Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 15, 1990 TAG: 9006150573
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: STATE =BY AP. DELFORD
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MAURERTOWN LENGTH: Medium
The farm where Spence came to live in 1931 is an anachronism, a quaint evocation of a more compassionate age. It is perhaps also an unaffordable luxury for a rural county faced with bills for school improvements and other projects, county officials said.
The farm faces extinction because of its dwindling population of mostly elderly residents and mounting costs to the county.
"The county supervisors, they don't give a damn about this place," said the farm's director and caretaker, Delford Keckley, stamping on a sagging board in the kitchen floor. "At one time every county, just about, had an alms house, a place where you could go if you had no other place . . . . Now it's just the state, or Social Security or what have you that looks after people. It's not the same."
The 18th-century farmhouse tucked between folds in the green and purple hills of northwestern Virginia is home to six indigents, several of whom cannot remember living anywhere else.
Before state licensing regulations forbade the practice, the farm's residents lived communally, dividing chores and raising and slaughtering most of their own food, Keckley said.
At times, as many as 40 people lived at the farm, he said.
The 265-acre farm was a gift to the poor of Shenandoah County from Revolutionary War Gen. Peter Muhlenberg in 1783, Keckley said.
It is the only home in Virginia run solely by a county for its poor residents, officials said. In at least one other case, several Virginia counties and towns operate joint homes for the indigent, a state licensing agent said.
County officials and Keckley believe it is also the last of its kind nationally. County Administrator John D. Cutlip said an informal survey several years ago turned up only one other county-run poorhouse, in California, which has since closed.
Entrance requirements at the farm entail little other than proof of indigence and Shenandoah County residency.
The aged building costs the county $91,000 annually, and upgrades to meet proposed fire code requirements could cost between $80,000 and $100,000, Cutlip said.
"You can look at the other 94 counties in Virginia and see that they have done away with their alms houses. Clearly it was something they thought they could not afford," Cutlip said.
The county would pay nothing if the farm was closed and its residents turned over to the state, as officials proposed earlier this year. The move would free money for other projects, including schools, some Board of Supervisors members argued.
by CNB