were required to hold a certificate that verified their 
place of legal settlement in the event that they required aid from the township.  To gain 
settlement within the Northwest Territory, a man had to maintain residency within one 
township for an entire year, where they paid $25 or more per year for rent, or held a 
public office.  A woman’s place of settlement was the same as her husband’s, but in the 
event of his death, depending on local statutes, she could claim residency in the place she 
lived prior to her marriage.  Children claimed their father’s residency, even if the mother 
was still alive after the father’s death.
38
    
                                                 
36
 Kennedy, The Ohio Poor Law, 19. 
37
 Chaddock, Ohio before 1850, 47. 
38
 Kennedy, The Ohio Poor Law, 16. 
35 
 
 When a stranger arrived to a community with the notion to settle permanently 
there, they had to provide some means of security to the township, usually in the way of 
money or by showing that they had property of some value that could serve as a 
substitute for cash to support them if they became indigent prior to gaining residency.  
The security, in addition to certificates of legal settlement, made it possible for people to 
have greater freedom to settle in a place of their choice, and protected the poorer 
townships of the Northwest Territory from the financial burden of caring for outsiders 
who became indigent.  Township officials developed a formalized system of “warning 
out” newcomers that they built into the settlement laws, evidence of the severe anxiety 
the population had over the threat poverty posed to the social order.  Townships saw 
exclusion of strangers as a natural right in their self-preservation.  If a stranger failed to 
produce security, they had three months to remove themselves elsewhere.  If they 
remained in the township after they were warned out, the community had no legal 
obligation to support them if they became indigent.
39
 
 When Ohio gained its statehood in 1803, the system of local government shifted 
away from townships to the county.  This created a more centralized government that 
supervised township trustees along a singular method of administration while it 
maintained the rights of the smaller organizational units to protect its citizens from the 
“aristocratic tendencies” of the previous era.
40
  Early Ohioans strongly believed that the 
new state continued to provide boundless opportunities for all inhabitants regardless of 
the social and economic class they held in the older states.  In Ohio, all citizens had to 
work together for the greater good of all and to slowly chip away at the wilderness.  The 
                                                 
39
 Ibid., 22. 
40
 Chaddock, Ohio before 1850, 77. 
36 
 
elite had far less influence, especially in the interior of the state away from the Ohio 
River and Lake Erie, where a “naturally developed manhood suffrage” mean that all men 
had some skill or wisdom to contribute to the strength and unity of his community.
41
  
Many of the Ohio poor laws remained heavily steeped in the standards outlined in the 
English poor laws well into the 1930s, particularly in relationship to laws of settlement, 
familial responsibility (whether parent to child, or child to parent), local administration of 
poor relief, and local taxation on real property to support the poor fund. 
 The preservation of the family unit, especially during times of their financial 
difficulty, was imperative to the perpetuation of a society founded on the ideas of 
sobriety, morality, and personal industry.  Many transportation arteries, such as river 
systems, canals, and public highways, were expanded soon after Ohio joined the Union, 
not only to facilitate movement of people between the states, but also to improve the 
exchange of goods from and to Ohio communities.  This invariably heightened the 
influence of commercialism within the state as access to luxury goods increased 
drastically.  Ohio struggled to maintain its community-oriented identity, predominantly 
based on strong Protestant work ethics and the family unit as an essential model of social 
regulation, as the prospect of refined living dangled within reach.  The act of 1805, 
created “for the relief of the poor,” reveals much about the transition away from the 
communal, familial order of society toward a pattern of individual pursuits.  American 
culture believed poverty led to the degradation of family life, a condition that had severe 
religious and social consequences.  The 1805 act did not hold the family responsible in 
the care of their destitute kin, as in previous decades under the Northwest Territory laws, 
                                                 
41
 Ibid., 68. 
37 
 
but shifted the responsibility almost entirely to the local government.
42
  This may have 
been acknowledgment that often the relatives of the poor were as equally impoverished 
and therefore unable to provide necessary assistance, but it can also be viewed in the light 
of a passionate effort to maintain a strong community support system. 
 The state upheld the opinion that parents had a social obligation to protect, 
maintain, and educate their children until they reached the legal age of emancipation.  
Ohio set this age at twenty-one years, although a female could earn her emancipated at 
the age of eighteen by marriage.  Until that time, a father had “no more right to allow his 
children to become public charges,” than to deny his children the necessary care and 
amenities that would prepare them for a life as upright citizens of the United States of 
America.
43
  Society held mothers less responsible over the economic status of their 
children, as it was the father’s duty as the breadwinner to ensure that the family did not 
fall into poverty.  Overseers of the poor preferred to distribute outdoor relief to destitute 
families as a single unit rather than remove the children and place them in 
apprenticeships or under guardianship of a wealthier community member.  This was 
especially true in the case of a widowed mother and her orphaned children, although in 
some cases the overseers thought that the best alternative was to divide the family in the 
children’s best interest, such as when the family consistently petitioned for partial or 
temporary relief month after month.  Partial relief was dependent upon the amount of 
relief given to an individual or family, supplementary to inadequate resources, while 
temporary was dependent upon the length of time that relief was provided.
44
  In a society 
                                                 
42
 Kennedy, The Ohio Poor Law, 23. 
43
 Ibid., 60. 
44
 Ibid., 95. 
38 
 
that was increasingly anxious over the influence of commercialism on the morality of the 
public, separating children from their parents was not a light matter.  On the one hand, 
the family unit was the fundamental component of a healthy society; removing children 
would lead to a breakdown of that society.  On the other hand, leaving children in a 
dysfunctional home would make them ill prepared for adulthood, and could also lead to 
the collapse of the social order.  The concept of family as a micro-hierarchy, and how 
local officials interpreted this model played a significant role in why social reform 
movements usually implemented a greater community-oriented infrastructure in rural 
Ohio than the rehabilitation of a single individual. 
 The prevailing notion that poverty was the will of God, a direct carry-over from 
many of the early-Protestant, Calvinistic religious sects brought to America from the Old 
World, put the blame of destitution almost entirely on the shoulders of the poor; this 
opinion lasted well into the early-twentieth century.  Many Americans acknowledged that 
under certain circumstances, such as brief stints of unemployment, the poor were not 
fully culpable for their plight, but this did not remove them from the supposed moral 
delinquency that led to their idle status in the first place.
45
  In a country as overflowing 
with opportunity and resources as the United States, where hard work, self-discipline, and 
righteous living, were the foundations of society, poverty’s persistent presence only 
strengthened the conviction that pauperism was some form of divine justice resulting 
from an individual’s faulty character.  Because many religious leaders and reformers saw 
the poor (who were the majority within the rural frontier) to be as much a part of society 
as merchants, doctors, and lawyers, it was the responsibility of the community to oversee 
                                                 
45
 Matthew A. Crenson, Building the Invisible Orphanage: A Prehistory of the American Welfare System 
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 31. 
39 
 
their welfare, since they had as much a right to exist as their wealthier neighbors.
46
  
Without the poor, the social order would turn into chaos. 
 The rapid growth of urban centers in Ohio during the second decade of its 
statehood only increased the population’s anxiety over the shift toward a more 
materialistic society.  The shift away from earlier religious ideologies of compassion and 
using excess wealth for the greater good of humanity toward a more scientific approach 
that excess wealth was the natural result of social evolution further complicated matters 
of poor relief.  Following the War of 1812, the United States fell into one of its first 
major economic crises.  The Panic of 1819, a depression that spanned from 1816 to 1819 
throughout most of the country caused by the inability of state banks to “redeem notes in 
specie,” forced citizens of the United States to reconsider its views on poverty.  Prior to 
the Panic of 1819, “the prevailing conviction was that people who failed to be self-
supporting in a country as bountiful as America must carry some fault within 
themselves.”
47
  But even the wealthiest—manufacturers who had placed high investments 
in the banks—felt the impact of the collapsed economy, and could not blame idleness 
entirely on the moral delinquency of those without work.
48
 
 In addition, the movement toward industrialization in the United States during the 
mid-nineteenth century created a period of much uncertainty as for the first time 
Americans began en masse to move away from their self-sustaining agricultural roots and 
entered into a realm of dependency upon a system that placed an arbitrary value on their 
individual worth within the greater society.  With industrialization came the innovative 
                                                 
46
 Kennedy, The Ohio Poor Law, 11.  See also Brundage, The English Poor Laws, 68 for the historical role 
of the poor within European society. 
47
 Crenson, Building the Invisible Orphanage, 45. 
48
 Chaddock, Ohio before 1850, 73-74; Crenson, Building the Invisible Orphanage, 37. 
40 
 
advances in production technology and the introduction of wage labor, a revolutionary 
concept within a society structured on a barter system, providing labor or goods in 
exchange for the like.  Industrialization not only transformed the economic system within 
the United States, but it also significantly influenced the social and philosophical mindset 
of the entire American culture, rural alongside urban. 
41 
 
Chapter Two: Rise of the Institution 
 Agricultural communities have rarely been among the wealthiest of society, and 
yet the assumption that poverty is less prevalent there than in urban centers, or does not 
exist at all, continues into the present day.  This assumption likely stems from the fact 
rural regions tend to have a more even distribution of wealth among all citizens than in 
metropolitan areas, where there is more diversity in occupations, and consequently results 
in a greater economic hierarchy among social classes.  The egalitarian nature of 
agricultural societies deemphasizes the manifestation of poverty within these 
communities by creating less of an economic margin between the wealthiest and poorest 
citizens.  Historically, rural communities across the United States have taken a more 
hands-on approach to social welfare programs than cities, more along the lines of catering 
to the needs of the individual rather than attempting to control the masses.  Less 
distinction among economic status leads to a greater appreciation of the individual’s 
value to society.  It also heightens the awareness among all social strata of the community 
of the stark reality that poverty is a real, potential threat to everyone.  All it takes is an 
overabundance of goods or a drought affects the entire local economy, not just the 
farmers.  Rural populations interpreted the poor law so that it best suited their 
community.  What worked in one county would not necessary work in the adjacent 
county.  The extreme localization of poor relief in rural Ohio attests to the concerns of 
self and community preservation, not only during times of great economic depressions, 
but also during times of industrialization and urban expansion that were seen as a menace 
to society’s core values. 
42 
 
