Sun 8/17/03 4:33 PM

I am currently working on transcribing the Coryell County, Texas, Poor Farm records. 
I am going through the County Commissioners Minutes page by page and retrieving all references to the poor farm, and also all references to inquests, lunatics, tickets bought to another state for indigents, and any other reference I think might be of interest to people looking for their families. 

This will take a while longer, as I have only finished Books E, F, G, H. and I.  [Each book has about 650 pages). Book A was published by a genealogical society in New Mexico at the instigation of a Coryell County native who now resides there, but it is probably not indexed for my needs, so I will need to go through it page by page also. 

Book B is missing and may be in the courthouse somewhere,  and I will eventually get around to looking for it.  Books C and D are going to take a long time to copy;  I am probably half through with each of them. Then I will have to get it all typed up and organized.  So it will be a while before the work is complete.  However,  you are welcome to publish the results when I get them in order. 

I should only have to do a few pages of Book J, as the poor farm land was sold in 1956. I have the deeds, and am presently getting the 80 acres plotted on the Coryell County map. One entry shows a surveyor was paid to plot the number of acres under cultivation on the poor farm (over 47). 

The man who now owns the land thinks he knows where the graves are, so when it gets cooler, I plan to go out and witch for the graves. Wish I could find the 1913 fee ledger. The Commissioners Minutes entry only says that Henry Johnson was paid ten dollars per body to move the bodies from the old poor farm to the new poor farm. It doesn't give the total amount he was paid or how many bodies he was paid to move. The minutes do give the names of quite a few who died on the poor farm.

Bobbie F. Thornton     ladytex@htcomp.net