Poor Farm Geographies of Minnesota
A public research project of Jesse McClelland
Top-left: The Ramsey County Almshouse residence, built in the late 1860s, was inherited by the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in 1885. This became the Administration Building and it was demolished in 1951. Photographer unknown, 1951. Courtesy of the Minnesota State Fair Archives.
Top-right: Fourth location of the Ramsey County Poor Farm in New Canada Township — now the Ramsey County Fairgrounds in Maplewood. From Hopkins’ “Atlas of St. Paul and Its Environs,” 1886.
Bottom-right: Threshing at the Hennepin County Poor Farm. Date and photographer unknown. Courtesy of the Hopkins Historical Society.
Bottom-left: The Hennepin County Poor Farm in the Village of West Minneapolis — now Hopkins. From Westby’s “Atlas of Hennepin County,” 1913.
Updates
March 2025
Great news! I am back at this.
I have never stopped thinking about poor farms since this project began, but I took a hiatus the last couple of years as I moved into job searching, more care-giving, and some teaching at Metropolitan State University here in Saint Paul. This Spring, I began a research collaboration with some of Metro’s students incarcerated at the Faribault prison. Our project is tentatively called A Public Study of the Rice County Poor Farm. From 1868 to mid-1950s, Rice County operated a Poor Farm on near the southwest corner of Faribault. In the 1990s, the prison was built at the southeast corner of Faribault in place of the Minnesota State Hospital.
My hard-working co-researchers there bring a very grounded approach to this place-based work and they are eager to make public contributions to local history. It feels exciting, challenging, and meaningful to be working alongside them. We have no end date for this project in sight, and that open-endedness is perhaps the most intriguing possibility in the work.
This turn began in November 2024, when I applied to facilitate a Research Cluster through Metro State University’s part of the Transformation and Reentry through Education and Community (TREC) network. Like the other six Research Clusters that TREC is supporting, the work is funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.
May 2023
Students Maura Haas, Leah Prinz, and Matthew Trager completed the second offering of my course, Unearthing the Poor Farm: Local geographies of land, labor and livelihood. Their public presentation, Life and Death at the Hennepin County Poor Farm took place at the Hopkins Public Library on May 7, 2023.
You can now find all student videos, bios and photos on this dedicated page. Beautiful Spring weather here in Minneapolis is giving me high hopes for more improvements to this site soon.
With my contract at Macalester College complete, I can now start calling myself an Independent Scholar! Will try this on for size.
April 2023
My course this Spring was profiled by Macalester in a news story called Grounding the Poor Farm. Thank you to the writer Talia Bank and the photographer John Schoolmeesters for making this possible!
I started this website in early 2022, with the primary goals of supporting and archiving student research and giving the public a general introduction to the history of poor farms.