 Knox County is a predominantly rural area located in central Ohio.  Scholars 
estimate that farming has been the leading industry in Knox County for approximately 
3,000 years, when the Adena culture introduced farming to the region in ca. 1,000 B.C.  
Created from Fairfield County on March 1, 1808, Knox County was appropriately named 
for General Henry Knox of Revolutionary War fame, who later became the first Secretary 
of War under President George Washington.  The federal government had designated 
much of central Ohio as part of the United States Military Lands, acreages of property 
specifically reserved for veterans of the Continental Army as compensation for their 
service and patriotism.  Funds in the federal treasury proved to be inadequate to provide 
the promised pensions to all Revolutionary War soldiers, which left federally owned 
lands as the only other alternative to cash money payment.  Land suited many soldiers 
better than or as well as currency, as many were poor farmers unable to afford the same 
amount of land prior to the war. 
 Agriculture was the principle occupation for most early settlers to Ohio outside of 
major port cities along the Ohio River and Lake Erie.  The land, once cleared of its dense 
woodland, proved to be highly fertile and conducive to the growth of corn, cereal grains, 
fruit trees, root and vine vegetables, and the rearing of livestock.  Despite the prospect of 
immense agricultural wealth, many families retained a pioneer-style existence for 
decades.  It was difficult to clear large acres of thick woodland and prepare fields for 
plowing, as well as to transport goods to market and still make a profit.  They lived on 
small, simple subsistence farms more along the lines of a glorified garden, and relied on 
wild game rather than livestock for most of their meat.  It took several years to condition 
new fields, untouched by concentrated human modification for millennia, to produce a 
43 
 
surplus beyond what was needed for a single family’s survival.  The threat of attack by 
animals or American Indians was a stark reality of everyday life, further complicating 
matters of bringing society out of a state of self-preservation.
1
  Additionally, Thomas 
Jefferson’s Embargo Act of 1807, which prohibited the exportation of American goods to 
foreign ports—specifically Britain and France, who, prior to this ban, relied heavily on 
American goods to support their troops during the Napoleonic Wars—wreaked havoc on 
the American economy.  The embargo deeply affected Ohio’s interior communities as 
much as the state’s port cities.  The little that the interior produced for export could not be 
shipped east to the New England states, south to New Orleans, or north to Canada.  It was 
difficult to transport goods of any sort in a state such as Ohio that relied almost solely on 
its waterways for travel, as the few inter- and intra-county roads were little more than 
primitive dirt paths weaving their way in, out, and over slowly decaying tree stumps.  
This created little incentive for settlers in isolated communities, such as Mount Vernon 
and Fredericktown, to produce much beyond what was necessary for their own survival, 
as even transport of goods to locations elsewhere in the state was impractical and 
unrewarding.
2
 
 Without hard currency readily available to many rural communities even after 
Jefferson lifted the embargo in 1809, many Ohio towns continued living in a subsistence 
economy, where the production of goods did not exceed the needs of the community, and 
were exchanged among citizens by means of barter for comparable goods or services.  
Knox County was more easily accessible to settlers than many other communities within 
                                                 
1
 N. N. Hill, Jr., History of Knox County, Ohio: Its Past and Present (Mount Vernon, OH: A. A. Graham & 
Co, 1881), 152. 
2
 Lorle Porter, Politics & Peril: Mount Vernon, Ohio in the Nineteenth Century (Zanesville, OH: New 
Concord Press, 2005), 19-20. 
44 
 
the Ohio frontier were, and yet it did not rise above subsistence level until the mid-1820s 
when the population increased (from 8,362 in 1820 to 17,085 by 1830) and became more 
diverse in its economic pursuits.  The Kokosing River (known as Owl Creek to the 
American Indians) serves as a primary tributary, along with the Mohican River, to the 
Walhonding River.  The Walhonding in turn converges with the Tuscarawas River to 
form the Muskingum and terminates at Marietta, where it joins the Ohio River.  The 
Kokosing River is not accessible by the large riverine boats and barges that travel the 
larger tributaries of the Ohio, but shallow draft vessels such as canoes and flat-bottom 
watercraft allowed many of the earliest settlers (fur trappers, surveyors, land speculators) 
to arrive at Knox County with more supplies than they would have been able to carry 
with them over land.  In Knox County, roads were practically nonexistent, and the few 
that did exist were little more than muddy trails winding through the thick foliage, many 
barely wide enough for the passage of a single cart.  Without legal tender, roads remained 
unimproved.  Without roads, fewer settlers ventured into the heart of Ohio, and with 
fewer settlers to clear the land for larger agricultural production, most communities 
maintained a hand-to-mouth existence.
3
 
 While Knox County’s population increased, it was unable to rise above a 
subsistence economy, as many of the newcomers were themselves poor farmers looking 
for cheap land, with little or no monetary wealth to contribute to the rapidly growing 
Ohio interior.  Knox County alone saw a growth in population from 2,149 in 1810 to 
8,326 in 1820, an increase of 287.4%—nearly twice the growth seen throughout the 
entire state—due in large part because of the War of 1812.  The soldiers had enlarged 
                                                 
3
 Ibid., 16. 
45 
 
many of the main roads through Knox County as they made their way north to facilitate 
the transport of troops and equipment to the battlefields.  This was the first introduction 
many soldiers had to the Ohio interior, and after the war, a large number of these men 
chose to return to the lush forests and fertile fields of central Ohio.  The widened roads 
made it possible to transport more goods to market, but with the financial difficulties 
throughout the United States that resulted from the Panic of 1819, very little real money 
was available to the inhabitants living in the still comparatively remote settlements of 
Knox County.  “The productions of the country were almost valueless in exchange for 
money” to purchase goods in the larger towns further south, “and it was with difficulty 
that they could be bartered for goods at the stores.”
4
  Some of the wealthier merchants of 
the county had invested in the local Owl Creek Bank, but similar to financial institutions 
everywhere, issued paper currency in good faith that its patrons had material wealth of 
equivalent worth.  The value of these notes depreciated quickly as the panic spread 
throughout the country.  Farmers were unable to obtain loans, merchants were unable to 
sell their goods, and the government struggled to support its citizens as the economy 
collapsed. 
 There is very little documentation of social welfare practices in Knox County’s 
early history, although it is apparent that such matters were never far from mind.  The 
very first county election took place on April 4, 1808 with an attendance of one hundred 
fifty-six voters.
5
  Included on the ballot for local government officials were three 
positions for overseers of the poor as mandated by Ohio law, bestowed on Moses Craig, 
                                                 
4
 A. Banning Norton, A History of Knox County, Ohio, from 1779 to 1862 Inclusive (Columbus, OH: 
Richard Nevins, 1862), 232. 
5
 Porter, Politics & Peril, 21. 
46 
 
James Walker, and Alexander Walker, who were all among the first settlers of the county 
and all too familiar with the hardships that corresponded with living in central Ohio.
6
  
Taking care of those less fortunate was already set in motion even while the fledgling 
society had barely organized and gained its own economically stable ground as an 
individual political entity.  It is not surprising that the impoverished received such 
attention early in Knox County’s history, like other rural communities throughout Ohio, 
considering that the majority of the population constantly sought to remain beyond the 
reach of poverty’s looming shadow.  While it was state law that each county have a board 
of overseers of the poor, the system that Knox County implemented for the distribution of 
poor relief more closely followed the customs of its predecessors than official state 
protocol.  Pioneers understood the volatility of their unique circumstances, and that their 
fate was almost wholly dependent on the whims of nature, man, and the good will of 
God.
7
  “North, west and east of these embryo settlements all was wilderness for many 
miles.”
8
  Frontiersmen faced the challenges that nature presented—harsh winters, wild 
animals, poor first harvests—stoic fortitude, and were aware that every man, woman, and 
child had an integral role in conquering the wilderness.  The only certainty at the newly 
opened Ohio frontier was family, friends, and neighbors.  Having a strong united 
population was of utmost importance to the survival of the community.  A home was 
more than a place to shelter a single family, but also served as shelter “for every stranger 
who passed that way, ‘without money and without price.’”
9
  This attitude of neighborly 
                                                 
6
 Norton, A History of Knox County, 39. 
7
 Richard Middleton, Colonial America: A History, 1585-1776 (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 
1996), 96. 
8
 Norton, A History of Knox County, 13. 
9
 Hill, History of Knox County, 209. 
47 
 
compassion carried over into Knox County’s use of poor relief, on and off the official 
record, despite the fact that the Ohio Poor Act of 1805 shifted responsibility to local 
government.
10
  The county’s citizens acknowledged the necessity of overseers of the 
poor, but continued to impart relief according to community and individual sentiment and 
tradition. 
 Local government created a formally sanctioned means of caring for the less 
fortunate of society soon after the State of Ohio officially incorporated Knox County as 
an independent administrative district.  State legislative acts clearly described the process 
by which individuals were to petition for relief, to what extent such aid would be 
furnished, and through whom the allotted assistance would be distributed.  Under state 
legislation, each county was responsible for appointing three individuals, commonly 
named “Overseers of the Poor,” to manage the care of the impoverished within the 
county.  While the duties of these overseers varied from one county to the next—and one 
township to the next—their responsibilities were more or less the same: to provide 
complete or partial assistance to those who petitioned for relief, and who the county 
commissioners deemed worthy in their need.  The commissioners often charged the 
overseers with the additional task of actively seeking out those individuals and families 
that did not make petition for aid, but that were clearly in need of additional support, or 
who were likely candidates to become county charges.  This included individuals with 
physical disabilities or severe injuries that prohibited them from gaining employment, the 
elderly who were without children and were no longer able to work due to the infirmities 
of old age, widows and their orphaned children, and outsiders who were unable to 
                                                 
10
 Aileen E. Kennedy, The Ohio Poor Law and Its Administration (Chicago: The University of Chicago 
Press, 1934), 23.   
48 
 
provide proper security.  Because of the sparsely populated nature of many early Ohio 
counties, overseers of the poor often delegated this task to township trustees, who acted 
as representatives for the rural poor, and who in turn relied on the citizens to report those 
living in poverty.  Although citizen involvement in reporting a “complaint” about likely 
county charges as part of their civil duty did not become part of the Ohio poor law until 
1865, it was common practice from the very beginning, and an integral part of the 
preservation of a community’s moral integrity.
11
  Knox County followed these 
regulations for the most part, although county officials made many exceptions, especially 
when living relatives were present.  Many living in poverty, or who possessed a mental or 
physical handicap, likely went unrecorded because of family or friends sheltering them 
without asking the county for assistance in their support. 
 The Euro-American settlers of Knox County primarily came from Pennsylvania, 
Virginia, New Jersey, Maryland, and the New England region.  Although the Kokosing 
River provided relatively easy passage to Knox County for the earliest “first white 
settlers,” the majority came overland through the Allegheny Mountains.  Most were poor 
farmers or unskilled laborers who “sought to better their condition by making permanent 
homes in the wilderness west of the Ohio river.”
12
  Many of these individuals and 
families were veterans of the Continental Army who had actively served in the 
Revolutionary War and took up residence on United States Military Lands, but many 
others came to escape the harshness of the rapidly industrializing Atlantic seaboard and 
the economic divide among social classes caused by the trend toward urbanization.  In 
the heart of Ohio, most everybody that remained after the first few years were among 
                                                 
11
 Ibid., 86. 
12
 Hill, History of Knox County, 208. 
49 
 
their social, economic, and ethnic equals.  By 1830, Knox County’s population had 
increased by 105.2%, whereas population grown throughout the entire state of Ohio only 
increased by 61.3%.  The unequal distribution of wealth became more apparent as more 
manufactories rose along the Kokosing River, primarily near Mount Vernon.  The Mt. 
Vernon Iron Works, founded in 1833, was the oldest and most successful of the small 
industrial plants, and catered to the predominant agricultural community by casting 
ploughs, troughs, kettles, grinders, and other farming equipment.  Knox County farmers 
no longer had to travel to Zanesville to purchase well-manufactured tools.
13
  Companies 
like the Mt. Vernon Iron Works invited many non-agricultural residents to Knox County, 
which contributed to the population boom in the early half of the nineteenth century.  
However, this also shifted the relationships within communities from close kith and kin 
to include people with little or no affiliation with the founding families beyond common 
heritage, and led to a reconfiguration of community identity. 
 Knox County citizens were predominantly of Irish, Scotch-Irish, German, and 
English descent, and Protestant.  Catholics (mostly Roman Catholic with Irish roots) 
formed a tiny fraction of the county’s population, and had minimal impact in the overall 
social attitude toward county poor relief.
14
  Christianity in Knox County took on several 
denominational guises.  Regardless, the citizens in most communities—even the county 
seat of Mount Vernon with the most heterogeneous population—paid little heed to 
fundamental differences in doctrine prior to the 1820s.  It was at this time that many 
groups began to construct permanent houses of worship specific to their religious 
preference.  The number of inhabitants was so small at this time that most religious 
                                                 
