Over the Hill to the Poor Farm: The Allen County, Indiana Asylum and Its Superintendents

The Allen County, Indiana Poor Farm and Its Superintendents

This is Part 1 in a 4-part series on the Allen County Asylum outside of Fort Wayne, Indiana.

      "We believe there are many counties where the poor are treated with a degree of brutality that is almost indescribable. It would be more humane to make pauperism a capital offense and kill the poor creatures off by the merciful Guillotine, than to subject them to slow torture and long-lingering deaths.” 

     In 1869 the Fort Wayne Daily Gazette printed this opinion piece from the Terre Haute Express. Newspaper editors around the country had a campaign against the state of Delaware's use of whipping posts for criminals, but they should “inquire into the far worse barbarities practiced here in our own state.” In addition to paupers, another example of cruelty was the treatment of the insane. There were about 18,000 hopelessly insane in the state, the newspaper claimed (a very inflated number), “for whose care no provision is made by the State, and many of whom are treated with a degree of cruelty, such as a decent man would weep to see inflicted on a dog.” 

     Poor farms, known under various other names such as the poorhouse, county asylum and later the county infirmary, were places for the desperate, those with no other option. Here, the “feeble-minded,” “decrepit” elderly, the insane, the disabled, and the desperate poor, who found themselves with no family to take them in, could find a home. But there was a steep price to pay. There was enormous stigma attached to ending up there – tremendous shame. Residents also gave up their freedom, with the asylum determining what they wore, ate, did with their time, whether they could leave or not, and so on.

     The 1816 Indiana Constitution mandated asylums for persons who, because of age, infirmity or misfortune “may have a claim on the beneficence of society.” By the 1850s all 92 counties had an asylum. The Constitution of 1851 expanded the state’s care to the insane, blind; and deaf and dumb. The goal of each asylum was to be self-supporting by means of farming. Some even suggested they should be profit-producing institutions. It was a goal unrealized. After all, families often struggled to support eight or ten people on 100 acres. County poor farms often had 60, 80, or more people. 

     Standards of care were slow to develop. Victorians regarded poverty as a moral failing caused by intemperance, laziness, weak character and poor choices on the part of the individual.  Providing anything too nice, it was thought, would make people want to live off the generosity of their fellow citizens, losing the incentive to work, a concern that still is voiced today. Many believed the poor farm should be punitive and as unpleasant as possible to discourage anyone from making use of it. Many believed conditions at a poor farm should at least be no better than what the poor had in their own homes – and that was thought to be very shabby indeed.

     But there were many who believed that human beings, at a minimum, should be kept in an environment that was clean and where they were not abused. This was regularly voiced in Fort Wayne from 1860 on. The superintendent of an asylum should be “kind and humane,” the asylum and residents kept clean, and spoiled food should never be served. It would not be until 1889 that some state control would be exerted through annual inspections by the Indiana State Board of Charities.

   

    he Allen County (Indiana) Asylum was established in 1853. Assistance to the poor was also provided through the township trustees in direct aid, such as a delivery of coal or food, and by individuals housing a pauper. Residents of poorhouses were referred to as inmates, and once they gained permission from the township trustee to enter, they were like inmates. They followed a rigid schedule and strict rules. Men and women were separated. Once at the asylum, one had to have permission from the superintendent to leave. Plus, the superintendent could hire out residents to individual families and there was little the inmate could do about it. In 1869 the Daily Gazette said the average citizen, given a choice between the poorhouse or hell, would choose hell.

     The county commissioners appointed a superintendent of the asylum with contracts ranging from one to four years. It was a patronage position, which in Allen County meant that Democrats held the position.      

     This is a dive into the history of the Allen County asylum and its superintendents in the nineteenth century as reported in Fort Wayne newspapers. More information is found from the 1880s on because newspapers did a better job of covering local news. Information about superintendents and their families was obtained from Ancestry, newspapers, and other sources noted at the end. It is not meant to be an exhaustive history of the asylum, but an introduction.    

George L. Parker (1853-1854) 

     The poor farm was established on 280 acres in a location that John Dawson, owner-editor of Dawsons’ Fort Wayne Daily Times, later described as “sand hills and marsh.” He described it as decidedly unsatisfactory land for a place that was supposed to be self-supporting. It was established at a cost of $6,440.

     “Ever since the purchase of the poor farm by Allen County at three times its value, and the attempt to build a county asylum upon it, it has been an “eye sore” to the people whose money had to be paid for it. We regarded the purchase as a great error on the part of the Commissioners, for the land purchased, if it had not been worn out from constant cultivation for a series of years, was in every other respect unsuitable for the purpose of which it was purchased. The want of timber was a very great objection to it, and the question has been for years how shall it be disposed of to avoid much loss to the county – for no one pretends that it was in the county’s interest to keep it.” 

     Dawson said the county added “shanty after shanty” to accommodate the poor, structures that could be compared to “a hog-sty, a hen coop, a cow stable and a sheep-pen – where animals could only live and fatten by extraordinary means – but where the human frame could only endure life but a little while…” He said sending the worthy poor there – the unfortunate man down on his luck, the widow and child “bereft by death and thus made helpless – has been to outrage humanity, and commit a sin against the undeniable laws of God.”

     On December 9, 1853 George Parker was given a one-year contract beginning December 20 with a salary of $600. He was an Ohio native, born in 1811, with wife Susannah and seven children, Hannibal, Elizabeth, Christian, Jacob, John, Susannah and Beniah. They later moved to Bates County, Missouri, where Parker continued farming. He died in 1891. 

