A topic that long has fascinated local folks is whether the small white crosses along old Highway 169 north of Iola mark graves. They’re on property that once held the Allen County Poor Farm.
The long-held thought of many was residents at the home — a distressing place where what today would be called homeless folks with not too many connections to mainstream realty were warehoused — who died were buried next to the highway. For the most part they ate, slept and waited for whatever end of life had in store.
Walking through the place, particularly toward the end, gave me the creeps, an observation not meant to degrade those who already had more problems heaped on their plates than they could handle, rather in concession to pragmatism.
In the 1970s, Jack Lundy, dean of instruction at Allen Community College, settled on the idea of buying the (poor) farm and making it the centerpiece of agricultural education for two-year programs in southeast Kansas. County commissioners, motivated by avarice when the opportunity arose, sold the property — a couple of hundred acres, as I recall, and run-down buildings — to the college for $96,000. I was a trustee at the time and thought transfer for a token sum would have been more appropriate, with the property remaining in the public realm and dedicated to education.
Last year the farm was deemed superfluous, a decision I trust is educationally correct.
A few days ago Pat Spencer, who spends more time than most doing good things for the community at large, dropped by with information that should put to rest arguments about burials at the poor farm.
Donna Houser, as much a jewel for the community as those she researches, found there is a cemetery at the poor farm, but no one knows precisely where.
Records from Sleeper Funeral Home — years ago on the northwest corner of Iola’s downtown square — show 12 burials occurred in the northwest quadrant of the farm, each on the day after the person died. The first two were in 1923, the last in July 1936.
With Spencer and Houser interested, it’s a pretty good bet the cemetery site will be found. Discovery may not mean much, but it will solve an Allen County mini mystery.
Maybe we should summon a modern-day Howard Carter, who discovered Tutankhamun’s Egyptian tomb in 1922, after searching for 15 years.
