Wayland A to Z:  A is for Almshouse/Poor farm

In the seventeenth century, everyone in a small town knew everyone else’s business and no one went without a place to sleep, food to eat, or warm clothing.  The word spread quickly when a family was in need and town leaders reacted just as quickly to provide assistance on a case-by-case basis.  For example, in 1649 the town voted to assist a local widow in need of financial help.  Over the next twenty years, the town continued to provide periodic support for her, including visitation of a Dedham physician.  In 1663, Thomas Rice took an indigent man into his home and the town paid for the man’s keep.  The following year, the town relieved another impoverished resident of his tax burden. 

While the town readily supported needy residents, it discouraged transients or homeless people who wandered from town to town.  Wanderers were never refused a meal or a night’s lodging, but they were quickly “warned out” of town the next day.  In fact, the colony enacted a law in 1692-93 that allowed towns to warn away strangers within fourteen days so that the town would not have to assume economic responsibility for them.  If the town allowed three months to go by without issuing a warning, the parties then became residents entitled to town assistance. 

For a number of years, needy cases were presented at town meeting and residents bid for their care.  Costs increased, however, and selectmen sought a new solution.  In 1831, following the example of other towns, the selectmen purchased the farmhouse of Eli Sherman at 206 Oxbow Road to house the poor.  The house had been built by Ephraim Sherman in 1780 and owned by two generations of the Sherman family.  Selectmen sold the house in 1845 and some time later purchased the Otis Loker farm (Cutting) on Rice Road for $3,130.  The house was located on the east side of the road just north of the sharp curve in the road. (Now the entrance to a private home) 

The overseers of the poor–John C. Butterfield and Charles Fairbanks of Cochituate and Luther H. Sherman of North Wayland–had the house repaired and a small farm established that would be worked by residents in exchange for room and board.  A warden and his wife were hired to run the farm and household.  Such farms provided a family-style environment for residents but some towns established strict rules of behavior and discipline for residents.  Bad conduct, which included the use of profanity, could be punishable by solitary confinement with only bread and water, forced labor, permission required to come and go, and to accept visitors.

In addition to providing for local residents at the poor farm, the town had been feeding and providing overnight accommodations for hundreds of transient men.  Some were cared for at the poor farm but others were housed at the lockup, built in 1875 to house drunks, in Cochituate.  The lockup was a brick building located on the south side of Harrison Street in Cochituate.  One generous overseer of the poor,  John Calvin Butterfield, who lived in Cochituate, made sure that every man held in the lockup was fed.  Butterfield, who lived on Pemberton Road, also served as superintendent of the Lakeview Cemetery and as local undertaker.  He was a shoemaker by trade and fought in the Civil War.  When he died in 1909, at the age of ninety-two, the Natick Bulletin called him “the grand old man of Cochituate.”    

Eventually, the town became so overburdened with having to meet the needs of transients–as many as 850 in 1878-79–that selectmen decided to eliminate use of the lockup and offer lodging at the almshouse only.  They stipulated, however, that the overnight accommodation would include only one meal of crackers and water.  Even though many indigents and drunks continued to stop in town, the word must have spread about the paltry meal they’d be given because by 1908 the number of people lodged at the almshouse had dropped to an all-time low of eleven.

The selectman also had to discourage the overseers from offering “partial” or temporary support in the form of money or groceries arguing that it resulted in “loss of self-respect and independence of character.”  Periodically, selectmen appointed committees to look into selling the poor farm or making recommendations about what to do about its run-down condition.  In 1881, the poor farm paid its fuel and food expenses from monies received for the sale of produce raised by its seven indigent guests.  Still, town records show that during 1880-81 various amounts of money were voted to cover expenses for the poor: $100 to house each of two insane and violent inmates at the Worcester Lunatic Hospital; $20 for the burial of an indigent member of the French community in Cochituate; $53 for the services of Dr. Boodey; and $53 to purchase a cow for the farm.

The pathetic condition of the farm’s barn and house caused much debate at town meeting. Members could not agree whether to move the whole operation from its remote location (Rice Road was remote at the time) and rebuild in Cochituate, or make repairs at the Rice Road site.  No decision had been made before state authorities came to inspect the almshouse in 1886 and declared it to be one of the worst establishments in the state.  Selectmen must have been embarrassed because records reveal they excused themselves by saying monies for the poor farm had been diverted to repair the Pelham Island bridge that had been destroyed by the winter flood of 1885.

Four years later, however, the town had built a new poor house on Rice Road which stayed in operation for the next twenty years.  As the number of residents dwindled over the years, it became uneconomical to support them and in 1908 the town transferred residents to an institution in Worcester.  Eventually the property was purchased by the owners of Mainstone Farm.

State and federal agencies slowly assumed responsibility for housing and unemployment after World War II.  Many poor farm facilities became health facilities for the sick and elderly.

Recently, federal and state cutbacks have altered or eliminated vital programs and institutions, the most serious being state mental health facilities, and towns are once again grappling with these same problems.