John B. Rennish (1854-1860)  

     A monument of shame. 

     The Black Hole of Calcutta. 

     A Bridge of Sighs. 

     A disgrace to the age in which we live.

     These were some of the ways John Dawson described the poor farm under the supervision of John Rennish. Readers may think the writer exaggerates, he said, “but we assure them that the picture is not drawn with color deep enough to convey to the minds of the Allen County Poor House – a just concept of it.”

      “This Name, County Asylum, …implies a Benevolent institution, but in the county of Allen has heretofore been the management of concern, that it has been more like the “Bridge of Sighs,” than anything else. If anyone were so unfortunate to be sent there as a poor person, he or she, if they had any claim to respectability theretofore, lost it all…

     Dawson added that, “the whole affair is loathsome and the derelict agents who allowed it to go on for years…” deserved an eternal punishment. 

     Rennish was a French immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1837. His original name was Jean Baptiste Reniche. It was also spelled Reiniche. He was married to Marie Francois Victorine, whose name was anglicized to Frances. They had three sons in 1850, Julian, Jacob and John Jr., with three more born later. On the 1850 census he was farming in Jefferson Township in Allen County. On the 1860 census they lived with eighteen inmates at the asylum. 

      Dawson strongly implied that he had an unsavory character and that he was illegally enriching himself from the poor farm. “The County has been the goose from which has been plucked a rich handful of feathers,” he wrote in 1860. Dawson also said he was paid $1,400 annually, which would be an unusually high salary. Rennish was actually hired in December 1854 on a three-year contract at $400 per year, with use of the farm. He was employed on a six-month basis in March 1858 for $1.75 per week and had to pay $250 for the use of the land. This continued until 1860. Another source said the amount contracted on March 1, 1855 was for three years at a total of $2,547, or $849 per year.

     There was an incident involving Rennish and his management of the asylum which exposed anti-Catholic sentiment. In March 1855 tavern keeper Uelrich Saylor Sr. sold a man named John Gardner a jug of whiskey in the morning. By noon, Gardner returned and bought another jug of whiskey. He stayed at the tavern drinking until about 4:00. He left and was about a quarter of a mile away when “he fell from drunkenness and broke his leg.”

      He was carried back to Saylor’s tavern where his leg was dressed and Saylor’s daughter Abigail cared for the man for days. Gardner did not have any money to reimburse them for putting him up in a helpless state. Uelrick sought payment from the county for the man’s room, board and care – a total of $35 for himself and $20 for his daughter. The Fort Wayne Weekly Times harshly criticized his attempt to be reimbursed and said the general consensus was that Saylor was at fault for selling the man so much whiskey, or, as the newspaper put it, “Saylor should take care of him at his own expense for being the immediate author of his misfortune.”

     The commissioners allowed the claims and ordered that Gardner be transported to the county asylum. The township trustees found a wagon and driver, and the party arrived at the asylum at 10:00 p.m. Rennish was already in bed and, according to the newspaper, would not assist the sufferer or help him into the house. The driver, “after much trouble procured a dirty cup, found the well, and brought Gardner some water. He made Gardner as comfortable as he could in the wagon bed, unhitched the horses and headed home. Gardner lay helpless and with no covering all night. “Here is the end of it, but not to the disgrace of humanity,” the article continued. “This morning’s sun found an unfortunate, sensible and well-raised man, but a fallen wayfarer, at the door of the Asylum of Allen county, with authority to be admitted, but refused, and that too having been refused in the darkness of night and compelled to lay out with no covering, save Heaven’s canopy.”

     The writer concluded, “John B. Rennish should be driven from the Asylum and from the community.” He claimed Rennish was a “bigoted Catholic” and that accounted for his “inhumanity towards Gardner, a Protestant.” The writer said a new Protestant asylum should be built, one that – unlike Catholics – would “meet with the tenderness characteristic of their creed and its adherents.” 

     Rennish’s side of this incident was not reported in the newspaper. It did not keep him from getting another contract when his three-year term was up in 1858. However, on July 5, 1860, the Board of Commissioners decided to make some changes. “...not deeming it prudent or advisable to continue the present system any longer.” The board appointed Rennish’s successor.

    In the early 1860s the Reniche/Rennish family moved to a French community in Kankakee County, Illinois where there were French-speaking priests. Jean Baptiste (John) died there in 1870. 

Notes:

Delaware Whipping Post - When New Castle County installed a new whipping post in 1869 and had public whippings viewed by crowds including children, Americans were aghast. Newspaper editors called it barbarity and campaigned against it. Delaware was, in fact, the last state to abolish whipping posts, removing the penalty from state law in 1972. The last time the law was administered was in 1952. The last whipping post was removed from the Old Sussex County Courthouse in 2020.

Bridge of Sighs - The Bridge of Sighs in Venice connects the interrogation room to the prison and was the last view of Venice prisoners would see before being taken down to their cells. 

John Dawson - Dawson began his newspaper career in Fort Wayne in 1853. His political issues included temperance and free public schools and being against abolition and various Know-Nothing Party causes. He was originally a Democrat, then became a Republican who was appointed governor of Utah Territory by Abraham Lincoln. He lasted three weeks in the position, allegedly making improper advances on a widow. Taking a mail coach east, he was attacked by a group of vigilantes. Dawson returned to Fort Wayne where he spent the rest of his life.