13
 David Neal Keller, Cooper Industries, 1833-1983 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1983), 2-3. 
14
 Hill, History of Knox County, 415-416; Porter, Politics & Peril, 26. 
50 
 
groups held nonsectarian services where everyone in the community gathered for general 
worship as one body.  The exceptions were the Catholics, as both they and the Protestants 
could not reconcile the prejudices each group brought with them to the frontier.
15
  
Catholics were among the first settlers to Knox County, primarily in Mount Vernon and 
Danville (located in the northeast part of the county), but their population was so small 
that they contributed little to the overall social organization of the county.  The local 
government was heavily steeped Protestantism, and consequently influenced how local 
citizens interpreted state legislation, especially acts pertaining to relief of the poor.  
Methodists and Presbyterians formed the largest congregations of Knox County, though 
large concentrations of Baptists and Episcopalians were also present around this time.  A 
sizable Quaker community was concentrated in the northwest corner of the county near 
Fredericktown, “who by their quiet yet industrious ways have contributed very much to 
the prosperity and peacefulness of our people.”
16
 
 Religion continued to play vital a role in shaping the social atmosphere of the 
early-nineteenth century as it had during the colonial period, and was a plush cushion that 
Americans fell back on when the natural order seemed to fall into disrepair.  Despite the 
religious differences between Protestants and Catholics, all agreed that it was their role as 
Christians to “relieve the poor, visit the sick and imprisoned, and instruct the ignorant in 
the ways of the Lord.”
17
  Religion helped to bring communities closer together even 
when their approaches to worship differed, but these differences were essential in 
creating a more democratic system of local government.  The separation of church and 
                                                 
15
 Hill, History of Knox County, 405, 415. 
16
 Norton, A History of Knox County, 15. 
17
 Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism & Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War 
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 155. 
51 
 
state worked well in part because religion had such a strong role in the everyday lives of 
the people.  It functioned along the lines of a civil institution that served to regulate the 
manners and morals of society, and allowed the legislature to perform more efficiently by 
lessening the “political strife” caused by competing interpretations of the law.
18
  “The 
church existed to enunciate the moral law, the state to enforce it.  Those who deviated 
from the accepted path could expect to be punished”
19
 either by the damnation of their 
eternal souls or corporal punishment through the legal system.  As long as citizens 
followed the law, the government cared little for how this transpired or why it worked. 
 Catholics and Protestants took great pains to take care of the needy within their 
own traditions, fearing that interference by the opposite religious sects would corrupt the 
souls of those they helped, especially when it came to caring for orphaned children 
without either parent.
20
  This rang as true for Knox County as it did in more densely 
populated parts of the state, but the high concentration of Protestants meant that even 
formal methods of poor relief distribution tended to be evangelistic in nature rather than 
charitable, creating a “disciplinary society”
21
 that stressed the regulation of moral 
behavior and the salvation of souls.
22
  The emphasis that Protestants placed on the 
differences between the worthy and the unworthy poor, unlike their Catholic neighbors 
who were inclined to be more open and liberal with their almsgiving, tended to deter the 
genuinely needy from seeking aid.  A fundamental difference between the Catholic and 
Protestant approach to poor relief was that the former saw charity as an extension of the 
                                                 
18
 Ibid., 35.  
19
 Middleton, Colonial America, 87. 
20
 Matthew A. Crenson, Building the Invisible Orphanage: A Prehistory of the American Welfare System 
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 41.  For definition of “orphan,” see chapter 1.  
21
 Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: 
Pantheon Books, 1977), 193. 
22
 Smith, Revivalism & Social Reform, 77. 
52 
 
church for the good of all mankind, while the latter viewed it as a social obligation that 
would end in personal salvation and community improvement.
23
 
 
Figure 2.  Illustration reflecting Protestant ideals of proper work ethic and public charity as a 
means toward personal salvation.  (Courtesy of the Library of Congress.) 
 
 Tight-knit rural communities such as those in Knox County faced a philosophical 
quandary when it came to differentiating between the worthy and unworthy poor.  Those 
who were unable to work because of age, infirmity, or mental illness were worthy of 
“Christian charity and ordinary human compassion [which] made their care a clear duty,” 
                                                 
23
 Crenson, Building the Invisible Orphanage, 32; Smith, Revivalism & Social Reform, 151. 
53 
 
whereas those who were able to work but did not, “should fend for themselves.”
24
  While 
agriculture requires precise knowledge of crops and livestock, even the best farmer could 
fall on hard times through no fault of his own.  His crops failed or his livestock died 
because of drought or disease, not because he was languid in his vocation.  Was he more 
worthy of assistance than the man who lived in town who lost his job at the gristmill 
because the demand for flour dropped?  The millworker had no more control over his fate 
than the farmer did, and yet society often looked upon his unemployment as idleness.  
The reason for his unemployment did not matter as much as his “deviant” jobless state, 
whereas the farmer—often upheld as a pious, exemplary model of proper work ethic—
was someone to pity.  The majority Knox County citizens were poor, living on the 
precipice of impoverishment, and recognized themselves in many of the indigent who 
sought aid.  They did not have much to offer their deprived neighbors, but made an effort 
to provide them with what little comfort that they could, whether the needy were widows, 
orphans, farmers, or tradesmen. 
 A percentage of the property taxes collected from landowners served to finance 
the public funds necessary to provide care to the indigent population, as part of the 
community’s civic duty to help those worthy in need.  There were no clear guidelines 
articulating how an overseer should determine who was eligible to receive relief, and 
more often than not assistance was given to the poor based on an adulteration of the 
“Bible, common law, and individual whim.”
25
  An outdoor system, where overseers of 
the poor distributed relief to the needy like a door-to-door salesman, was often the only 
                                                 
24
 Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York: 
Basic Books, 1986), 18. 
25
 Middleton, Colonial America, 96. 
54 
 
 
Figure 3. Based on the Biblical parable of the poor widow who offers her last two coins to the 
poor, and the wealthy donate great sums of money to buy their way into heaven.  (Courtesy of the 
Library of Congress.) 
 
means of assistance available to the rural poor, as most agricultural communities did not 
have enough capital in the treasury needed to erect a poorhouse.  When possible, 
indigents (those who were unable to work because of mental and/or physical handicaps 
and therefore had no source of income) were maintained within their own meager homes, 
or in the homes of family or friends, and were provided with food, clothing, and other 
material support on a need-by-need basis.  The worthy poor (those who were able to and 
did work but had little or no extra income to provide anything but the basest necessities), 
received similar treatment.  The unworthy poor—able to work but did not—were often 
imprisoned or otherwise indentured to earn public relief funds.  State law prohibited 
overseers of the poor from distributing cash to the needy, as county auditors could only 
55 
 
authorize receipts for items that were billable.
26
  This law was congruent with the 
widespread Protestant conviction that an excess of wealth was inherently evil unless the 
individual used it to do good.  Money was useful to purchase necessary items for the truly 
needy, but putting money directly into the hands of the poor, many Protestants believed, 
would only increase the “causes of human suffering” that contributed to the further 
degradation of society, such as alcoholism, gambling, and other moral vices.
27
 
 When a pauper’s need for assistance became a long-term issue (i.e. petitioned for 
or received relief over several consecutive months), and prior to the establishment of the 
county poor farm, these individuals were sold at public auction to the lowest bidder.  On 
May 7, 1832, it was 
Ordered by the Commissioners that Public Notice be given in a public Newspaper 
that the said John Haywood will be offered At public sale at the Court House in 
the Town of M
t
 Vernon on the first Monday of June next at one oclock P.M. on 
said day to be Kept for the Term of one year at the Lowest bidder.  Ordered by the 
Commissioners That the said John Haywood be Left in the hands of the Jailer 
until First Monday of June Next.
28
 
Haywood, “An Idiot or Insane person,” was sold to Smith Headly for $137.00 for a term 
of one year.  The following year he was sold to Lewis Layman for $74.00, and in 1834 
that price was set at $97.00 to be paid to Ruben Luce.
29
  The bidders received monthly 
compensation that would result in the full amount agreed upon at the time of auction for 
                                                 
26
 Kennedy, The Ohio Poor Law, 104. 
27
 For Protestant views on personal wealth see Smith, Revivalism & Social Reform, 155; on providing 
monetary relief to the poor, 148. 
28
 Knox County Commissioners, “Commissioners Journal B, 1831-1832,” Office of the Commissioners, 
Knox County, Ohio, recorded May 7, 1832, 21-22. 
29
 Knox County Commissioners, “Commissioners Journal B,” recorded June 5, 1832, 25; recorded June 3, 
1933, 48; and recorded June 3, 1834, 80. 
56 
 
taking these indigents into their homes.  Those paupers deemed legally insane after close 
examination—often only by county commissioners with no medical training—who 
received no bids at public auction were housed within the city or county jail and treated 
as the basest criminals until a proper guardian was found.  Guardians provided their 
charges with basic human necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter, and assisted the 
individual in procuring gainful employment if they were of sound enough mind and body 
to perform any sort of task.  As much attention as legislative acts took to ensure that 
guardians did not abuse their charges, physically, mentally, or in undue labor, the Knox 
County did not reimburse guardians for medical expenses.
30
  There is no account in the 
existing county records as to why overseers and trustees refused to reimburse guardians 
for medical treatment.  The most likely explanation it is that there was a County 
Physician received a salary by making monthly rounds throughout the county, as was the 
practice in later years after the establishment of the county poorhouse.  If this were the 
case, “trustees had no authority to pay anyone else for medical services,” as this would 
have gone against the contract between the county and the physician, who, like guardians, 
offered his services at the lowest bid.
31
 
 As Knox County’s population grew, so, too, did the number of paupers and poor 
farmers seeking aid.  County officials realized that the cost of traveling throughout the 
countryside to distribute aid and to monitor the poor was far higher than the actual 
amount of aid provided.  The Knox County Commissioners had discussed the possibility 
                                                 
