Ionia County "Poor Farm"

       Transcribed by Theresa Sweet 

Burial Records

Shepard Cemetery (old Infirmary) Images

New Infirmary Cemetery Images

  

CEMETERY, CEMETERY, WHO HAS YOU NOW?

        
     As long ago as June, 1970 I included a paragraph in THE RECOLLECTOR about Ionia County's Potters Field, or a cemetery for indigents, particularly those who had died in the Poor House and had no relative or friend to claim them.  Burials were made simply with a wooden cross for a marker.  Time has eliminated all such markers.
     Two years ago, while picnicking at the roadside park at the site of the old County Poor Farm that is now part of the State
park system, some of us deplored the neglect of the little cemetery plot there.  Harold Lillie, who lives on Riverside Drive a mile or so west, approached the caretaker the following spring and asked that the cemetery be kept mowed.  As a result, the cemetery has had a neat appearance the past year.
    Knowing that without any permanent marker, this cemetery might well become lost and forgotten as has happened with most of the Indian Mounds in the Lyons area, the situation has bothered me.  Then I realized there had been a previous County Farm in Ronald Township and if there had been one, there must also have been another Potters Field.  A call to Stanley Powell confirmed my guess--a quarter acre in the southeast corner of what had been the County Farm, a quarter mile from any road was the almost forgotten cemetery.       
     With Marge Smith's help we found that the title to that quarter acre was not clear.  It had not been on the assessment roll for well over a century.  Again, with help from Wm. B. Davis, we got the title cleared by securing quitclaim deeds in favor of Ionia County from the adjoining property owners.  The Ionia County Board of Commissioners reaffirmed ownership and the deeds were recorded.  Again there was no marker in the cemetery.  Plans are being worked on to get a permanent stone marker for each cemetery in 1983.
      On a visit to the Parks Department of the Department of Natural Resources in Lansing in a conversation with Mr. Butterfield
about the old County Farm, he brought out a large-brick sized copper box that had been taken from the corner stone of the
poor House when the building was razed in converting the area to a park.  He gave me the box and contents to return to the
area from which it had come.  Besides three hazel nuts and two faded photographs, the box contained two newspapers with
accounts of the building of the 1907 Poor House.  One of the articles is reproduced on the following page.  There is also a
list of signatures of the 24 construction workers who had worked on the building. Mr. Butterfield has agreed that a stone
marker at the cemetery will be appropriate and the D.N.R. will maintain post markers at the boundaries of the cemetery.  We plan to add some more information to the copper box and plant it again inside the marker to be placed at that cemetery.
     It was l855 when the Ionia County Board of Supervisors decided to establish a poor Farm as other counties were doing then. In 1871 the Board of Supervisors replaced the original farm buildings in Ronald Township with a $7,OOO brick building.  Its foundation can still be seen on the farm of George Wittenbach on Cooper Road.  From 30 to 5O people at a time were cared for at the Poor House.  You can look back to the December 1977 RECOLLECTOR to find the reasons for admittance to the Eaton County Poor House.  Ionia's records seem to be missing.  Residents were referred to as inmates.  There were some residents able to work and work they did on the County Farm to produce farm products to make the place partly self sustaining.
      In 1907 fire destroyed the Poor House.  The residents were farmed out to available housing while the new $37,OOO Poor House was being constructed at the new site closer to Ionia on West Riverside Drive.  The new poor House went from "magnificent" to a state of neglect over the next 5O years.  Changed attitudes in caring for the indigent saw the closing of Poor Houses in county after county and Ionia was no exception.  The remaining residents were moved to other forms of care and the farm was sold to the  D.N.R. to become part of the Ionia State park.          

                                                   Robert W. Gierman
From the Sebewa Recollector - printed with permission by Graydon Slowins, Editor.

