The establishment of the Lancaster County poorhouse also referred to as an almshouse, followed 3 years of planning initiated by “an act to provide for the erection of the houses for the employment and support of the poor in the counties of Chester and Lancaster” (passes February 27, 1797) and the establishment of the office of the Directors of the Poor. A tract of land was purchased from Matthias Slough in 1799. In reading over the Minutes of Directors of the Poor and the House of Employment Dec. 18, 1799 it reads as follows: The board met desires to know how much money will be required for the purpose of completing the House of Employment Total- $6424.76. The Rules that they put into place for anyone being admitted to the House were …show more content…
At a suitable age they shall be taught to read at such hours as shall be appointed by the director; and the rest of their time shall be employed in such work as shall be assigned them. Lancaster County in the fall of 1800 opened “Poor and House of Employment” for the indigent citizens of the county. By November they had a total of 70 people “maintained in the House of Employment.” Originally the Lancaster County Almshouse housed the chronically unemployed and often unemployable older men and women, the sick, the delinquent, the minor dependent, the crippled and blind and the mentally incompetent. As the local poor population grew, separate buildings were constructed to house and meet the varied needs of these citizens. The poor and the infirmed lived on the two main floors, with cells for the insane in the basement. In Lancaster, as in most major east coast cities, the almshouse initially housed both invalids and those capable of productive labor, in the same building. Talbott, P. Ph. D. The Two Hundred Year History of the Lancaster County Almshouse and Hospital, vol. 102 number 2/3, Summer/Fall 2000. Bourque, M. Ph.D. The Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society, …show more content…
An 1862 resolution determined that “all convalescent collered men, women and children” formerly kept in the hospital and ”all hereafter admitted as paupers” would subsequently be “transferred to the Basement of the almshouse.” The African American experience was even more unpleasant than that of their fellow white inmates. Many of the African Americans who came to Lancaster County were running from slavery and indentured servitude. Later in the 19th century formerly enslaved unskilled African Americans with nowhere else to go and no steady employment became almshouse residents. The basement was assigned in 1937 to be converted to a work shop for the mental