Public assistance in Beltrami County, Minnesota: Now and Then

CATHY WURZER: 47 people in Bemidji are still out of their homes after the city evacuated an apartment building last week. The city said the Red Pine Estates, a subsidized housing facility, was structurally unsound. Now this is the fourth subsidized housing to close in Bemidji in the last nine months. Around 100 families have lost their homes. Most residents of the Red Pine Estates were older or disabled adults.

Now public assistance used to look different in Bemidji, and for that matter, across Minnesota. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were more than 60 Minnesota counties with Poor Farms, places where people in need of food and shelter could stay and work on the farm. Beltrami County had such a place. We're going to take a look back into that time period for our regular segment Minnesota Now and Then.

Joining us right now is Cecelia McKeig. She is a Regional Historian and Lecturer with the Beltrami County Historical Society and the Cass County Historical Society. Cecelia, welcome.

CECELIA MCKEIG: Hello. Good morning. Good afternoon.

CATHY WURZER: Good afternoon, you're right. So as I mentioned, Poor Farms-- well, they're forgotten places, but they were all across the state. Tell us about the Beltrami County Poor Farm

CECELIA MCKEIG: The Poor Farm was intended to be self-sustaining. Of course, that didn't happen. But the idea was that if they had a farm, and in these rural areas, they could always use labor, that these people could help run the farm. And, therefore, it wouldn't cost the city or the county so much.

Here in Beltrami County, they switched back and forth a couple of times. The county had it. Then the city had it. Then they decided it would go to a township.

Well, that didn't work out too well. So they switched back and went to county. But the idea that these people could actually help pay the costs of the farm didn't work out very well. [LAUGHS]

CATHY WURZER: Are the buildings still standing?

CECELIA MCKEIG: There was an original building built in 1901. That burned. And for a time, they had to put people up in private homes here in McGee. And then they rebuilt and put up a building in 1918. That still stands.

CATHY WURZER: Wow. I know there are other buildings across Minnesota--

CECELIA MCKEIG: It's being used--

CATHY WURZER: Go ahead.

CECELIA MCKEIG: It's being used as an apartment building. So it was built well. I mean, it wasn't built cheaply.

CATHY WURZER: Could you tell me who were the folks that lived at the Poor Farm? Do we know much about them?

CECELIA MCKEIG: Well, I've done some research on those people and I also tried to read up on the people around the Poor Farm. We tend to think of it as just an old place that-- four old men and women sat on the porch and passed out the remaining days of their lives. But that wasn't really the case here. We did have the old lumberjacks who had no place else to go and weren't sick enough to be in a hospital. The County Commissioner, or the doctor, could send them to the Poor Farm.

But we also had people there temporarily. I don't think people realize that the Poor Farm often just housed, say a young lumberjack, that was seriously hurt and needed to mend and he needed time before he could go back to work in the woods. The County Doctor might say, the Poor Farm is better for him. That was cheaper for the county than to have him be here in the hospital.

CATHY WURZER: I'm most familiar with the Wabasha County Poor Farm. There's an original building that's still off the original Highway 61, as a matter of fact, and that seemed to be, not a bad place, but not a great place, right? So was the Beltrami County Poor Farm-- how would you describe it? Was it relatively comfortable or not?

CECELIA MCKEIG: Well, for the times, I think it was fairly comfortable. It was a nice, new building. They seemed to have caretaker couple that did a good job. They had, perhaps, better food than they would have had if they had tried to survive on their own. They had fresh produce.

They had cattle and they butchered. So I don't think it was too bad of a place. The men didn't have much privacy. They lived upstairs in a sort of dorm-like situation. If a woman was there, which was more rare, they would try to find a small room for her or, at least, curtain off her area with a blanket.

There were fewer women, of course, than men. But you didn't know what situation might prompt that. In one case, they took in a whole young family. The father had been killed in a sawmill accident. So they took the mother in with her very young children.

And what ultimately happened was when they evaluated the situation and the county took away the children and sent them to an orphanage because they couldn't see how she could ever support them. They released her, and I don't know if she went to work as a waitress or what. But the children wound up in the orphanage. But, occasionally, they had situations like that, too.

CATHY WURZER: But, by and large, folks at the Poor Farm didn't stay there permanently.

CECELIA MCKEIG: Most of them did not. If they were at all able to make it outside of the Poor Farm, then, of course, the county wanted them out. And there weren't very many people there. I don't know about the Poor Farm that you're familiar with or other Poor Farms, but this one usually only had a population of 9 or 10 people, maximum 30, maximum, and that would be really rare.

CATHY WURZER: I know some of the Poor Farms had folks who were there died there at the Poor Farm and there were cemeteries. They were buried on the property. Does the Beltrami County Poor Farm have its own cemetery, too?

CECELIA MCKEIG: Yes, they did have their own cemetery. It's a little difficult to research because the records are skimpy and it was also where they buried someone who was in town briefly. Say there's a fellow who came from Blackduck down to Bemidji, and he had a heart attack and died on the sidewalk. Well, they didn't know what to do with him. If he didn't have family they could contact or someone to pay for the burial, he wound up in the Poor Farm Cemetery.

CATHY WURZER: Oh.

CECELIA MCKEIG: So there's a mix of people who are buried there. If a person who was at the Poor Farm had a family somewhere who was willing to take responsibility for paying for a funeral and a burial, or even just a burial, then that person went to the town cemetery, or a neighboring cemetery, called Calvary Lutheran. So it's inconsistent.

You have residents who were buried elsewhere. Sometimes the body was shipped somewhere. But the cemetery was there for poor people that the county didn't know what else to do with.

CATHY WURZER: So, Cecelia, final question here for you. Of course, listeners probably want to know what the heck happened to all the County Poor Farms? When did they start to disappear and why? Do you know?

CECELIA MCKEIG: Yes. They disappeared because Social Security came in. They couldn't-- [LAUGHS NERVOUSLY] a person could not collect Social Security and pay it.

CATHY WURZER: OK. It sounds as--

CECELIA MCKEIG: So consequently--

CATHY WURZER: Go ahead.

CECELIA MCKEIG: --it went to private ownership.

CATHY WURZER: Ah. OK. And then mostly disappeared--

CECELIA MCKEIG: So what they did is they sold the Poor Farm to a couple familiar with running it and Social Security checks went directly to that couple and the County got out of the business.

CATHY WURZER: Got it. You did a lot of work on this, Cecelia--

CECELIA MCKEIG: So the Poor Farm-- the farm existed, but it was under totally different arrangement.

CATHY WURZER: OK. Well, thank you for the updates, and the history is really interesting. Thank you so much, Cecelia.

CECELIA MCKEIG: It was a pleasure. Thanks for asking.

CATHY WURZER: Cecelia McKeig has been with us. She's a Regional Historian and a lecturer with the Beltrami County and Cass County Historical Societies. And by the way, we're going to keep following the story of the Red Pine Estates in Bemidji. There's more about that at mprnews.org.