Ontonagon County Poor Farm

This remarkable sight sitting along M-38 five miles east of Ontanagon is the abandoned county poor farm. The county's first poorhouse was built in 1855 to care for indigent lumberjacks and miners. At that time most came from Ireland. The building pictured above was built in 1900 on 205 acres. The residents who could work raised potatoes, oats, and hay. There was a dairy barn, a horse barn, and a outbuilding for TB patients. In the 1870s, Poles became a large part of the resident population. By the 1890s Finns represented the biggest ethnic group here. The facility operated until 1945, when the State of Michigan assumed responsibility for the indigent population, and the residents were moved to a state facility in Gibbs City north of Iron River. The big brick building, which is now rapidly deteriorating, was sold to a local citizen. The odd message scrawled in large white letters on the building, "EaT light WiTh BeeF," has become an image of amusement on internet sites like Flickr.com.

A woman who calls herself the "Poorhouse Lady" provides this historical perspective on a phenomenon that today seems distant and dismal:
Poorhouses were tax-supported residential institutions to which people were required to go if they could not support themselves. They were started as a method of providing a less expensive (to the taxpayers) alternative to what we would now days call "welfare" - what was called "outdoor relief" in those days. People requested help from the community Overseer of the Poor ( sometimes also called a Poor Master) - an elected town official. If the need was great or likely to be long-term, they were sent to the poorhouse instead of being given relief while they continued to live independently. Sometimes they were sent there even if they had not requested help from the Overseer of the Poor. That was usually done when they were found guilty of begging in public, etc.

[One misconception should be cleared up here; they were not technically "debtors' prisons." Someone could owe a great deal of money, but if they could still provide themselves with the necessities for remaining independent they might avoid the poorhouse.]

North side of M-38, 5 miles east of Ontonagon.

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