Anita Firebaugh
A new highway marker noting the location of the first Craig County Poor Farm should be visible in the near future on Virginia Rte 42, about 13 miles outside of New Castle in the Sinking Creek area.
The Virginia Department of Historic Resources (VDHR) announced in July that it had approved the new highway marker.
The marker will read:
“After the Revolutionary War, care for people facing poverty in Virginia ceased to be the responsibility of Anglican parishes and instead was managed by county-appointed “overseers of the poor.” Craig County, formed in 1851, initially assisted the poor outside of institutions but in 1892 established a 250-acre working farm here as a residence for those unable to support themselves, often because of age or disability. Residents provided labor as they were able. The property, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, included three cottages, a superintendent’s house, outbuildings, and a cemetery. The county sold the property in 1921, opening a new poor farm north of New Castle.”
Members of the local historical society are excited about the new marker. “We are always pleased when the history of Craig County is acknowledged and shared with the public. This marker is a welcome addition,” said Diane Givens of the Craig County Historical Society.
The Poor Farm was created in 1892 when Craig County purchased the property for $9,000, according to the VDHR nomination form.
It appears that the county may have constructed the poor farm superintendent’s two-story house, a simple dwelling of frame construction with vernacular Greek Revival elements. Next to the house stands an 1892 poorhouse cottage, one of three residential cottages that stood on the grounds in 1909. The two-bay, two-room cottage is reminiscent of servants’ quarters of the 19th-century era and conforms to the standard poorhouse lodging form in Virginia at the turn of the 20th century.
The property also retains from its poor farm period a stone cellar structure, a frame granary-corncrib, the County Farm Cemetery where poor farm residents were buried, and a frame barn. In 1921 the county sold the farm to a family who used the superintendent’s house as their farmhouse and converted the surviving poorhouse cottage to a chicken house.
The poor farm’s superintendent’s house from 1892 still remains. It served as the home of the overseer of the poor and his wife, who together operated the farm and cared for the residents. At the Craig County Poor Farm, the first overseer husband and wife team was Josh and Rebecca Looney.
The superintendent’s house is a fairly simple dwelling for its era and is much plainer than some of the elaborate Queen Anne houses built in New Castle around the same time. However, it is larger than the one-story worker houses that populated many of the region’s industrial and mining communities. An overly elaborate dwelling would not have been justified for a county facility, built with taxpayer money, but the house had to be sufficient to attract a qualified overseer and his family.
Near the superintendent’s house stands the 1892 poorhouse cottage, one of three residential cottages that stood on the grounds in 1909. The poorhouse cottage has a two-bay two-room form reminiscent of servants’ quarters of the 19th century era and was the standard poorhouse lodging form in Virginia at the turn of the 20th century.
Also from the poorhouse period are a stone cellar, a frame granary/corncrib, the cemetery, where residents of the poor farm were buried, and possibly a frame barn.
Four recipients of assistance are known for 1892, all of whom died that year: William Caldwell (ca. 1827-1892), Delilah “Lila” (Hackett) Hughes (ca. 1812-1892), Eliza Reynolds (ca. 1852-1892), and a second William Caldwell (d. 1892). Reynolds and the first William Caldwell were African American; Hughes and the second William Caldwell (whose birth date is uncertain) were white. Note that these are only poorhouse residents who died in 1892—there may have been other residents who did not die.
The 1900 census listed eight poorhouse residents, six females and two males. The majority of the residents were over 50 years of age, one was 80, and one, Alexander Sarver, born in 1815, was 85.
In 1910, the poorhouse had a new overseer, Charles Allen “Bub” Keffer (1866-1929), who lived there with his wife, Mary Ellen (Johnston) Keffer (1862-1942), a young daughter and son, and a farm laborer. Five poorhouse residents, three females and two males, lived in the cottages.
VDHR research has determined the names and sometimes the condition of some of the poor farm’s residents, including individuals like John F. “Cats” Myers, whose “mind never developed beyond that of a child,” and “a one-legged white man, who is very nervous.”
On the hill above the farm complex is the County Farm Cemetery (also called the Poor Farm Cemetery) with a single marble tombstone. VDHR archaeologist Thomas Klatka investigated the cemetery in 2010. Klatka identified one tombstone, that of Benton Thomas, and several unmarked grave depressions. According to one source there are thirty-nine unmarked graves in the cemetery.
The small marble Thomas tombstone is of standard military form and is inscribed Co C 22 Regt VA Inf (a Virginia company active during the Civil War). According to notes at the VDHR website, in a 2018 interview by Jane Henderson with Scott Jones, who grew up on the farm in the 1950s and 1960s, “The Benton Thomas marker is not at the grave site. At the time the [Craig County] Historical Society placed it, they were not allowed to put a single headstone in the middle of the field, so it was placed near the fence. Also, there is some question about Benton being buried there or his brother who also served in the Confederate Army.”
The first deaths occurred at the poorhouse in 1892, therefore the first interments in the cemetery likely date to that year. The fate of any markers that may have marked the graves, or even whether the graves were so marked, is unknown.
The granary/corncrib is the oldest farm building to survive on the farm, with cut-nailed frame construction suggesting it is contemporaneous with the superintendent’s house and cottage (1892) or slightly later.
The property, which now consists of about 145 acres, is currently owned by former U.S. Senator Bill Frist and his wife Tracy. The farm occupies both sides of Sinking Creek.
The Frists worked with the VDHR to place the property on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 2020. The old Craig County Poor Farm, also known as an almshouse, is important for its role in promoting the welfare of the county’s poor and needy residents during its 29 years of operation. The structures on the property are rare surviving examples of poor farms or poorhouses in Virginia.
