Harris County Poor Farm

The plaque ends at Oates Road, where the poor farm's successor and its dead went. Harris County bought the 100 acres in 1921 with $80,000 recovered in court from corrupt law officers, and about 75 poor farm residents moved into the new Home for the Aged. Black residents lived in a separate frame house until the county built them a stucco building in 1930. When the land was sold, 18 acres of cemetery stayed. More than 1,000 paupers moved from the 1904 ground lie in an unmarked mass grave there; burials ended in August 2014 and moved to Crosby.

What the plaque says

Harris County Poor Farm To provide for indigent citizens, Harris County established a "poor-house, work farm, and hospital" in 1882 on 37.4 acres, two blocks north of Glenwood Cemetery. The site had been a private hospital run by Drs. Stuart, Larendon and Boyles, plus a 33.4-acre farm formerly owned by Dr. Boyles. Needing modern facilities and more space, in 1894 the county built the "Harris County Poor Farm" on 200 acres, four miles southwest of the Houston city limits. Drainage ditches were dug along three sides: near Edloe St. on the east, about 115 feet west of Auden Rd. on the west, and about 400 feet north of Bellaire Blvd. on the south. The fifteen acres north of Richmond Rd. (now Bissonnet) included the superintendent's cottage, segregated housing for the residents, a dairy and barn, and a state-of-the-art water system. Some residents worked on the farm, which was largely self-sustaining. A 1915 report listed chickens, ducks, geese, pigs and cows, and crops of corn, cantaloupe and watermelon. Today, the poor farm ditch near Edloe street is the only visible evidence of this complex. In August 1904, commissioners court selected a ten-acre tract of the poor farm for the county's New Paupers Cemetery. The first person buried in it was Gadson Gamble, a very aged black resident of the poor farm. When nearby residential development made the poor farm's land too valuable to ignore, a new "Harris County Home" and county cemetery were built on 100 acres near Oates Road, opening in March 1922. The old poor farm property was sold late in 1923 and all remains in the Paupers Cemetery were moved to the new cemetery. During the Great Depression, federal aid programs replaced many state and county initiatives, ultimately leading to permanent closure of the county home in 1958. However, the 1922-2014 county cemetery remains at Oates Road. (2022)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

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• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 3.3 mi
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• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 4.1 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

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