30
 Knox County Commissioners.  “Commissioners Journals.”  Office of the Commissioners, Knox County, 
Ohio.  1808-1931.  All guardianship entries specifically state that medical expenses are not covered under 
terms of agreement.  It is not known if refusal to pay for medical treatment was unique to Knox County, or 
if the practice existed elsewhere in Ohio and the United States, as well. 
31
 Kennedy, The Ohio Poor Law, 28. 
57 
 
of establishing a poorhouse beginning in the late 1830s, very likely in response to the 
Panic of 1837 and the unexecuted construction of the Walhonding Canal extension, 
scheduled to terminate in Mount Vernon.  An act of legislature on March 10, 1838 
ratified the plans of the Mount Vernon Lateral Canal Company to construct the 
Walhonding Canal extension along the Kokosing River, which would have expedited the 
shipment of goods to eastern markets.
32
  Only a few years earlier, however, in the years 
1835 and 1836, a charter was created for the construction of the northern portion of the 
Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark Railroad, which later became a part of the Baltimore & 
Ohio Railroad.  Thousands of men and their families flocked to the county with the 
prospect of finding work on both the Walhonding Canal extension and the Sandusky, 
Mansfield & Newark Railroad.  Knox County was left with the weighty decision of 
which mode of transportation to adopt: the tried and true canal system that they already 
had the contract to build, or the still relatively new technology of steam-powered rail that 
had no clear date of construction.  Knox County ultimately chose to wait for the railroad, 
but had to wait a little over a decade before work commenced in laying the line south 
from Richland County to Newark, a line that did not open until 1851.
33
  
 The great influx of immigrants that resulted from the expectation of finding 
steady work on either the canal or the railroads created a severe strain on the social order 
of the county; most were not even remotely affiliated with the established families.  
Manufacturing industries were in embryonic states, and offered a limited supply of 
employment opportunities to these newcomers.  Some that chose to stay in Knox County 
                                                 
32
 Acts of a Local Nature, Passed at the First Session of the Thirty-Sixth General Assembly of the State of 
Ohio, Begun and Held in the City of Columbus, December 4, 1837 (Columbus, OH: Samuel Medary, 
1838), 221-222. 
33
 Hill, History of Knox County, 225-226. 
58 
 
were able to hire themselves out as farmhands, especially during the harvest, but this was 
only temporary work.  The overall communal sentiment, especially during the Panic of 
1837, was fear that these outsiders would take away precious financial resources from the 
hands and mouths of family and friends who deserved it most—well-loved community 
members who had contributed to the social stability of the area since its infancy.  In wake 
of the shifting socio-economic pattern, County Commissioners on April 18, 1838, 
formally considered for the first time “the propriety of Building a poor House,” and 
decided that in “the first week in June . . . they [would] receive proposals and view Lands 
for the purpose of Building” a poorhouse farm.
34
  For a rural community such as Knox 
County, with small towns, villages, and hamlets loosely scattered within its borders, a 
poorhouse appeared to all concerned a more efficient and cost-effective solution than the 
traditional distribution of outdoor relief.  If the overseers of the poor could no longer 
afford to go to the poor, bring the poor to the overseers.  It would only cost the county the 
one-time fare of transporting the indigent to the poorhouse, rather than spending time and 
money month after month in visiting the poor throughout the county.  A poorhouse would 
a place where “the infirm could be more readily healed—the idiot more humanely 
provided for—the lunatic more securely kept, and the youth better prepared for 
society.”
35
  Knox County prepared reconstruct society by means of “Social Christianity,” 
where they would attempt to reform the moral character of the poor rather than try to 
regulate their behavior through law alone.
36
 
                                                 
34
 Knox County Commissioners, “Commissioners Journal B,” recorded April 18, 1838, 228. 
35
 Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse, 23.  Quoted from “Report of the Secretary of State [of New York] 
in 1824 on the Relief and Settlement of the Poor,” commonly known as the Yates Report.  This report was 
the first of its kind to survey statewide poor relief practices, based on a formal questionnaire.  Similar 
surveys were used in other states following the success of the Yates Report. 
36
 Smith, Revivalism & Social Reform, 148, 161, 168. 
59 
 
 In September 1842, the County Commissioners purchased 132 acres of land from 
William E. Davidson for the purpose of establishing a poorhouse on the property.  The 
property, known as “Bricker Farm,” was located four and a half miles southwest of the 
county seat of Mount Vernon in the tiny hamlet of Bangs (then known as Bangs 
Station).
37
  The Knox County Poor Farm served as a central location to corral the poor, 
and economized the process of providing aid.  Early in the forays of the poorhouse 
movement during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century, many communities 
throughout the United States converted preexisting buildings into poorhouses as a 
cheaper approach in the relocation of county paupers.  It did not matter to community 
leaders or their citizens that the majority of these buildings were ill suited to the task of 
housing and caring for large numbers of people; it was shelter that provided some of the 
inmates with better living conditions than they had previously possessed.  The beauty of 
Bricker Farm was that it came prefabricated with farmhouse, barns, sawmill, sheds and 
other outbuildings, and copious amounts of land already cleared specifically for 
agricultural use, for crops and livestock.  The commissioners converted the preexisting 
farmhouse on the property into living quarters for the poor, with a wing added for the 
propriety of separation of the sexes, though they gave little consideration to the 
separation of children from adults, or the mentally ill from the elderly.
38
  Institutional 
buildings designed specifically for social reform, whether poorhouse, insane asylum, or 
public schools, did not become common practice until the mid-nineteenth century.  Many 
                                                 
37
 Knox County Recorder, “William Davidson & Wife Deed to The Commissioners of Knox County,” in 
Conveyance Volume Y, Office of the Recorder, Knox County, Ohio, recorded August 8, 1842; Knox 
County Commissioners, “Commissioners Journal C, 1838-1845,” Office of the Commissioners, Knox 
County, Ohio, recorded June 13, 1842. 
38
 Knox County Commissioners, “Commissioners Journal C, 1838-1845,” Office of the Commissioners, 
Knox County, Ohio, recorded August 5, 1842, 179-182. 
60 
 
rural communities did not construct these structures until much later, as they often lacked 
the funds to construct buildings of sufficient size to hold the inmate population.  This 
may be why some communities adopted a cottage system, where several smaller 
buildings served to house the inmates, and resembled a tiny village more than an actual 
institution.
39
  One commonality among all poorhouses, rural as well as urban, was that 
were established in part to reform the corrupt moral character of the poor by providing 
them with many opportunities to perform productive labor. 
 
Figure 4. Americans viewed poverty as a moral delinquency, and believed that the poverty could 
be cured by instilling a sense of proper work ethic among the poor and working classes.  (Courtesy 
of the Library of Congress.) 
 
 The Knox County Commissioners intended that the farm would make the 
poorhouse a self-sustaining enterprise that would minimize the impact of providing relief 
                                                 
39
 David Rothman, Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum and Its Alternatives in Progressive America 
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980), 265; Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse, 130. 
61 
 
on the County’s purse, and establish a proper work ethic in its poorer citizens.
40
  The 
poorhouse directors strongly encouraged the able-bodied poor were to work on the farm, 
in the sawmill, perform domestic chores, and general indoor and outdoor maintenance of 
buildings and grounds.  Knox County had high hopes that the establishment of the Knox 
County Poor Farm would eradicate outdoor relief altogether, and the commissioners gave 
township trustees formal notice “to bring all the poor that are a township charge, to the 
Knox county Poor House, on the 10th of January, situated five miles from Mt. Vernon, 
on the Columbus road.  All pay will cease at that time for the keeping of said paupers.”
41
  
This plan was doomed from the very beginning.  As the earliest census records 
enumerating the poorhouse inmates attests, nearly every adult housed on premises 
suffered from some form of debility that would have likely prevented or limited them 
from working.  Of the nine female inmates, three were children under the age of four, one 
suffered from rickets while another from seizures, one had cataracts, one was “simple,” 
and one insane.  Of the seven male inmates, two were “idiots,” one suffered from 
rheumatism, one was deaf, and one insane.  In all, that left a 53-year-old man, a 60-year-
old woman, and an 80-year-old man to work on the farm and conduct most of the indoor 
chores.
42
 
 The poorhouse was supposed to be self-sustaining, run by the inmates under 
direction of the superintendents, and when this failed to occur, the poorhouse directors 
forced to used hired hands to assist in the daily farming operations.  From plowing, 
                                                 
40
 Knox County Commissioners, “Commissioners Journals”; Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse, 41; 
Smith, Revivalism & Social Reform, 163. 
41
 “Notice,” in The Democratic Banner (Mount Vernon, OH), January 10, 1843, 3. 
42
 U.S. Bureau of the Census.  1850 Ohio Federal Population Census Schedules, Knox County.  
Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Service, 1964. 
62 
 
cultivating, and harvesting the fields to taking care of the livestock, from food processing 
and canning to doing the laundry, most of the work was done by others not listed as 
inmates of the poorhouse.  The first available poorhouse expense report provides 
evidence that the system of a self-sustaining institution was doomed to failure almost 
from the outset.  By 1848, Knox County was using a dual system of indoor and outdoor 
relief to care for the poor.  Nineteen inmates were reported as living in the poorhouse at 
the time of the report, and several “outdoor paupers” were receiving care from 
community members.
43
  Why township trustees chose not to remove some paupers to the 
poorhouse while others were is unclear, but it appears that it may have been due to who 
they considered temporary versus permanent paupers (discussed in chapter one), and 
which individuals were more likely to find employment outside of the poorhouse.  It is 
also likely that the tight-knit, religiously minded citizens of the county found it difficult 
to remain separated from the direct care of their family, friends, and neighbors.  “A 
meeting was held . . . composed of nearly all the denominations in town, for the benefit 
of those families who may be in needy circumstances.”
44
 
 Knox County continued to use both indoor and outdoor relief into the twentieth 
century.  In 1874, an “idiot” boy burned to death (age not revealed) when he crawled to 
the stove in the room that he and his mother shared and his clothes caught fire.  This 
horrific incident brought to the public’s attention the wretched condition in which its poor 
were living, and of the very real possibility that if the boy had been discovered later that 
                                                 
43
 “Report of outdoor expenses for benefit of Poor of Knox county,” The Democratic Banner (Mount 
Vernon, OH), October 24, 1848, 4.  As the report does not list names for the outdoor paupers, only the 
names of those receiving payment for providing assistance, it is difficult to determine the exact number.  
Outdoor paupers often received care from multiple benefactors. 
44
 “Relief for the Poor,” The Democratic Banner (Mount Vernon, OH), January 11, 1848, 2. 
63 
 
the entire building would have smoldered to the ground.  The citizens of Knox County 
came together and petitioned for the construction of a new poorhouse. 
Let the New Infirmary Building be erected as speedily as possible.  Let it be 
strongly and securely built; not costly, but comfortable; large enough to 
accommodate the growing population of the county; and above all things let it be 
fireproof, and be heated either by hot air or steam.”
45
 
They also began to rethink the role of the institution, utilizing its floor plan, architectural 
style, and landscaping to further promote the rehabilitation of the poor and extend 
community ideals. 
                                                 
45
 “Interesting Meeting at the County Infirmary,” The Democratic Banner (Mount Vernon, OH),  May 1, 
1874, 3. 
64 
 
Chapter Three: A Convenient Style of Architecture 
 The institutional reform movement in the United States reached its peak in the 
1870s and 1880s.  The Civil War had facilitated the movement toward large-scale 
industrialization in many of America’s large cities, and spread outward toward less 
urbanized centers.  Once industrialization was fully set in motion, many Americans felt 
that the pauper problem would greatly diminish, if not vanish entirely.  However, even 
while the standard of living began to rise, the wages that the working-class received did 
not.  This created more frequent stints of temporary unemployment as working-class 
individuals searched for a better-paying job in order to support themselves and their 
families.  Industrialization affected agricultural communities such as Knox County as 
much as it did urban centers.  Mechanization of farming implements, e.g. threshing 
machines and self-propelled tractors, reduced the amount of time and effort needed to 
cultivate a field, which consequently reduced the number jobs available to hired hands.
1
  
