An aerial view of the old Poor Farm. (Courtesy photo)
The Municipal Affordable Housing Trust has proposed that the town purchase the property at 166 Littleton Road and then solicit bids from developers to build affordable housing condos in the building. It seems fitting that the old farmhouse is once again to be used for multiple dwellers. And it seems somehow in the spirit of the past that the units will be “affordable.” In the 19th century the farmhouse served as a home for the town’s poor. One might say that it was, in a way, Harvard’s first multiple affordable housing, with the town making housing “affordable” to those who could not support themselves.
No poor people welcome
Harvard, whose attitudes were no doubt mostly in accord with the trends of the times, has a history of alternating very different attitudes toward the poor. In the mid-18th century the town did not want to take on the burden of any poor and shiftless people coming into Harvard. In fact, if the selectmen caught word of any impoverished strangers trying to settle in, they would send the constable who, in the name of the king, would “warn out” the newcomers. In his “History of Harvard” Henry Nourse calls this inhospitality mere “sound and fury signifying nothing” in most cases. At the same time, however, he notes a letter, dated 1766, from the three Harvard selectmen to one of the town constables in which they require him to search for and warn the listed poor persons to “depart forthwith out of the town of Harvard.” One of the persons named is “Nathanial Stone, an infant child of about two months.” Also a “lad named Silas Harris who came from Leominster” and a “young woman named Rachel Wright” are to be warned out because they, along with the baby are “likely to be chargeable to the Town of Harvard speedily.” One can’t help but wonder why these minors are named and, more to the point, how they are supposed to get themselves out of town!
At the same time, since its incorporation, the town had put money into the town treasury to give regular aid to the town’s own poor, presumably those who had proved themselves of worthy character but who had no means. In 1742 the town voted to instruct the selectmen “to see what the necessity of Joseph Blood’s family was and Releave them as they thought best for the Present.”
The ‘town’s house’ for the poor
Several years later the town went a step further, and in doing so, set itself apart from other towns. In the “Historic Property Survey” of Harvard, Claire Dempsey says, “Harvard has an exceptionally long history of institutional handling of the town poor. Other towns held on to informal methods of providing, but Harvard voted as early as 1753 to build a house.” This first alms house was a small house on the eastern border of the common, called the “town’s house.” (The house stood directly to the north of what is now the old library.) The Bloods were the first occupants. Later, the wife of Phineas Whitney occupied the house when her husband was a soldier in the Continental army. Other poor people, largely widows, became the charge of the town and the selectmen were ordered to “inquire into their necessities and to give assistance accordingly.” One major “assistance” seems to have come in the form of a cow.
Annual auction of the poor
By 1785 the house was called the Work House, reflecting a shift in attitude toward the poor, and in 1797 the house and land were sold to Asa Daby, who extensively remodeled the house into a duplex (which burned in 1880).
By the end of the 1700s, the town had reverted to its earlier inhumane attitude toward the poor. Whether better or worse than warning out, “vendueing” was the auctioning off of the poor for a year to the lowest bidders. While people who bid on paupers would receive a certain amount of labor, the town had to pay for their food, clothing, and shelter. Nourse suggests that many widows and spinsters facing poverty may have joined the Shakers rather than face the annual vendue. An interesting item in the town accounts is the listing of an expense “for Liquor at Vendueing the poor.” Apparently, the human auction ranked right up next to burials as occasions for imbibing excessive “ardent spirits.”
In 1818 a committee was formed to find a better method of dealing with the town’s poor; it is unclear whether the motivation was conscience or cost savings. The result was that the town decided to contract with an individual who would relieve the town of all care of the poor for a term of years. Captain Oliver Hill offered to support Harvard’s paupers for three years for a sum of $2,500, and his bid won. This arrangement did not provide the solution, either, and the contract was not renewed.
Establishment of the poor farm
Seven years later, the town used $2400 to purchase 94 acres and buildings from Phineas Davis to serve as a home for paupers. (The site was at what is now 166 Littleton Road, the corner of Pinnacle and Littleton roads.) A committee was instructed to find a suitable man and wife to be in charge of the farm and to submit a bill of fare and set up rules and regulations for the institution. The committee determined 14 rules, and the punishment for a serious breach of one of them was solitary confinement with bread and water for not less than 12 or more than 48 hours. According to the bill of fare that Nourse cites, the inhabitants were to have “Good Rye and Indian Bread at all times, Pork and Beans twice a Week, Hasty Pudding twice a Week, soup, boiled or fried victuals the rest of the time, and Beer in warm weather.” It is interesting to note a rare “advantage” to women: while men would have tea once a day, women would have it twice in a day. Of course, this “perk” for women may have been outweighed by the fact that instead of tea the men may have been having “ardent spirits.”
Overseers of the Poor
The Overseers of the Poor, appointed by the Selectmen, formed one of the most important committees in town. They hired caretakers for the farm and managed finances. Their ledgers listed expenses for the “inmates at the alms-house,” most of whom were older but also included some children. Also accounted for was money to lodge “the travelling poor” and for the cost of supporting the “poor out of the alms-house” who were in various institutions. The annual report listed in detail the crops and livestock sold by the farm, as well as money received by the town. In 1838 a new barn was built and in 1868 the original farmhouse was replaced with the current structure at a cost of $8,200. At the time of Nourse’s writing, 1894, he says of the poor farm: “There are now but three town paupers, and the number has rarely risen above fifteen, though the building can well accommodate twenty-five or thirty.”
Things went on for another 20 years, with occasional proposals put forward to close the poor farm and make arrangements with a neighboring town for joint care of the poor. In 1916 the property was put up for sale and when no buyer came forward for several years, it was sold at auction for $7,000 in 1923. It seems by that time there was only one permanent inmate, Lizzie Saunders, who was placed in a state institution.
Developers of the old poor farm property will find a house that, according to town lore, was built by a Mr. Sawyer, “the best house-builder in these parts.” They will find that the framing is all thick, sturdy pieces of chestnut, and beams that are pegged rather than nailed. And they will find an old door with a big crack down the middle, split by one of the “travelling poor” running amok through the house—a reminder of its 100 years as refuge for the poor and homeless.
