An ancestor of mine died at the Alms House in Claremont in 1864. On the 1860 census it was Dwelling 452 Family 128. Last winter I was in the Claremont area trying to find records about it. The Claremont Alms House no longer exists as such. Someone said that it is probably the old "Fletcher Farm". For my purposes, no records existed. Town alms houses were apparently a thing that were contracted out. However What I did find out is that in the 1870s (I believe) town poor farms went out of existence and were replaced by the county farm which later became the county home which now is the county nursing center and is now trying very hard to change its image. I dunno if it is the same set of buildings or not. I might suggest a check of the 1920 census and the Sullivan County probate and the director of the county nursing home. You might also want to check out vital records out of Concord to see if there was any death certificate filed and what that certificate said. By then there there was a law that deaths were to be reported to Concord. That may or may not mean anything to those who were supposed to do the reporting, but its worth a try. It would also be nice if someone from the historical society or maybe the director of the Nursing Home could write up a short history of the alms houses and alms farms and their evolution into what they are today. They were most everywhere in the world. In England they were debtors prisons. For those of you who might have had an ancestor in one of them, there were a host of reasons for a person to end up in one of these institutions. In general, they were warehouses for people that society did not know what to do with. Insanity was one reason, poverty was another. Insanity could mean anything from Alzheimers to senility to the effects of some kind of occupational situation. You have heard of the Mad Hatter. That was an occupational hazard. It is said that Christopher Columbus ended up in a debtors prison because of some diseases he contracted while in America and those diseases affected his mind. My ancestor candidate was the subject of a petition by the Claremont Board of Selectmen to have him declared a "lunatic and distracted person." (Just what that means I do not know.) This was filed in probate court and he was made a ward of the court in the winter of 1840. His wheelright shop was sold off and nothing else is known except the inventory and such of the shop. I have been trying to establish for sure that this individual is the same John REED that my gggrandfather said was his father. I had hoped to discover some communication to the family but none seem to exist. Ken Nelson kennelson@home.com -----Original Message----- From: Wayne McElreavy <mac@cyberportal.net> >As a USGenWeb volunteer for Claremont, I was contacted several months ago >regarding the Alms House. The requester had reason to believe it was in >Claremont. I had never heard of it nor did the president of the Claremont >Historical Society, who probably knows more about Claremont's history than >anyone.