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it someone had just had an operation—many of them had before they came to the poor farm—then the county nurse—she was Mrs. Fulton then—would tell us how to care for them,” said Mrs. Woodward.
“We were the undertakers and everything there,” she continued. “When one of the old people died, we laid them out and buried them right on the farm.”
There were two big days at the county poor farm. Christmas when Mrs. Woodward baked an old fashioned dinner of oysters, ham, sweet potatoes, cakes pies and all the trimmings, when each farm resident received a little bag of gifts a pair of gloves, an orange, candy, some raisins. And July 1 when the county supervisors met at the poor farm. “We had to prepare a feast for everyone'who wanted to come, not just the supervisors," Mrs. Woodward recalled We’d butcher a sheep. That’s the only time you’d see that!”
Then the supervisors would tour the farm, check the cabins okav everything and lay down some orders,” Mr. Woodward added. ’
Over and over again, the Woodwards described their charges at the countv poor farm as paupers, the poorest of the poor in times when most were needy “Most of them just didn’t have no people,” the overseer emphasized
The couple remembered two in particular, both ex-slaves.
Ella Hawkins. She came to the poor farm after she was freed. She made the place her home. She helped out with the cooking and the cleaning and the gardening, took her meals in the kitchen rather than carrying her plate back to the cabin. She was an old lady when she died there. No one knew how old she was ” Mrs Woodward related.
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