We would like to invite you to visit our website, The POORHOUSE STORY (a clearinghouse for information about 19th century American poorhouses) at http://www.poorhousestory.com We have just published a link to the list of residents of the DALLAS County Poor Farm From the 1930 Federal Census. DIRECTIONS: At the homepage (link above) click on POORHOUSES BY STATE, then on TEXAS on the table of states. If you have been to the website recently you may have to click REFRESH or RELOAD on the browser to see the new information. Then scroll down to the section titled RECORDS. There are other pages on the site which may give you some interesting perspective on poorhouses. They are off the homepage and include: the HISTORY page and the LETTER TO GENEALOGISTS as well as FEATURED ARTICLES. There are great tips for researching poorhouse records for yourself on the RECORDS page; and you might want to subscribe to our (almost) monthly newletter (which you can do in the lower right corner of the homepage). The information on our site will only grow through the submissions of generous readers. If you would like to e-mail me ... please do so off-list because I cannot maintain subscriptions to as many lists as we post messages on. (You can use an e-mail link off one of our web pages.) We hope you enjoy the site! Thanks, Linda Crannell (aka=The Poorhouse Lady)

Were there any poor houses in Dallas County in the 1870's? Did orphans wind up there ever back then? My great grandmother and her brother were abandoned by their parents down by the Trinity River bottoms between Wilmer and Ferris in Ellis county. Wilmer being in Dallas County. My great grandmother was born in 1872 in Sweden according to our family information and her brother, Mac Anderson was born in 1870 in Sweden. My great grandmother was Ella Anderson. The boy, Mac, was takin in by the Weatherford family who lived in Dallas county at the time but they did not want Ella, a girl. At some point she was taken in by a relative of the Weatherfords, the Neely family but my grandmother told me that she thought that Ella had lived somewhere else for a while before the Neely's took her in. I could not find her in 1880 with the Neely family. I don't know where she could have been but Mac was living with the Weatherfords under the name, Mac Anderson, adopted son. He later took on the Weatherford name, but Ella was never adopted and was always Ella Anderson until she married my great grandfather, Judge Carson Little from Wilmer. I was just wondering if maybe she could have been in one of these poor farms for a little while or an orphan train or something like that or maybe an orphans home. I don't know exactly when all of this happened to the children but am thinking that it was probably sometime in the middle to late 1870's. I cannot find them or rather, Mac, in the 1870 census and of course, have no idea what their real parents names were. The story goes according to my family as Mac remembers it that the real father was a drinker and would go out for days getting drunk and then come home and get mean and beat up on his wife and she would hide the children from him. They were usually under the big bed looking out from under it. The last time, Mac saw them was on one of those days or nights when his father came home drunk and began beating his mother with a big pillow sham that was on their bed. She ran out and he ran after her with the pillow. No one ever saw either one of them again. The children were found wondering around down by the Trinity river starving and scared and people went back to Ferris and told the Weatherfords about seeing these children down there and that they needed help. I don't know if Mac somehow knew the names of him and his sister and their birthdays or how this information came to be. You'd think he would also remember his parents names but if so he never seemed to know it as an adult or it was never told to any of my family because Ella didn't seem to know who they were. She always wondered about it and wanted to know what happened to them and so did Mac but they never did find them. Thanks, Jane Little McEndree [email protected] ----- Original Message ----- From: Poor House Lady <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, January 19, 2003 6:26 AM Subject: [TXDALLAS] POORHOUSE Information > > We would like to invite you to visit our website, The POORHOUSE STORY (a > clearinghouse for information about 19th century American poorhouses) at > http://www.poorhousestory.com > > We have just published a link to the list of residents of the DALLAS County > Poor Farm From the 1930 Federal Census. > > DIRECTIONS: > > At the homepage (link above) click on POORHOUSES BY STATE, then on TEXAS on > the table of states. If you have been to the website recently you may have > to click REFRESH or RELOAD on the browser to see the new information. Then > scroll down to the section titled RECORDS. > > There are other pages on the site which may give you some interesting > perspective on poorhouses. They are off the homepage and include: the > HISTORY page and the LETTER TO GENEALOGISTS as well as FEATURED ARTICLES. > There are great tips for researching poorhouse records for yourself on the > RECORDS page; and you might want to subscribe to our (almost) monthly > newletter (which you can do in the lower right corner of the homepage). > > The information on our site will only grow through the submissions of > generous readers. If you would like to e-mail me ... please do so off-list > because I cannot maintain subscriptions to as many lists as we post messages > on. (You can use an e-mail link off one of our web pages.) > > We hope you enjoy the site! > > Thanks, > Linda Crannell > (aka=The Poorhouse Lady) > > > > ============================== > To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to: > http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237 >