POOR HOUSE CEMETERY UPDATE

        
     Learning about the County Poor house system from what have been obscure records has been an interesting experience.  You might think that to find out about the County Poor House, inquiry at the Court House from county officials would open the records. But what records? Nobody had ever heard of any!
     One clue did develop. Somebody remembered that Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Gibson of Ionia had been the last custodians at the Poor Farm.  I made a call at the Gibsons, now in their 80's. From them I learned that under administrations previous to theirs, the Poor House had been far from an ideal place for homeless and often near helpless people. With the advent of the convalescent home care in the 1930's, minimal though many times it was, the burden for admission to the Poor Farm lessened.   Better standards for Poor House care had brought State Fire Marshall condemnation of upper floor use of Ionia's Poor House.  The Poor Farm idea was on the decline.
     After more visits with the Gibsons I learned that there was a Poor House book - a ledger of entries, deaths and discharges.
Mrs. Gibson had tried to give the book to Ionia County officials and/or the library. She found nobody interested in such records.
The book was left at the building at the time the property was transferred to the Department of Natural Resources.  D.N.R. had no notion of maintaining a poor house or anything like it.  To get on with their plans for a new state park, the building was razed and when the bulldozers left, no trace of the poor house remained.
     So, back to D.N.R. where I had gotten the copper box with its corner stone contents on a previous visit.  "Yes, there had been a poor house record book."  If I would be patient they would try to locate it. Next day the phone call came saying that the book had been sent to the State Archives on North Michigan Street in Lansing.
     At the Archives I found the book in its permanent home--nobody can remove it-- with a wealth of information in its many pages. The record began in l884 some 28 years after the establishment of the first poor farm in Ronald Township in l856.
     Here were entered the names of the "inmates", their ages and dates of birth, nationalities and reasons for commitment and what township or political unit was responsible.  If there was a death, date was given with a notation of "burial on farm", or "friends or family took the body" or "sent to Ann Arbor."  Apparently the medical school at the University did not lack for cadavers for student training.
     Thumbing through the pages was enough for one afternoon.  In a day or two, Marge Smith went with me to make a record of
burials. We found the names of 44 people who had been "buried on farm" in the almost forgotten quarter acre cemetery in
Ronald Township. No doubt the graves had been marked with simple wooden crosses as those on the Riverside Drive
location had been later. None of those crosses survive.  That little cemetery has been left to itself enough so that little rows
of depressions clearly show where there were graves.  This is the cemetery that is now in County ownership and is scheduled
for fencing in the coming summer season.
     After the 1907 fire that destroyed the Poor House at the Ronald Township location, the records move to the Berlin Township
site on Riverside Drive.  Somebody saved the record book from the fire.  There we find the first burial in the "new cemetery"
as that of John Grinels, who died July 4, 1908.  Records of 55 other burials follow with the last notation being that of William
Peplar, who died February 15, 1934.
     Perhaps that was the last burial there, but considering that those were depression years, it seems more likely that careless
record keeping might be the better explanation.  From l934 on, there was a change in the way the records were entered.
     Another visit to the Gibson home disclosed that some of the later records had been kept at their home.  Mrs. Gibson
made a search and found several entry pads and index cards from which I got a list of 500 names of entrants from 1928 to 1967. There was some duplication of names but allowing for that, the number for the period was well over 400.  This covered the
time when the people of our big wave of immigration of the 1890's were nearing the end of their lives.  There were many
entries of foreign born people.  These records, too, I took to the State Archives for safe-keeping.
     We have a sort of promise that these records of the Ionia County Commissioners of the Poor will one day be microfilmed
so that they can again become available locally.  Perhaps in these days of tight state budgets it is too much to hope that
the microfilming will be soon.  My impression is that there at least 200 pages in the book.
     As a result of all this stir, another development has shed some light on the history of that quarter acre burial plot in Ronald. 
The first settler in Ronald Township was Joshua Shepard.  This is noted in the Schenek History of Ionia and Montcalm Counties. 
Shepard took up land from the U. S. Government.  Perhaps pioneering in that forested wilderness was too much for him. 
From a descendant of his we now learn that he died and was buried on his farm in 1837.  Court House records show that
title to the farm went from Shepard to David Baldie.  In 1856 Baldie sold the farm to the County of Ionia for its first poor farm. 
Baldie, however, made a reservation of that little quarter  acre for cemetery purposes and that is the last entry in the
Register of Deeds office for the cemetery.
     In 1907 the County sold the farm the cemetery excepted, to Normington, Normington to Welch and Welch to Wittenbach. 
With no other claimants, the three adjoining property owners have now quit claimed it in favor of Ionia County.
     Somehow we have to raise some money to set up a marker on each of these cemeteries-- perhaps even list the names of the
known burials-to protect then from other use by unknowing persons in the future.  Wish us luck and a financial boost if you
feel inclined.

                                                                       Robert W. Gierman
From the Sebewa Recollector - printed with permission by Graydon Slowins, Editor.