Industrialization actually created a cycle of dependence on public welfare instead of 
providing the highly sought after opportunities of upward financial and social mobility 
that it promised.  The insane asylum received the highest level of attention, in part 
because of strong social activism by the likes of Dorothea Dix and women-organized 
benevolent organizations such as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.).  
Poorhouses (labeled “infirmaries” in Ohio according to 1851 legislation) received similar 
attention.  Poorhouses were reform of these institutions was based largely on the model 
used to restructure the insane asylum. 
                                                 
1
 Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York: 
Basic Books, 1986), 5. 
65 
 
 Everything from poorhouses to mental hospitals, public schools to orphanages, 
and prisons to group homes for the disabled, transitioned into places designed to 
rehabilitate the unfortunate classes of society rather than facilities devised to correct 
delinquent moral character.  The mid-nineteenth century was a period of religious 
renewal, and a refocusing of the United States toward social welfare with a more 
maternal approach, meaning a greater emphasis placed on nurturing and caring for 
inmates of social institutions rather than relying on legal codes alone to dictate how a 
facility should be administrated.  An individual living in poverty, like mental illness, 
alcoholism, drug abuse, and other addictions, had the potential to be cured of their 
“ailment.”  Americans became aware that, in order to change the impact that institutions 
had in the cure of its inmates, it was necessary to reconfigure the physical spaces of these 
institutions along with the relationships among administrators, inmates, and the larger 
community. 
 In the mid-nineteenth century, one man—Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride—had an 
idea that would forever change institutional housing in the United States, including the 
Knox County Infirmary.  His ideas also influenced the way in which administrators of 
these facilities cared for those in need.  The first Kirkbrides, hailing from the northern 
part of County Cumberland, England, arrived in the United States as members of William 
Penn’s mass Quaker relocation movement to North America in 1682.
2
  Like many other 
Quakers, the Kirkbrides settled along the fertile banks of the Delaware River in the 
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania near present-day Trenton, New Jersey.  Thomas was 
                                                 
2
 Nancy Tomes, A Generous Confidence: Thomas Story Kirkbride and the Art of Asylum-Keeping, 1840-
1893 (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 46. 
66 
 
born on July 31, 1809 on the family farmstead.
3
  As he grew and began to have more 
responsibility helping his father on the farm, he took a keen interest in the treatment of 
the livestock, particularly the sheep, which he quickly “became so familiar with them as 
to recognize them by their physiognomy.”
4
  It was during this time that Kirkbride 
developed an interest in medical treatment beyond that of livestock, and set his mind to 
the professional study of medicine, with a specialization in surgery. 
 Kirkbride’s influence within the medical profession began prior to his admittance 
into the Medical Department at the University of Pennsylvania in 1828.  He began his 
studies at the age of nineteen, reading books on the subject of medicine, disease, and 
psychology under the exemplary tutelage of Dr. Nicholas Bellville, a prominent 
physician who resided in Trenton.  Kirkbride had only praise for his mentor, who he had 
the privilege of being his last private pupil.  When he graduated from the university in 
1832, Kirkbride strove to follow Bellville’s example.  All of Dr. Kirkbride’s colleagues 
agreed that he was destined for great things, and that his benevolent dealing with difficult 
patients was unparalleled.  Because of his kind and generous demeanor, it was not 
surprising that he was at the top of the list of candidates under consideration for 
superintendent of the new Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane in Philadelphia, even at 
the comparatively inexperienced age of thirty-two.  Kirkbride secured the position of 
superintendent not only because patients, their families, and other doctors found him 
likable, but also in part because he had already proved himself as a budding expert in the 
                                                 
3
 John Curwen, Charles H. Nichols, and John H. Callender, Memoir of Thomas S. Kirkbride (Warren, PA: 
E. Cowan & Co, 1885), 13. 
4
 Ibid., 14. 
67 
 
field of mental disorders, which he had studied while serving as the resident physician at 
the asylum for the insane at Frankford, a neighborhood of Philadelphia.
5
 
 Kirkbride dedicated his mind, body, and soul to taking care of those left with little 
or no normative mental capacity, living by the mantra, “My work is my pleasure.”
6
  He 
took genuine concern in the welfare of his patients, and was thoroughly appalled by the 
state of mental healthcare available in the United States.  He would personally spend at 
least a few minutes every day with each individual, believing that one-on-one interaction 
between doctor and patient was the most beneficial for all parties.  Of chief concern was 
the way in which hospitals were constructed with no rhyme or reason, rarely giving 
consideration to the special needs of the insane, and how the most “excitable” patients 
were often imprisoned within a jail cell when no other alternative was available.  “It is 
pretty generally conceded, that a more convenient style of architecture, and better 
arrangements, are desirable in most establishments for the care of the insane.”
7
  Kirkbride 
desired to create a facility specifically designed to accommodate the unique needs of the 
mentally ill, to offer them a place of comfort, compassion, and to return to them the 
dignity of a human being that society had managed to strip away from their persons. 
 Recalling his days as a child along the banks of the Delaware River, roaming 
around on endless acres of picturesque farmland with chores and other physical and 
mental activities to occupy his time, Kirkbride devised a plan for hospitals for the insane, 
a plan that many other social institutions adopted over time, including poorhouses.  His 
proposal was a combination of general healthcare practices, a hierarchy of medical 
                                                 
5
 Ibid., 16. 
6
 Ibid., 32. 
7
 Thomas S. Kirkbride, On the Construction, Organization, and General Arrangements of Hospitals for the 
Insane (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1854), 3. 
68 
 
professionals and patients, ideal geographical settings for these institutions, and suitable 
occupations for patients of a stimulating variety.  Perhaps most significantly, Kirkbride, 
after careful study and consideration, introduced an architectural design for an institution 
that contributed not only to the basic care of patients, but also to their potential cure.  
Kirkbride’s design was to be pleasing to patients, visitors, caretakers, and efficient for the 
implementation of effective healthcare for all levels of mental disorders, from docile 
short-term patients to those with violent tendencies and long-term care.  Known as the 
Kirkbride Plan (often specifically referring to the floor plan, but including the general 
principles of operation, care, and setting), benevolence was the key ingredient throughout 
the sympathetically composed doctrine.  “There is no reason why an individual who has 
the misfortune to become insane, should, on that account, be deprived of any comfort or 
even luxury . . .”
8
  This was a novel idea presented at a time where social institutions 
were more concerned with alleviating communities of the deviant classes, not considering 
the inmates as part and parcel of an evolving society. 
 Kirkbride outlined in exhaustive detail the proper arrangements of rooms, wards, 
outbuildings, gardens, roadways and walkways—everything down to the tiniest details 
such as water pipes and dust vents.  He created his design to take full advantage of local 
terrain and natural resources, which made it an attractive design across the country, from 
the Atlantic Coast to the Rocky Mountains.  Kirkbride strongly believed that architects, 
while well-intentioned and capable of executing beautiful architectural styles, were 
unable to comprehend fully the significance of interior spaces within social institutions 
like mental hospitals or poorhouses because they did not have the intimate knowledge as 
                                                 
8
 Ibid., 5. 
69 
 
to how these institutions functioned or what purpose they served.  Internal arrangements 
of rooms, corridors, wards, and wings were far more important to Kirkbride than exterior 
dressing, though he did concede that style should be in good taste, as this would provide 
an atmosphere conducive to a more pleasant patient experience, and which could even 
play a factor in the ultimate cure of certain individuals.
9
  It is somewhat surprising that a 
gentleman architect and landscaper, with no formal training in architecture or 
horticulture, was able to design building and grounds to harmonize with one another so 
perfectly.  Kirkbride’s design proved so beneficial that it would be replicated throughout 
the United States from its first implementation in 1856 well into the latter half of the 
nineteenth century.  The basics of his design are still visible in institutional buildings—
hospitals, retirement campuses, schools—that are erected today, though they would not 
formally be considered as adhering to the Kirkbride Plan.  Remnants of Kirkbride’s 
design in these institutions include a hierarchy of space, wide hallways, and plenty of 
natural light. 
 The three main principles utilized in the ideal institution were centered on fresh 
air, natural light, and expansive grounds.  The selection of a suitable building site took 
precedence over all else, for only then could plans be properly designed for the most 
convenient and appropriate construction.  Kirkbride preferred somewhat secluded 
locations, always in the countryside near ample objects of “interesting character,” 
meaning a landscape of rolling hills, bodies of water (whether rivers, ponds, or lakes), 
and fertile soil to support a small farming operation.
10
  This would provide patients the 
                                                 
9
 Curwen, Nichols, and Callender, Memoirs of Thomas S. Kirkbride, 21. 
10
 Thomas S. Kirkbride, On the Construction, Organization, and General Arrangements of Hospitals for 
the Insane, 2nd Edition (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1880), 37. 
70 
 
opportunity to partake in “ample walks for exercise, pleasant drives and cheerful views 
and surroundings, [and] might direct from morbid fancies to more healthful ideas.”
11
  
This type of setting and the personal freedom to enjoy the natural beauties it provided, 
Kirkbride believed, would greatly reduce melancholy that could lead to unruly and 
destructive behavior, which would allow caretakers to distribute their attention to all 
patients on a more even scale, not just those with under severe distress.  Also essential in 
site location was the proximity to main transportation arteries, such as railroads or county 
and state highways that would provide free and easy access to medical facilities, as well 
as in transporting patients quickly and safely to the asylum.  Although located in the 
countryside, Kirkbride’s ideal institution was not to be removed from society, but to 
serve as a refuge from the chaos inherent in urban settings that had the potential to upset 
certain classes of patients.  The well-being and potential rehabilitation came first and 
foremost in Kirkbride’s plan, whether in the administration of care or in the physical 
design of the institution. 
 What he does not specifically express, but which is equally significant within his 
argument for a rural setting, is that a large site also affords the necessary space required 
for future building expansion, which would not always be possible in an urban setting.  
The Kirkbride Plan was not conducive to the restrictive composition of city blocks.  His 
plan was one of linear construction, meaning all the hallways ran parallel to each other, 
which he believed was ideal for providing patients with ample sunshine, fresh air, and 
unobstructed views of the expansive grounds from anywhere within the building.  The 
linear plan made possible a more complete division of patients by gender, further divided 
                                                 
11
 Curwen, Nichols, and Callender, Memoirs of Thomas S. Kirkbride, 17. 
71 
 
by class of mental disorder, and allowed superintendents to provide a higher level of 
moral treatment to their charges.  Many people, from doctors to clergymen to the average 
citizen, believed that some cases of insanity were caused by moral degradation as much 
as psychological impairment.
12
  The tripartite plan consisted of a central administration 
hall (often defined by a tower to emphasize the authoritative role of this space) that 
housed offices, kitchen, laundry, apartments for administrators and their families, other 
communal spaces suitable for the general public to visit, and often dining halls.  Separate 
wings for male and female patients flanked the administration hall, each of which 
consisted of a series of wards with progressively increased levels of care corresponding 
with distance from the center.  The most violent or “excitable” patients were located 
farthest away from the center of the building, so as not to interfere with the daily 
operations of running the institution, or upset visitors unaccustomed to intense frenetic 
state of mind and behavior.
13
  Separate wards were to be staggered forward or backward 
from those adjacent to it so that the hallways did not directly connect to the others, but 
essentially ran parallel to each other, further separating the classes of mental disorders 
and minimizing the likelihood of undesirable mingling between these patients. 
 
