A six-year mission to locate the Independence County Poor Farm and Burial Ground has met success, and a historical marker from the Department of Arkansas Heritage has been placed to memorialize the location.
According to Independence County Judge Kevin Jeffery (pictured above at the marker), Linda Hidy, of Batesville, and her daughter, Jennifer Hidy-Pitts, also of Batesville, began a search in 2017 for the county’s poor farm and cemetery.
On Thursday, the results of their search efforts were memorialized with the historical marker at 320 Mack Street (the “Moorfield cutoff”) in Batesville — the site of the Independence County Poor Farm and Burial Ground.
The two researchers found that the Poor Farm was established in 1855 by the Independence County Quorum Court.
Linda Hidy researching the poor farm location in 2019
It was one of many poor farms or houses created in the mid-1800s. A similar English model during the Industrial Revolution inspired poor farms. Shelter and food were provided for those community members who could not support themselves with the expectation that they would provide labor for the farm work.
(Click here to read more about poorhouses in Arkansas from the Central Arkansas Library System’s Encyclopedia of Arkansas.)
In a 2020 article from the Batesville Daily Guard, Linda and Jennifer said they had documentation of a poor farm cemetery in Moorefield, but the exact location could not be found. They had a mission to locate the cemetery site: To memorialize the burial of Linda’s grandfather and uncle.
Linda said in the 1920s and 30s, life was hard. At her grandmother’s death, Hidy’s mother, along with her three siblings and father, were taken to the county’s poor farm. She said three children found new homes while the father and oldest siblings stayed at the poor farm.
Read the inscription from the marker below:
Established in 1855, the Independence County poor farm provided those in need with a place to live, medical care, and the opportunity to grow their own food in the garden patch. These houses were the community’s way of providing care to the poor before the creation of welfare programs. After operating for over one hundred years, the farm was closed and sold in 1957, except for a 0.81-acre plot of land that contains the poor farm’s unmarked cemetery. This marker has been placed to memorialize the estimated 200 residents who died and were buried in the farm’s cemetery.
Gary Bridgman, White River Now
Images provided by Independence County Judge Kevin Jeffery
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