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In 1834, residents of Hancock purchased a run-down
farm in the north part of town as a "…house
of correction for the keeping, correcting and
setting to work of rogues, vagabonds, common
beggars, lewd, idle and disorderly persons…"
In other words, to house the town poor. There
they would be cared for in a way that "…would
be calculated to discourage indolence and intemperance,
- two fruitful sources of pauperism." The purchase
of a town pauper farm was in keeping with the
social reform movement then sweeping the nation,
which blamed the poor for their own troubles
and sought to "reform" them so that they might
once again become productive citizens.
Prior to purchasing a town pauper farm, Hancock
had relied on a patchwork system of "outdoor
relief" for its poor, providing the use of a
cow, fuel or foodstuffs for families in need,
or auctioning off the annual support of paupers
at Town Meeting. The lowest bidder promised
to shelter, clothe and feed the individuals
at the least expense to the town.
The Hancock Town Farm continued to operate as
a working farm and poorhouse for almost twenty
years before it was sold in the 1850s. All Hancock
paupers were subsequently sent to the County
Poorhouse in Hillsborough. The only extant record
of the Town Farm is a slim, leather-bound account
book that combines everyday farm accounts with
brief and poignant references to Hancock's poor.
A page recording the delivery of cattle to pasture
in 1845, for example, also notes that the "Kyes
family came to Pauper Farm Sept. 18, 1851, seven
in number." A child of this family subsequently
died; the account book records the visit of
the local doctor and the purchase of his coffin.
Another page records the 20 days neighbor Elbridge
Burtt spent haying on the farm as well as the
arrival of a new resident. "Mrs. Abigail Allen
came to Pauper Farm Oct. 14 1849 with nothing
except her wearing apparel." Lorena Hills, on
the other hand, is recorded as having brought
with her in 1844 a chest of drawers, a bedstead,
an array of bed linens, a feather bed and a
straw tick. Near this careful inventory of personal
belongings is the undated note, "sow pigd."
The stories of Hancock's paupers and their experiences
on the Town Farm are difficult to extricate
from the written historical record. The very
fact of their poverty renders them invisible
as they seldom owned property or paid taxes
and tend to lie in unmarked graves. The Town
Pauper Farm is also long gone, as is the small
neighborhood of farms that surrounded it on
Nahor Hill. It is a pleasant walk up to the
site of the farm, however, obscured as it is
by years of logging and forest regeneration.
Take the steep old road that rises on the right
at the end of Antrim Road, just where it turns
to dirt (appears as a dotted line on the old
map of Hancock), and you'll find an interesting
network of old roads and cellar-holes to explore.
Copies of the old nineteenth-century map of
Hancock are available inexpensively at the Town
Office or at the Hancock Historical Society;
the Pauper Farm was located at #77.
Cindy Amidon, Hancock
Happenings, Volume 3, March
2000
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