Figure 5. Kirkbride's basic linear floor plan, illustrating parallel hallways extending from a central 
administrative block, staggered to prevent intermingling of patients from different wards.  
(Courtesy of Kirkbride, On the Construction (1880), 155.)  
                                                 
12
 Tomes, A Generous Confidence, 120. 
13
 Kirkbride, On the Construction (1854), 12-13. 
72 
 
 
 The Kirkbride Plan advocated for buildings to be aligned to the cardinal points, as 
best as the prevailing landscape would allow, to permit maximum exposure to natural 
sunlight, and to create conducive patterns for cool breezes to circulate freely throughout 
the facility.  Ideally, rooms should be located on one side of the building only, so that 
natural light would penetrate each patient’s room consistently throughout the day, but 
Kirkbride realized that this was not always feasible in smaller communities, as it by 
nature created a more costly construction cost because of the amount of land it would 
require.  In the event that the rooms were located on either side of a central corridor, it 
was essential that each would be outfitted with large windows to admit both sunlight and 
fresh air, with appropriate safety precautions such as bars to prevent a fall.  A solution to 
the “problematic” arrangement of a central corridor, each ward was to have at least one 
parlor, or similar room for socialization, located in the center of that ward so that all 
patients were able to enjoy the full benefits of light, air, and beauty during any part of the 
day.
14
  Social rooms also provided an opportunity for inmates to have a more normal 
domestic-like experience, by giving them an alternative indoor space other than a 
bedroom and dining hall. 
 Kirkbride’s revolutionary notions on institutional architecture and design were 
fashioned specifically “for the relief of those deprived of the use of their reason,”
15
 but in 
the end served a far greater purpose in the scheme of social reform.  The mid- to late-
nineteenth century was a period of progressive social reform throughout the country.  The 
increase in the erection of various social institutions such as insane asylums, schools for 
                                                 
14
 Kirkbride, On the Construction (1880), 136-141. 
15
 Curwen, Nichols, and Callender, Memoir of Thomas S. Kirkbride, 14. 
73 
 
the deaf and blind, public schools, veterans’ hospitals and group homes, and poorhouses 
came at a time when Americans needed to prove to themselves that social morality was 
not lost in the wake of the Civil War.  All of these institutions needed to be able to 
regulate large numbers of individuals efficiently, while providing necessary moral and 
social rehabilitation predicated on the idea of utilizing natural environments as a means 
of reinvigorating the mind, body, and soul.  Social rehabilitation within poorhouses, in 
particular, concerned many Americans, as these institutions had traditionally been places 
of complex social stratification, as the poor that they housed included the insane, 
disabled, elderly, children, and general poor.  Such a wide variety of social classes under 
a single administrative body increased the likelihood of corruption among all of these 
groups the more interaction they had with each other.  The Kirkbride Plan was well suited 
for the poorhouse and other forms of social institutions in carrying out the “moral 
treatment” and general care of these patients, paupers, and children, and was modified 
easily to suit the particular needs of individual communities. 
 Knox County had an idea of what they wanted their new infirmary building to 
look like and how they wanted to reconfigure its daily operations.  The county 
commissioners had a fairly simple decision to make when they received bids for 
architectural plans.  William Tinsley was a familiar name to the commissioners, and his 
skill as a conscientious architect was well known to them.  Tinsley’s work was first 
introduced to Knox County in 1857 when he earned the commission to build Ascension 
Hall from Bishop Philander Chase, president and founder of Kenyon College (in 
Gambier), where the hall erected.  While in Gambier, Tinsley designed the Kokosing 
74 
 
House in 1864 as a residence for Bishop Thurston Bedell, who was a professor at Kenyon 
College, and a few other homes located in Mount Vernon, including the Potwin House.   
 William Tinsley was born on February 7, 1804 in Clonmel, County Tipperary, 
Ireland, and descended from a long line of architects.  His father Thomas, his grandfather 
Sylvester, and his great-grandfather Thomas, and even his maternal grandfather Joseph 
Brouph/Brough, a stonemason by trade, were all builders.  His older brothers, John and 
Thomas, Jr., followed their father into the building profession, and were also instrumental 
in introducing and encouraging William to join the family business.
16
  It was while he 
worked for his father, and later for his brothers, that William found his passion in 
drawing and designing buildings more than their actual construction, and he soon made a 
name for himself as a professional architect.  He received commissions throughout 
Ireland and England, where he constructed many churches and summer cottages for 
wealthy patrons.  Tinsley’s early aesthetic ranged from Italian Villa Renaissance to Tudor 
and English Gothic, all three of which he continued to revert to after he immigrated to the 
United States in 1851.
17
  Tinsley settled in Cincinnati, Ohio with his wife and eleven 
children, and set up an architectural firm with his eldest son, Thomas.  He edited his 
designs to fit the Midwestern aesthetic, but maintained elements and features in his 
buildings that he felt were crucial to the built environment.  He was told that his “notions 
of style and structure were ahead of the notions and tastes of” the American Midwest,
18
 
and it took him over two decades to gain the liberty to express fully his ideas of 
architecture, design, and function. 
                                                 
16
 Douglas John Forbes, Victorian Architect: The Life and Work of William Tinsley (Bloomington, IN: 
Indiana University Press, 1953), 5. 
17
 Ibid., 60. 
18
 Ibid., 65. 
75 
 
 Tinsley’s foray into the world of institutional architecture other than for college 
campuses commenced soon after his sojourn in central Ohio.  In the mid-1860s, the city 
of Cincinnati made plans to construct a new hospital there, a project that Tinsley hoped 
would become his.  As with many large public structures, architects were required to 
submit architectural sketches along with a written description of the proposed building to 
the board of directors for review.  Tinsley took a trip home to Ireland in 1865, and while 
in Europe took a side trip to Paris, France.  While this was primarily a pleasure excursion, 
Tinsley was keen to examine Lariboisière Hospital had been constructed in 1853 to fight 
an epidemic of cholera.  Tinsley was particularly taken with the architecture and floor 
plan of this hospital, “on the general arrangement of which I knew the [Cincinnati] 
hospital should be constructed, i.e., the Pavilion or separate buildings on one square 
area.”
19
 
 While Tinsley did not receive the commission for the Cincinnati Hospital, a 
second opportunity emerged when the State Board of Education held a competition for 
the design of the Ohio Institute for the Education of the Blind, in Columbus.  Tinsley 
returned to his earlier aesthetic of academic architecture for his proposal rather than 
implementing the ideas that he brought back from Paris, though he did take special care 
to design the interior spaces to best suit the needs of the blind.  Although the purpose of 
the Ohio Institution was primarily academic, it functioned more along the lines of a 
formal institution somewhere between general hospital and school.  Tinsley chose to use 
a modified version of the Kirkbride Plan for his design, although it is uncertain how 
familiar Tinsley was with Kirkbride’s work.  The Ohio Institution for Education of the 
                                                 
19
 Ibid., 105. 
76 
 
Blind, completed and ready for occupancy by May 21, 1874, was Tinsley’s “largest and 
most ambitious project.”
20
 
 
Figure 6. Ohio Institution for the Education of the Blind shows clear similarities to Tinsley's work 
at the Knox County Infirmary, constructed the following year.  (Courtesy of the Ohio Historical 
Society.) 
 
 William Tinsley was seventy-one years old when construction of the Knox 
County Infirmary began in 1875 under the father and son partnership, “W. & T. R. 
Tinsley.”  The county commissioners selected the Tinsleys design even though they were 
not the lowest bidders to respond to the request for plans.
21
  It was likely a combination 
of Tinsley’s successful implementation of institutional architecture at the Ohio Institution 
for Education of the Blind in Columbus and his local reputation for employing unique 
architectural designs that ultimately convinced the commissioners to use Tinsley’s plans.  
Based on Tinsley’s private journals and various family records, the Knox County 
                                                 
20
 Ibid., 119. 
21
 Knox County Commissioners, “Commissioners Journal F, 1866-1875,” Office of the Commissioners, 
Knox County, Ohio, recorded May 14, 1874, 522. 
77 
 
Infirmary is the last building that William Tinsley designed on his own, without the 
assistance of and prior to relinquishing the entire architectural firm to his son in the latter 
half of 1874.
22
  The building retains many of Tinsley’s early architectural aesthetics, and 
the style and floor plan resemble that of the Ohio Institution, though on a far smaller 
scale.  It is not known whether Tinsley had read any of Dr. Thomas S. Kirkbride's books 
or articles on the subject of institutional housing, but it seems likely that Tinsley would 
have been at least casually familiar with Kirkbride’s work, especially since Tinsley had a 
growing interest in institutional architecture outside of the academic world.  Kirkbride 
and Tinsley were contemporaries, one a gentleman architect and the other a professional, 
but it would not be surprising if Tinsley had obtained Kirkbride’s publications prior to 
submitting designs for institutional buildings like the Knox County Infirmary and the 
Ohio Institution for the Education of the Blind. 
 Like Kirkbride, Tinsley preferred a tripartite floor plan when he designed his 
buildings, which often followed a linear plan, when it came to academic structures such 
as residential halls and buildings designed for educational instruction.  For Tinsley, the 
tripartite design was more a matter of what he perceived aesthetically pleasing and a 
matter of economics, rather than relying on functionality alone.  Tinsley’s institutional 
designs, similar to Kirkbride, had two wings that flanked a central unit, which often 
extended above the wings a half-story or more, sometimes further defined by a square 
tower or rounded turret, depending on what was appropriate to the designated 
architectural style.  Tinsley was a strong advocate for this type of layout because he 
understood that, especially in the largely agricultural Midwest, funds to construct a 
                                                 
22
 Forbes, Victorian Architect, 127. 
78 
 
building in its entirety were not always possible to obtain in full at the time of initial 
construction.  A single building that is constructed as three separate units that could either 
stand alone or be pieced together as a whole was more attractive to potential patrons with 
restrictive budgets than other designs might have been.  Even when money was not an 
issue, however, Tinsley preferred the visual impact provided by building in “units” 
because it presented a sense of movement within the architecture, not the flat factory-like 
buildings that other architects were constructed at this time.
23
 
 Tinsley also advocated the notion that architectural style should be consistent 
throughout the building, not only along the most visible, street-facing façade, but also on 
all exterior sides and throughout the interior.  He took special interest in personally 
designing the interior spaces to maintain a singular architectural theme “simply and truly 
carried out” for all aspects of the entire structure.  “The interior is intended to harmonize 
in style with the exterior, simple in character, of durable materials,” so that an individual 
would not be overwhelmed by contradicting, jarring, and invasive architectural 
dialogue.
24
  This idea plays well with Kirkbride’s idea of creating spaces that were 
peaceful and calming to the inmates.  For example, a Tudor Gothic building should 
remain Tudor Gothic on the interior to create a smooth, seamless transition from the 
exterior to the interior.  This, in theory, would lessen the emotional disharmony certain 
classes of inmates might experience when entering an institution. 
 In designing the Knox County Infirmary, Tinsley favored the faintly Tudor Gothic 
style he used in many of his collegiate buildings, combining it with distinct Italianate and 
                                                 
23
 Ibid., 77. 
24
 Ibid., 76-77. 
79 
 
Second Empire-inspired elements that give it a unique compositional style.
25
  Unlike 
many of his collegiate buildings, or even the Ohio Institution, this building appears to be 
cramped, narrow, daunting, and uninviting.  This begs the question, did Tinsley succumb 
to the stigma attached to the poor of society and created this building in the hopes of 
deterring potential paupers from seeking public assistance, or, perhaps, it was simply that 
he was unable to fully execute his aesthetics within the parameters presented by the 
Board of County Commissioners.  There were 139 rooms in total, including a small 
chapel located on the third floor where church services were held every Sunday.
26
 
 
Figure 7. Knox County Infirmary c. 1880, displaying tripartite design, ample ventilation, large 
windows, and pleasing architectural style.  (Courtesy of the Knox County Historical Society 
Museum.) 
 
