The following was sent to PHL in an e-mail  from Gerald Gieger   giegerg@hotmail.com   on 4/18/00

"Tarrant County, TX (Ft. Worth is the County Seat) had a Poor Farm north and East of the City and Courthouse (the one featured on Walker- Texas Ranger) off Kimbo Road... It was a stately old two story building with colonial columns and rooms for both men and women...Next door was the TB sanatorium, Elmwood, which was also operated by the County. Those old people might have been in there because they were considered demented (not Senile, which actually means Old-Aged), but they knew enough to realize that TB was contagious and when one of the patients walked near the dividing line, those old folks would literally run to the opposite side of the yard...This was as late as 1959-60...The County buried them in "Pauper's graves" behind that building and when the County closed the Farm and Sanatorium, they sold the land. About 8 years later, a company laying a pipeline unearthed some graves and there was a big news story about it, because the County had not kept any records of who or where they buried back there...

Adjacent to that burying ground was a Methodist Church Cemetery which had been abandoned, also, going back to the 1850's. The County subsequently had to move all those graves to other cemeteries...at $4000-5000, lot of money for that day, but not even half of what one burial costs today..."

Return to TEXAS       HOME