Shirley township, Shirleysburg borough

The county poor house on the Leas farm

An act of 6 May 1850 provided for a county house for the employment and support of the poor. It named eleven commissioners to choose and buy a site if the voters agreed, and at the next annual election the voters approved, 1,299 to 952. In November 1850 the commissioners asked for offers on a farm of 100 to 300 acres.

By January 1851 they had bought the farm of W. B. Leas in Shirley Township, 200 acres with good improvements and the crop in the ground. In February 1851 a Huntingdon paper called it the Poor House Farm, adjoining the town of Shirleysburg.

In January 1853 the directors of the poor asked for sealed proposals to make 200,000 bricks and to build a poor house on the farm near Shirleysburg. Dr. J. G. Lightner won the contract, and when the house was ready he was chosen as its doctor. The accounts show $700 paid to him on the contract in the report published in early 1854, and $906.94 paid "in full for the erection of the poor house" during 1855. The grand jury of January 1855 found the paupers well cared for but disapproved of the plan, calling the dining room and kitchen too small. On 1 January 1856 the house held 27 men, 24 women and 6 children.

In early 1858 the Huntingdon Journal and the Shirleysburg Herald printed charges against the directors. On the directors' own petition the court named a board of visitors, who met at Shirleysburg on 21 June 1858. They counted 71 inmates at the start of that year. They found the accounts badly kept and some violations of the letter of the law, but said no intentional wrong had been committed. Asked whether improper conduct had secured an unsuitable farm at an extravagant price, they answered, "Nothing was shown from which any improper conduct could be suspected." A later act let the voters decide whether to sell the property, and they refused, 2,802 to 892.

On the forenoon of Saturday, 3 May 1879, the house burned. The Huntingdon Journal said the fire began in a small frame building at the south end, that the inmates were all brought out with one man badly burned about the face and neck, and that men on the roofs saved the barn and outbuildings. A week later the paper said there was "great unanimity of opinion as to the impropriety of rebuilding the poor house at Shirleysburg, or at any other point," and that nine-tenths of those it had heard from favored selling the farm. The house was rebuilt anyway. In June 1879 Henry Snare of Huntingdon won the contract at $4,125. The Journal noted that the foundation and walls were not much damaged. The county's accounts put rebuilding, furnishing and a hospital building at $5,669.51 for 1879. Welch's 1909 history names Shirleysburg as the seat of the County Home.

Checked against the record. We read the directors' printed accounts, the public notices, the 1858 visitors' report and the newspaper reports of the 1879 fire, along with the county histories of 1876, 1883 and 1909. A January 1851 paper gives the price of the farm, but a digit is blurred on the page we read, so the story leaves the price out. Still open: we did not see the commissioners' minutes or the deed. We did not find the day the building was finished or the day residents moved in, though the accounts for 1854 already list money for bringing in paupers. The date of the vote on selling is also open, since the 1876 history already reports the result. The papers place the farm beside the town and give no compass direction, so the story gives none.

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