                                                 
25
 Mark Gelernter, A History of American Architecture: Buildings in Their Cultural and Technological 
Context (London: University Press of New England, 1999); Virginia and Lee McAlester, A Field Guide to 
American Houses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011). 
26
 “Grand Opening of Knox County’s New Infirmary,” The Democratic Banner (Mount Vernon, OH), June 
29, 1877, 3. 
80 
 
 
Figure 8. Knox County Infirmary’s use of the Kirkbride Plan and Tinsley’s design aesthetic made 
would have allowed future expansion without altering architectural style.  The secondary building 
is the boiler house.  (Courtesy of the Knox County Historical Society.) 
 
 Tinsley’s use of a modified Kirkbride Plan, which coincidentally played into his 
own architectural ideals, is evident throughout the Infirmary building, its orientation, and 
its location on the property.  First, it was erected in close proximity to State Route 3, one 
of the largest and most highly traveled state roads in Ohio, and the Cleveland, Akron & 
Columbus Railroad, which had a small passenger station in Bangs.  This follows 
Kirkbride’s instruction that although secluded, an institution like a poorhouse should be 
located along main transportation arteries.  Second, the Infirmary is located within the 
extremely picturesque countryside of southwestern Knox County and along Dry Creek, a 
major tributary to the scenic Kokosing River.  The farm, gardens, courtyard, and grounds 
provided the “objects of interest” advocated by Kirkbride in the restoration and 
reinvigoration of the mind.  Third, it is oriented along the cardinal points, with the long 
axis running east to west, allowing for the northerly winds to enter large portions of the 
building and for the southerly direction of the sun to enter the building throughout all 
parts of the day.  Fourth, there is a central block where the main offices and hospital ward 
81 
 
were located, flanked by the female ward to the east and the male ward to the west.  Fifth, 
the more “excitable” patients were relegated to the third floors in the rear wings that run 
perpendicular to the main portion of the building, as the Infirmary did not have the length 
required to fully separate the mentally ill from the other residents.  Additionally, a small 
jail cell was installed in the southwest corner of the ground floor.  Sixth, a small 
apartment was located on the second floor to house the Infirmary Superintendent and his 
family.  It is interesting to note that the kitchen and dining hall were not located in the 
central portion of the building as suggested in the Kirkbride Plans, but rather on the 
eastern wing with the female wards.  This was done at the request of the county 
commissioners, likely because the kitchen is traditionally women’s domain, though an 
explanation was not provided.
27
 
 The Knox County Infirmary was more than a building and grounds erected in the 
mode of an ideal institution or the physical manifestation of social reform theories.  It 
was a reflection of Knox County and its struggle to maintain their agricultural identity 
while the rest of the world was on the fast track toward industrialization.  Between the 
1860s and the 1870s, Knox County experienced a “Gas and Glass” boom, which 
continued into the mid-twentieth century.  Discoveries of large quantities of natural gas 
within Knox County led many companies to establish natural gas processing plants, most 
in or near Mount Vernon.  Companies chose this region because Mount Vernon because 
was the county seat and the largest municipality within the county that could support 
large-scale manufacturing.  The Mount Vernon Gas Works, one of the earliest 
companies, was established in 1857, and was the largest supplier of natural gas products 
                                                 
27
 Knox County Commissioners, “Commissioners Journal G, 1874-1881,” Office of the Commissioners, 
Knox County, Ohio, recorded June 21, 1875, 70. 
82 
 
for heating and lighting throughout Knox County, including the infirmary.  Large 
numbers of immigrants from Indiana and Oklahoma, many of Belgian descent, came to 
Knox County as a result of the “Gas and Glass Boom” hoping to make their own way, 
much like the earlier immigrants had during the canal and railroad debates in the 
preceding decades.  The influx of immigrants, however, also led to the rise of vagrancy, 
which threatened the social and economic infrastructure of the county, where there were 
minimal opportunities in the few manufactories to absorb the large quantity of unskilled 
laborers. 
 Rural communities throughout Ohio, not just Knox County, felt similar pressures 
from industrialization.  Social reform movements were created from a mixture of 
religious revivalism, professionalized charity, and greater state regulation of local 
institutions such as poorhouses.  Society began to recognize that economic issues, 
unemployment, and other factors contributed to poverty, and that the social structure of 
the United States “was responsible for some poor men’s sins.”
28
  While industrialization 
and urbanization was evidence of America’s social evolution, it was also part of the 
perceived social degradation that many reformers feared.  It increased the 
commercialistic mindset of the middle and upper classes, which trickled down to the 
poorer working classes as the natural path toward an advanced society.  Ohio, among 
numerous other states, enacted a series of statewide improvement plans that challenged 
the traditional agrarian values of places such as Knox County.  State legislature put these 
plans in place to create a more cohesive cultural identity among its citizens.  “New 
standards of value . . . were defined and embodied in material possessions that emanated 
                                                 
28
 Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism & Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War 
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 167. 
83 
 
from and reflected urban culture.”
29
  Consumerism devalued the role that agricultural 
communities played in the support of the greater society by taking their goods, whether 
crops (grains, fiber) or animal byproducts (meat, wool, leather, dairy), and selling them at 
low prices, meaning that farmers received minimal payment for their products. 
 This left agricultural communities with even less economic stimulus, and they had 
to face a difficult decision.  They could adapt the statewide improvement plans for their 
own benefit, or crumble under the pressure to conform to urban ideals and forfeit a large 
portion of their code of morality.  Communities throughout Knox County were unsettled 
by society’s movement away from “the Protestant work ethic . . . toward the god of 
consumption.”
30
  Rural towns could not compete with the burgeoning urban 
commercialism, and many individuals migrated toward the cities in order to survive.  
This also meant that many of the older citizens of the county, most poor farmers when 
they were in their prime, were left without children to take care of them.  The Knox 
County Infirmary was the only place that they could go, except for the save few that had 
been able to save enough personal assets during their lifetime to afford to live in a private 
boarding house.  In addition, the State Board of Public Charities, created in 1867 and 
reorganized in 1875, began to be a stronger presence in poorhouse regulation as part of 
the statewide improvement plans.
31
  This concerned many agricultural centers that unless 
they actively participated in the maintenance of the county infirmary and its inmates, the 
                                                 
29
 Hal S. Barron, Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870-1930 (Chapel 
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 155. 
30
 Richard Middleton, Colonial America: A History, 1585-1776 (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 
1996), 244. 
31
 Deborah Marinski, “State Policies and the Public Response to Institutionalization: Caring for the Insane 
in Late-Nineteenth-Century Ohio,” Ohio History 114 (2007): 118. 
84 
 
institution would become stagnant, impersonal, and completely removed from local 
traditions of family and community.
32
 
 In reality, the State Board had very dull teeth and comparatively little impact on 
local poorhouse improvements.  The state established the board to inspect the county 
poorhouses and to provide counsel to the superintendents as to how to bring the buildings 
and care up to state code, but did not have the legal power to enforce directly their 
recommendations.
33
  Genuine concern for community preservation was what led to high 
levels of social interaction between the general population of Knox County and those 
living in the poorhouse, and contributed to the longevity of the institution until its 
termination in September, 1977—135 years to the month from its establishment in 1842.  
The Knox County Infirmary provided its inmates with as normal a domestic atmosphere 
as is possible within an institutional setting.  Family and friends visited the poor several 
times throughout the year on formal holidays, such as the Fourth of July, Flowers Day, 
and Christmas, in addition to regular visits from church groups and benevolent societies.  
The superintendents invited the entire county to come celebrate these events with the 
inmates.  Hundreds of people attended these events, and brought with them homemade 
treats and little presents for each inmate.  There were any number of indoor and outdoor 
games and other amusements throughout the day.  The celebrations were like any regular 
community gathering, the only difference was that it was at the infirmary rather than a 
community park.  Organizations such as the W.C.T.U. would read essays on the dangers 
of immoral conduct, the importance of being temperate, and the rewards of leading a 
                                                 
32
 Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse, 102. 
33
 Aileen E. Kennedy, The Ohio Poor Law and Its Administration (Chicago: The University of Chicago 
Press, 1934), 1. 
85 
 
spiritually pious life.
34
  Therefore, despite a fare more sympathetic attitude toward the 
indigent and disabled, endeavors to reform the traditionally “unworthy” inmates of the 
infirmary were still present, although these efforts took on a much more passive approach 
toward the end of the nineteenth century. 
                                                 
34
 The Democratic Banner, Mount Vernon, OH. 
86 
 
Conclusion: Preservation of Community Identity 
 Today, there are approximately 1,270 farms within the county’s borders, each 
averaging 156 acres.  Agriculture continues to account for nearly eighty-six percent of the 
county’s land use, with roughly fifty-nine percent of the population engaged in some 
form of agricultural science.  The United States Department of Agriculture has 
designated fifty-seven percent of all agricultural land within the county as “prime 
farmland,” defined as “land that is best suited to grow food, feed, forage, fiber and 
oilseed crops.”
1
  Knox County was and continues to be a farmer’s paradise.  It was in 
large part the county’s strong agricultural traditions that guided the administration of 
public relief, and to some extent maintains a level of influence in shaping local attitudes 
toward social welfare.  The Knox County Infirmary remains as one of the largest late-
nineteenth century infirmaries in the state of Ohio, and is one of the few examples of a 
the Kirkbride Plan as implemented and modified for use in rural county poorhouses. 
 The fear of social deterioration in the United States in the early- to mid-nineteenth 
century led to a series of social reform movements and the rise of institutionalization of 
certain classes of citizens (indigent in poorhouses, insane in asylums, criminals in 
prisons, children in schools), which in turn initiated a reexamination of the designs of 
these institutions.  Commonalities in many of these buildings include the linearity of their 
floor plans, often with a central space reserved for administrative purposes, and almost all 
                                                 