GETTING THE CEMETERY MARKER UP - DEDICATI0N SET FOR OCT0BER 7,1984

                
     At last, the marker for the Ionia County Infirmary Cemetery at the former Poor House site, but now cornering the new State
Park picnic area on Riverside Drive, some three miles west of Ionia, is in place and will be dedicated Sunday, October 7 at 4 P.M.  Everybody is invited to the dedication, especially the contributors to the $l200 fund that was raised for the marker.
     Especial thanks goes to the Ionia County Road Commission for moving the 10 ton boulder from a location a mile west. 
Steve Yenchar of the Lowell Granite Company has given freely of his time and it was under his direction that his boy
scout troop undertook the cleaning of the area and doing landscape work there.
     The plaque is 20" x 30" with 55 names of people buried at the site with a listing of their death dates and their ages as was
obtained from the Poor House record book that is now at the State Archives at Lansing.  Microfilm copies of this record
are at the Sunfield, Portland and Belding libraries.  Practically every section of Ionia County used the Poor House to care for
the indigent.
     We are told that at the time of burials there the graves were marked with wooden crosses, crosses that have rotted and
long since disappeared.  The cemetery area is merely marked with a post at each corner and now with the rather permanent
huge marker at the front.  The Department of Natural Resources has agreed to keep the area mowed.
     The cemetery was started there in 1907 when the Poor House was built to replace the building the County lost by fire in
Ronald Township.  That left a small cemetery abandoned at the back corners of three farms in Ronald.  The book indicates there were 45 burials in that cemetery.  That, too, never had a stone marker and is yet to receive one. 
     There is no known plat of this cemetery nor any indication of any burial spot. Good Luck Department of Natural Resources
in keeping this cemetery trim  The Ionia County Board of Supervisors gave you the plot with no strings attached.
       
  From the Sebewa Recollector Vol. 18 #4 Feb 1983 copied by permission by Graydon Slowins, Editor        

THE CORNER STONE OF THE NEW COUNTY HOUSE LAID ON FRIDAY LAST

Progress at the New Institution--Brick Work to be Finished in Six

Weeks--Work Going on Rapidly and Smoothly.

     By the courtesy of Dr. Ogden, a representative of the SENTINEL was enabled to enjoy an automobile trip to the new
County Farm on Monday and to view the foundations of Ionia's magnificent infirmary. When the buildings are completed,
they promise so much comfort and ease that it will soon seem almost impossible for anyone to wish to be other than poor.
     The corner stone of the building was laid Friday, and is a handsome block of gray granite furnished by Anderson Bros.
It is placed in the foundation at the southeast corner and bears the inscription, 1907. A history of Ionia county, from its first settlement, and the history of the old poor house and the proceedings which led to the change of site and the purchase of the new is being prepared by E. M. Davis, to be placed in the small hollow reserved for it in the heart of the stone. This record will bear the names of the board of supervisors, the commissioners of the poor and an the committees that have had the supervision at the plans in charge. The paper will be placed in the stone as soon as it is ready and there have been no preparations made for any ceremony at that time. The laying of the corner stone will be of no more importance than that of any brick in the walls.
     Contractor Wright has been busy and the little rise of ground on the historic Sessions farm where still stands the house of cobblestone and mortar erected in 1845, is being rapidly crowned by the rising walls of the new county house. And as a coincidence it my be mentioned that Mr. Wright's father was one of the men who worked on the Sessions house when it was built sixty-two years ago.
     The cellars have been finished except the floors and the walls have all risen above the first floor. The brick work will be finished in about six weeks. The Rikard Lumber Company, of Lansing, has the contract for all lumber, and the slate, tin, are furnished by the Valley City Cornice and Slate Co. of Saginaw. F. H. VanderHeyden is furnishing the brick and about
100,000 still remain to be drawn.  The heating contract has been let to the Tuinstra Hardware Company, of Belding, and
all radiators have been delivered and are stored in the barn, also the most of the pipe.
     A sixty-five foot, drive well has been put down through blue clay, and a flow of water obtained, which rises 28 feet and is sufficient for all the work which is being done there now. And more water is used now than will ever be when the home is finished, so that this well will provide plenty of water for the future.
     Mr. Wright has twenty-four men employed. Their sleeping quarters are in the stone house, where they are boarded by
Mrs. Prall, wife of Contractor Prall. Near the front data is a tent used by the men who are having brick and which is familiarly
known as Camp 10.
     The 720 feet of six-inch sawer, which runs from the house to the creek is practically all laid and ready for connection.
     A hoisting engine has just been purchased by the contractors through Hubbell & Son at a cost of $250. This will be run by a gasoline engine, which also runs the cement mixer. The hoist arrived and was delivered this morning.
     Everything is progressing smoothly and while the work will be carried on during the cold months, the progress is well described in the words of one of the men. "We'll be all heated up and ready to cook before the roof is on", he said.
 

From THE IONIA SENTINEL November 21, 1907 by permission

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Last update June 28, 2012