“So they took it in, and it was Lincoln’s birthday, so they named the infant Lincoln,” said Michelle Henry, the county’s historian.

Records kept at the time provide further insight.

Listed as a foundling — an infant abandoned by its parents and cared for by others — the child was officially named Seward Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln was just over a year into his presidency by late March 1862. Seward almost certainly refers to William H. Seward, who served as governor of New York, a U.S. senator and as the 24th U.S. Secretary of State under Lincoln, and was “hugely popular in New York state,” Henry said. In fact, Seward had ties to Chautauqua County, having lived in Westfield serving as an agent for the Holland Land Co.

Pictured is a rear view of the poor farm in Dewittville.

Unfortunately, the infant died April 28, 1862, at 28 weeks and was buried in a cemetery on the grounds of the poor farm, also known in its lifespan as the poor house, the county farm and the Alms house.

“I think that kind of illustrates the situation,” Henry noted of the infant being left at the property. “It kind of reminds us that people have always found themselves in difficult situations. For whatever reason, somebody felt that this child might have a better chance being left at the poor farm than wherever they had been born.”

Indeed, the county Poor Farm in Dewittville — first established on 90 acres of land purchased for $900 in 1831 — was like many built in that era. It was a place where the poor, elderly and disabled were housed, clothed and fed at the public’s expense.

At least two sets of human remains were found on the once sprawling property late last month. The discovery, not believed to be suspicious and likely part of an unmarked burial site, has helped shed new light on the former poor farm and its place in history.

IDENTIFYING A NEED

In the county’s earliest years, towns handled its own indigent — the poor and needy. Those who could not support themselves were put up for auction, with the indigent going to the lowest bidder who would then provide clothing, shelter and food while receiving labor in return.

The public auction method was a form of indentured servitude and is now largely criticized for being akin to temporary slavery.

There were other issues as well with the practice.

“There was an increasing number of situations where they just felt the poor were not being given the care that they deserved,” Henry, the county historian, said in a recent interview, “so the state determined that it would make more sense to have counties establish poor farms and that way care would be standardized so that anybody who was indigent from any town would be sent to the county’s poor farm. There, they would be put to work — it was a working farm — and then it would be a county operation so we would know they were housed and they were clothed and fed adequately.”

In 1824, New York state passed the County Poorhouse Act requiring counties establish a poor house to better handle the poor, the sick and the elderly.

“By 1830, we knew we needed to find property in Chautauqua County to establish a poor farm,” Henry said. “So, there were members of the county Board of Supervisors who created a committee to find decent land. They went out and looked at a bunch of different farms.”

County officials eventually settled on 90 acres on Meadows Road. “They said it was good farmland,” Henry said.

For the first couple of years, the county leased the land until enough money could be budgeted to build a facility big enough to house 100 paupers.

“For anyone who could not support themselves for whatever reason — a husband injured in an accident, elderly, disabled, mentally disabled,” Henry said, “to provide care for those who couldn’t do it themselves.”

Chautauqua County’s poor farm opened in the early 1830s as a two-story frame building. The superintendent of the facility and his family were required to reside on-site, and everyone was expected to work.

“The wife cooked, the husband oversaw the grounds,” Henry said. “It was fully functioning.”

Being a farm after all, food was produced, some of which went to feed the inmates at the Chautauqua County Jail. The poor farm also had a schoolhouse for children of the poor and its staff.

In need of an upgrade to the original frame building that lasted about 35 years, a large multi-story brick building was erected between 1867-70 and became the centerpiece at the poor farm. It was noted for its center tower.

“At the time that was considered to be the most beautiful building in the county,” Henry said. “I think it kind of shows it was considered an important function of county government, and the county did invest money in making sure that the poor farm was adequate for the people who had to be there.”

ARRIVING BY RAIL

Completion of the New York and Erie Rail Road in 1851 brought new immigrants escaping famine in Europe to Chautauqua County. The line ran from the Hudson River north of New York City to Lake Erie at Dunkirk.

“Somebody in New York City was giving immigrants who were getting off the boat at New York, they were giving them a ticket to the end of the train line,” Henry said, “and so these folks were arriving in Dunkirk three days after getting off the boat with no money, no associates here, and they were told in New York City, ‘Oh, when you get to your final destination you’re going to be taken care of so don’t worry about it.’ ”

Many immigrants arriving in Dunkirk would stay at the poor farm. Doing so, Henry said, placed a “huge financial strain” on the county with no funding mechanism in place.

Attempts to document all the immigrants who came through the poor farm proved both time-consuming and fruitless as the county wasn’t reimbursed its expenses.

However, those documents have provided a “treasure trove of information” on the county’s influx of immigrants and their role in the county’s history.

A CEMETERY IS ESTABLISHED

Henry is quite certain a cemetery was established at the county Poor Farm early on in its existence. In 1833, the first year the facility was in operation, three people died there.

“Not everyone was buried there,” said Henry, noting that family or friends of the indigent “always had a right to come and take remains.”

However, some superintendents were better at keeping records than others and not all deaths at the poor farm were tracked the same way.

“I would guess they knew death was going to be part of that function and they needed to have a place to inter people who passed away there,” Henry said. “So, the cemetery was established, I’m going to say, quite early on.”

The official Poor Farm Cemetery is located south of where the former red brick building sat. A now-fading monument in the middle of the cemetery was dedicated in 1864 to the 600 inmates buried there at the time.

Around the same time, stone markers were first used to note where the graves were located.

It’s not clear today just how many people are buried in the cemetery, though Henry estimates the number could be around 1,500 judging by the 600 noted there by 1864 and because burials stopped around 1928.

The remains found May 24 of this year were deemed “quite old” by the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office. “The history of this property along with some of the items located at the scene seem to indicate that these remains may have been part of an unmarked cemetery,” the Sheriff’s Office said. No further action is expected following their discovery.

DIMINISHING NEED

By the 1870s, New York established facilities across the state to address specific needs for its residents. They included a school for the blind and school for the deaf. Institutions to address mental illness also cropped up.

By 1961, the county moved its operation to a new facility in Dunkirk that became the Chautauqua County Home. The county then sold the poor farm complex and its land to private interests. It changed hands again, and eventually the once-iconic red brick building fell into disrepair.

All the buildings eventually were cleared; a farm now occupies the land.

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