Memorial Stone at County Cemetery
The site was located about
two miles southeast of town. We drove across Black Creek and parked in a narrow
drive next to the small fenced area. It had been newly mown, weeded and
well cared for. There were only two grave stones visible on the small
plot of ground. Across the road was a wheat field with limestone pillars
that once marked a fence around the County Poor Farm.
The marker at
the south end was surrounded by Prairie Primrose and one plastic flower.
The recently laid stone to the north was shaded by the largest pecan tree I had
ever seen. Sure enough, the north stone marker was the grave of my Great
Uncle Berry, Grandmother’s Brother.
Their mother
had died when they were children and the father remarried his house keeper.
This enraged Uncle Berry’s grandfather who disowned the family. Uncle
Berry’s father then moved to Kansas and took a homestead in Cowley
County. Unfortunately, he died within a short time after his
arrival. This left Great Uncle Berry to make a go of the farm at the
tender age of sixteen.
Tragedy struck
again. It was believed that Great Uncle Berry went “coon dog
hunting” one dark night and fell into the river. Unfortunately, he
swallowed a deal of water and contacted Cholera which proved to be fatal.
This left his sister and stepmother alone and faced with the upkeep of the
homestead. The Stepmother found this situation impossible, so she placed
our Grandmother Emma in an orphanage and returned to her family back east.
At that time
people were required to go to the Poorhouse if they were ill and unable to
support themselves. I think we call such taxpayer support “Welfare” in
today’s society. Sometimes I heard the term “outdoor Relief” when
describing benefits. The basic idea was that the poor would labor to
off-set the expense of their keep.
An overwhelming
sadness came to me as we stood in front of the stone and read the plain, short
inscription. So many forgotten souls lay in that small fenced area.
I was deeply moved as I listened to the wind move through the grass and trees
that bordered the plot. A dog barked in the distance as if to warn us
that he had an eye out for intruders. I like to think we all had a silent
conversation with Great Uncle Berry and those who slept here.
Ted Kooser’s poem
“Site” captured much of the scene and feelings that we had that day. I
send it on with the hope that we shall remember those who helped lay our
present families’ path. They are certainly part of the foundations upon which
we stand as well as for those who follow us.
-- Elder Aldwyn
Site
by Ted Kooser
A fenced-in square of sand and yellow grass,
five miles or more from the nearest town
is the site where the County Poor Farm stood
for seventy years, and here the County
permitted the poor to garden, permitted them
use of the County water from a hand-pump,
lent them buckets to carry it spilling
over the grass to the sandy, burning furrows
that drank it away—a kind of Workfare
from 1900. At night, each family slept
on the floor of one room in a boxy house
that the County put up and permitted them
use of. It stood here somewhere, door
facing the road. And somewhere under this grass
lie the dead in the County's unmarked graves,
each body buried with a mason jar in which
each person's name is written on a paper.
The County provided the paper and the jars.
Ted Kooser is a
poet and essayist, a Presidential Professor of English at The University of
Nebraska-Lincoln. He served as the U. S. Poet Laureate from 2004-2006, and his
book Delights & Shadows won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
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