Franklin County Poor Farm: A Visitor's Perspective

Andre and Nicole Bonnin at the Poor Farm.
Photo by Peter Burns

This guest post was written by Andre Bonnin of Paris, France. Andre and his wife, Nicole, were visiting the Mettenburg family, of Princeton, Kansas, in October 2016 and were invited to join the Rural History Club's field trip to the Franklin County Poor Farm. Andre wrote the article in his native French; Nicole provided the English translation. Andre also took the photos, except for the one at left.

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Archeology, history, social topics: here are three good reasons to meet a club of Kansas citizens, fans of history, in the outbuildings of a Franklin County “Poor Farm” on a sunny morning.

More than one hundred years ago, some kind people of this county worried about precarious conditions of poor farmers. A social and human sensitive issue without solution. Back to their ideals and looking for the Pilgrim Fathers' history, they founded a community gathering together those poor farmers. They built lodging houses and infirmaries providing medical care. Farm working in the fields around and milking cattle fed the farmers. A very innovative social adventure began.

Later on came problems, too. Epidemics have succeeded diseases. The people around were not all favorable to this strange farm. And still less when the poor were easily identified as the cause of the epidemics. The establishments were closed and the buildings abandoned; we were visiting the ruins.

I am telling that story and what I understood of the explanations (given in English, that unfortunately I don’t speak, by people quite skilled) because it moves me very much. Most of history books, in any country, write about The History, major events, army victories and defeats, the great names of history. Simple guys are never mentioned, especially poor people. In romantic novels, yes; in surveys, seldom. There, we were right in the center of social local history research.

In Paris, I am one of the people involved in that kind of social local history and I have a passion for this experience: looking for and sometimes finding answers to troubles overwhelming underprivileged social classes. Even solutions not working quite right are part of the adventure.

Our feet on the very same soil they trod on and amidst more visible traces of buildings they built, we were there with them thinking of what our histories had in common: our desires, our utopian ideals, our achievements and also our failures, being straightforward and open-eyed.

A very visible structure, made of white stone, attracted all of us. One after the other, we all went round, looking inside through the remains of doors or windows; listening to the explanations on its functioning and its ingenious equipment.

I must say that it looked proud and beautiful in the soft light of this end of October. The stonework was of white limestone, slightly ocher, with four corners, frames, lintels, sills, in carved stones. The quality of the materials used, whether the stones, the mortar, or the wood of the door frames and the enthusiastic care that the constructors of the project had put in them, still jumped at the sight and spoke of obviousness. Human attention to one another was still written, there, clearly legible.

The visit was not over because there were remains of other buildings left on the ground and so it was possible to understand the whole organization: here water tanks, there sandstone pipes, low walls, fences, buildings. Approaching the small river, it was possible to see a stone platform and other facilities.

But to understand I needed the patient, attentive, documented work of the archaeologist researcher: such as a "native," he got the tracks to talk. He showed a balanced mix of passion for the subject, intelligence, knowledge, and imagination. Despite my lack of understanding his language, I could feel that and also saw it in the way he had to flip through his notebook when he explained. Everything to federate an awakening group.

Bob Marsh, president of the club.

I imagined the other wooden buildings, all around, of which nothing remained, with men, women, children, animals, posts, barbed wires. Everybody there was briskly bustling around; history got shapes and faces. But it also had its briefness. Errors, illnesses, death ended it earlier than expected, as a fleeting dream that we must take over on our own account, constantly. It was (and still is) so rare to seek to provide a living, in a sustainable way, locally, to poor farmers through their work and their skills. For it is so simple to let happen the even more unhappy migration of the country people to the cities which have prepared nothing to welcome them, or so little.

Here and there, the battles to be carried out are the same, in a certain way. Let us try to win some in these gentle prairies of tall, blue grass under the wide sky of Kansas.

History can help. Tenaciousness and height of views are the components that some friends I know over there have brought into play for a while and still now; and not only in the romance of a western sunrise.