1
 For land use statistics, see Knox County Regional Planning Commission, Knox County Comprehensive 
Plan 2012 Update (Mount Vernon, OH: privately published, 2012), 3.2-3.3; United States Department of 
Agriculture, 2007 Census of Agriculture: Ohio, State and County Data (Washington, D.C.: National 
Agricultural Statistics Service, issued February 2009) (updated December 2009).  Data from the 2012 
Census of Agriculture is not yet available.  For local agriculture and definitions, see Ohio State University 
Extension Office, “Farming in Knox County,” last modified January 14, 2008, 
http://www.kirklyn.com/hgg/farming.htm.  Knox County agriculture primarily includes crops, feedlots, and 
orchards. 
87 
 
are of masonry construction.  All were used to instill a sense of order and hierarchy, 
which many Americans felt were under threat within the increasingly industrialized and 
urbanized society.  Tall ceilings, large windows, masonry, single hallways, few ells if 
any, all served to promote and facilitate the rehabilitation and education of citizens 
deviating from the parameters defining the “social norm.” 
 Legislation that was enacted to regulate the poor closely followed periods of great 
social and economic upheaval.   The first major stride toward strictly organized 
administration of material or financial relief to the poor occurred in England with the 
1349 Statute of Labourers.  This statute was created to counteract the devastating 
economic impact of the Bubonic Plague, which forced England to rapidly transition away 
from feudalism to capitalism with the increase of peasants earning wages for their labor 
instead of room and board from their lords.  The 1349 Statute mandated that work was 
compulsory for all the able bodied of the working class, or else they faced imprisonment 
in the workhouse.  Only those who were truly unable to work because of age, physical or 
mental disability would receive minimal assistance.  Many of the middle and upper 
classes citizens began to fear poverty as a threat to their own comfortable ways of living 
by the end of sixteenth century with the rise of the working class.  The idea of “worthy” 
and “unworthy” poor made its first official appearance in legislature in 1597, which was 
the when provisions for furnishing publicly financed relief to the poor was standardized 
across the entire United Kingdom.  When Parliament revised this statute in 1601, they 
clearly defined laws of settlement to determine which parish was responsible for 
providing relief for individuals and families in need.  This created a system of localized 
poor relief that would influence legislation well into the twentieth century in England and 
88 
 
the United States, and also shaped the general attitude of society at large toward people 
living in poverty. 
 An individual’s legal permanent place of residence was crucial in determining 
how much aid an overseer of the poor would provide, as well as how that relief would be 
administrated.  Two systems were developed to accommodate the distribution of public 
funds to assist in the maintenance of the poor, each with unique advantages and 
disadvantages.  Outdoor relief was the earlier of the two systems.  Paupers who received 
relief under this method of distribution had the luxury of remaining in their own 
residences, or living with family, friends, or neighbors if they were without a home.  
Indoor relief referred to institutions such as poorhouses or workhouses where overseers 
of the poor would remove paupers to in order to receive room and board.  The primary 
stipulation for the indoor system was that all able-bodied inmates had to work, sometimes 
on the poorhouse farm, domestic chores, or various forms of production.  
Institutionalization of poor relief brought all the indigent of a municipality, city or 
county, to a single location, which facilitated a more strictly regulated system of relief 
administration.  Outdoor relief was the more popular mode of relief distribution, and had 
the most advocates for its use, even though it was more likely to be abused by the poor 
and guardians alike.  While the outdoor system was slightly more labor intensive in 
ensuring paupers received adequate aid and attention, the indoor system was more 
expensive to maintain. 
 Religion dictated the qualifications a poor person had to meet in order to receive 
aid in early forays into poor relief.  In the United States, especially in Ohio and other 
highly agricultural areas, Protestantism was the most widespread and fervent when it 
89 
 
came to determining an individual’s worthiness to receive assistance.  It was every 
Christian’s duty to care for the poor of society, for it was charitable kindness that would 
lead to a moral society, but more importantly, lead the provider’s soul to salvation.  
Religion served to regulate the manners and morals of society.  Liberal distribution of aid 
to those living in poverty without first determining the worthiness of their need, many 
Protestant reformers believed, would lead to the degradation of society and create a class 
of citizens with no morals, work ethic, or respect for community. 
 The rise of institutionalization in Knox County followed similar trends throughout 
the state of Ohio.  The county commissioners purchased the Bricker Farm in 1842 in 
reaction to local and state development programs, such as the construction of the 
Cleveland, Sandusky & Newark Railroad and the proposed Walhonding Canal.  These 
and similar projects brought many immigrants into the area, most with little or no 
connection to the existing families in the county.  The larger the population became, the 
more intense it became for overseers of the poor to distribute relief in a place like Knox 
County, where most families lived on remote farms.  Knox County chose to relocate the 
poor to the county farm to alleviate the burden of traveling to and from the county seat to 
monitor the indigent in the countryside.  It was an act of county resourcefulness when the 
commissioners purchased Bricker Farm in 1842 for the purpose of converting into the 
county poorhouse, not a devaluation of the county’s indigent population.  The gas and 
glass boom of the 1860s and 1870s, while it increased the population of potential county 
charges, also increased the county’s financial resources that they could put toward 
constructing a new poorhouse in 1874. 
90 
 
 The Knox County Infirmary—its main building and outbuildings, the 
landscaping, the large acres of rolling farmland—offered a means for the citizens of this 
rural county to reflect on its past and the direction that it was heading at the dawning of a 
new century.  The infirmary was the physical manifestation of local traditions within the 
sphere of regional and national institutional social reform, and in many ways stood as a 
monument to the strong sense of community that Knox County citizens maintained 
throughout its history.  The Kirkbride Plan, from physical features to administration, 
materialized many of the core social values already present within Knox County.  “Good 
institutions existed in a close, symbiotic relation with their communities,”
2
 and the 
Kirkbride Plan used in institutions like poorhouses and insane asylums, performed as a 
tiny community all on its own.  Beautiful scenery, objects of interest from fields to 
streams to gardens, natural light, fresh air—all were available at the Knox County 
Infirmary.  The design created by architect William Tinsley only added to the splendor 
provided by the natural world.  Tinsley provided the inmates of the infirmary with a 
beautiful place live, inside and out, a place where they could escape the reality (to some 
extent) that they were dependent on county for their survival.  The building was far 
grander than the majority of the county’s population could even dream of living in, and 
yet they spent the money to construct a palatial edifice to provide even the poorest 
members of society with some small comfort, luxury, love.  They may have been 
removed from the community in space, but not from thought. 
 The Knox County Infirmary “is an institution of which the citizens of the county 
may be justly proud, and stands to-day as a monument . . . to the cultivated, benevolent 
                                                 
2
 Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York: 
Basic Books, 1986), 102. 
91 
 
spirit of the people.”
3
  This statement speaks as much to the predominant community 
ideals of social order as it does to the larger social reform movements occurring 
elsewhere within the United States.  The mid- to late-nineteenth century was a period of 
progressive social reform, which saw an increase in the construction of various social 
institutions for the rehabilitation of inmates to proper work ethics and moral standing.  
The pride that Knox County felt in its poorhouse was a mixture of genuine compassion 
for the indigent population and the need for self-commendation.  From the farm to 
domestic work, from blacksmith shops to food processing, from religious services to 
tuberculosis hospitals, the poorhouse was essentially a miniature model of all the 
surrounding communities, a type of fringe society within itself.  The Knox County 
Infirmary was, in a sense, a way to begin anew; a means to divert attention away from the 
prevailing faults within the greater community and focus its efforts on recreating the 
social order and harmony that began to fade with the persistent chiming of progress. 
                                                 
3
 N. N. Hill, Jr., History of Knox County, Ohio: Its Past and Present (Mount Vernon, OH: A. A. Graham & 
Co., 1881), 252. 
92 
 
 
 
Figure 9.  Inmates of the Knox County Infirmary.  Photo taken soon after the completion of the new four-
story, “fireproof” brick building c. 1877.  (Courtesy of the Knox County Historical Society.) 
 
 
Dedicated to the individuals who once roamed the halls of the Knox County 
Infirmary.  The directors, the superintendents, the matrons, the staff, but above all, the 
forgotten inmates.  The Knox County Infirmary was a true Palace for the Poor, where 
communities came together to provide their destitute mothers, fathers, children, 
friends, and neighbors a sacred space that they could call home. 
93 
 
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& Littlefield, 2005. 
 
Ziff, Katherine.  Asylum on the Hill: History of a Healing Landscape.  Athens, OH: Ohio 
University Press, 2012.  
 
 
Articles 
Baugher, Sherene.  “Visible Charity: The Archaeology, Material Culture, and Landscape 
Design of New York City’s Municipal Almshouse Complex, 1736-1797.”  
International Journal of Historical Archaeology 5, no. 2 (June 2001): 175-202. 
 
Bourque, Monique.  “Populating the Poorhouse: A Reassessment of Poor Relief in the 
Antebellum Delaware Valley.”  Pennsylvania History 70, no. 4 (Autumn 2003): 
397-432 
 
Bremner, Robert H.  “The Civic Revival in Ohio: Harris R. Cooley and Cooley Farms.”  
American Journal of Economics and Sociology 14, no. 1 (Oct. 1954): 71-75. 
 
De Cunzo, Lu Ann.  “Reform, Respite, Ritual: An Archaeology of Institutions; The 
Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, 1800-1850.”  Historical Archaeology 29, no. 3 
(1995): i-v, vii-viii, 1-168. 
 
98 
 
Francis, Richard.  “The Ideology of Brook Farm.”  Studies in the American Renaissance 
(1977): 1-48. 
 
Garman, James C. and Paul A. Russo.  “‘A Disregard of Every Sentiment of Humanity’: 
The Town Farm and Class Realignment in Nineteenth Century Rural New 
England.”  Historical Archaeology 33, no. 1 (1999): 118-135. 
 
Keblaner, Benjamin Joseph.  “Employment of Paupers at Philadelphia’s Almshouse 
before 1861.”  Pennsylvania History 24, no. 2 (1957): 137-148. 
 
Leedy, Russel W.  “A Study of the Unemployable Persons Receiving Relief from the 
Federal Emergency Administration in Knox County Ohio during July 1935.”  
M.A. thesis, The Ohio State University, 1935. 
 
Levstik, Frank R., ed.  “Life Among the Lowly: An Early View of an Ohio Poor House.”  
Ohio History 88 (Winter 1979): 84-88. 
 
Marinski, Deborah.  “State Policies and the Public Response to Institutionalization: 
Caring for the Insane in Late-Nineteenth-Century Ohio,” Ohio History 114 
(2007): 118-131. 
 
Marshall, Joan E.  “National Depression, the Poor, and Poor Relief: Lafayette, Indiana, 
1896-1897, a Case Study.”  Social Service Review 69, no. 2 (1995): 285-308. 
 
Quigley, William P.  “Five Hundred Years of English Poor Laws, 1349-1834: Regulating 
the Working and Nonworking Poor.”  Akron Law Review 30, no. 1 (Fall 1996): 
73-128. 
 
Smith, Billy G.  “Poverty and Economic Marginality in Eighteenth Century America.”  
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 132, no. 1 (March 1998): 85-
118. 
 
 
Websites 
Ohio State University Extension Office, “Farming in Knox County,” last modified 
January 14, 2008, http://www.kirklyn.com/hgg/farming.htm.