Cooke County Poor Farm

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker records for the Cooke County Poor Farm. Now, most stories about Texas in 1880 are about cattle drives, railroad schemes, or somebody striking it rich. This one's a little different.

This one's about a county looking its struggling citizens in the eye and saying, we're going to do something about this. On April 23, 1880, Cooke County Judge J.P. Hall purchased one hundred acres out of the Adam Dozier survey.

The purpose was straightforward and, for its time, not nothing: establish a farm for the county's indigent citizens. Living quarters went up soon after. And then the work began.

Under overseers contracted by the county, an average of twelve residents kept that land alive. Cotton went in the ground. Consumable crops came up.

Hogs were fed, chickens tended, cattle raised. Twelve people, on average, turning one hundred acres into something that sustained them. Now, here's where the story asks you to slow down and sit with it a moment.

In 1888, necessity dictated the creation of a cemetery. The marker doesn't elaborate, and maybe it doesn't need to. Some of the people who came to that farm never left it.

The poor farm site remained active all the way until 1915, when the operation was relocated to a ten-acre tract on Rice Avenue, near Old Denton Road. Thirty-five years of harvests, of overseers and residents and quiet seasons and hard ones, and somewhere on those original one hundred acres of the Adam Dozier survey, a cemetery that got there by necessity. That's the part that stays with you.

What the marker says

As part of a county effort to improve the lives of its rapidly growing population, on April 23, 1880, Cooke County Judge J.P. Hall purchased 100 acres out of the Adam Dozier survey to establish a farm for the county's indigent citizens. Living quarters were built soon after. Under the direction of overseers contracted by the county, an average of 12 residents managed production of cotton and consumable crops as well as raising livestock including hogs, chickens and cattle. In 1888, necessity dictated the creation of a cemetery. The poor farm site remained active until 1915, when the farm was relocated to a ten-acre tract of land on rice avenue, near Old Denton Road. (2023)