This Day in Henrico History: October 22 – Henrico officials discuss selling the county poor farm
On October 22, 1869, Henrico County officials discussed selling the county’s Poor House and Poor Farm, according to a surviving volume of the Minutes of the Overseers of the Poor. The record offers a window into how local government responded to poverty in the years immediately after the Civil War.
The overseers were responsible for assistance that could include food, clothing and burial expenses. The archival description of their minute book explains that early entries named recipients and discussed support arrangements, while later records increasingly emphasized expenditures. The October 22 discussion concerned transferring the county’s poor-relief arrangements to Richmond.
The overseers planned to contact the Richmond City Council about having people housed at the county facility maintained in the city almshouse. The arrangement was subsequently made and residents were moved. The archive also describes a February 1870 minute entry reporting that the transferred residents encountered dirty rooms and poorly clothed occupants at the city institution.
The episode illustrates the limited and often harsh public assistance available in nineteenth-century Virginia. It also shows how decisions about county facilities could directly affect vulnerable residents whose own voices are largely absent from official administrative records.
