COMMUNITY NEWS
| Muscatine County, Iowa COMMUNITY NEWS | |
Well Balanced Life Provided at County Home
Work, Diversions, Responsibility
Keep 72 Inmates at Muscatine Home Busy; Meal Planning Major Task
Muscatine Journal & News Tribune, April 23, 1939 pg 8
Submitted December 11, 2013 by Lynn McClearyHome life – with its duties, its cares and responsibilities and its pleasures – is shared by 72 persons, some residents of Muscatine for a long period of time, others who have been here but few years, some mentally incapacitated, others with major physical defects, at Muscatine county’s home located at 419 Houser street.
Operated along the same lines as any well organized home and farm, the establishment provides a final haven for the scores of less fortunate’s who for one reason or another have been force to seek shelter at the expense of Muscatine county taxpayers.
Faces Real Task. To supervise the care of the “non-paying guests’ is no small task. Upon the shoulders of Mrs. Eldora Kemp, matron, falls the task of planning daily menus, which daily include such quantities as:
One bushel of potatoes Forty pounds of meat. Fourteen loaves of bread. Three pounds of butter. Twelve quarts of pickles Twenty quarts of fruit. Her son, Rex Kemp, was named superintendent of the farm Jan. 1, taking over the position held by his father, who died last year.
Likes Her Job. Mrs. Kemp, who likes the work with which she has been associated at the home for the past 10 years, sees nothing depressing in the fact she has to oversee insane patients and others for whom the battle of life has been too much.
“If you once get the good will of the insane patients, they are your friends. Get many of them started on some task, and they’ll go through the same routine day after day. No two patients are exactly alike, each has a character of his own”, she said.
The insane population of the home was increased by 17 last summer when a fire at the hospital at Mount Pleasant forced removal of patients to surrounding counties. Of the group received from Mount Pleasant, two have since been paroled and one has died. Twenty-three insane patients, all of them kept under lock and key or constantly under the supervision of paid workers, reside at the home at the present time.
Faithful on Job. Several of them have proved faithful in accomplishing simple tasks. A great deal of the food served to the patients, either at the tables or on the 17 trays which must be carried to individual rooms of insane or ill inmates, is raised on the 160 acre farm, 95 acres of which are under cultivation. Each summer a great deal of canning is done at the home, and an apparatus recently was added which makes possible the cold packing of 80 gallons of fruit or vegetables at one time. Much of the food is preserved in tins, rather then glass jars.
“We butchered 28 hogs weighing about 275 pounds and six beefs during the winter”, Mr. Kemp said.
Butchering during the summer is limited by the fact that the ice box provides facilities for the storage of only one hog at a time. Mr. Kemp is looking forward to a plentiful supply of pork in the future, as he is grooming 45 little pigs destined to replenish the home larder.
Like Other Farms Work goes on at the farm much as it does on any other similar Muscatine county farm. Preparations are under way at the present time for the planting of two acres of early potatoes. Later about two acres of late potatoes will be put in to help provide the 400 bushels of the tubers which are consumed year by the inmates. The farm obtains its mil supply from 12 Holstein cows, which are milked with the assistance of the inmates. Approximately 45 acres of corn, 18 acres of wheat, 14 acres o oats and 12 acres of soy beans will be harvested at the farm this season.
The fact that many of the inmates are advanced in years and need their rooms heated to a temperature above the required for a younger person means that the furnace in the central heating plant must be well stoked during the cold winter days. Some of the wood now stacked at the farm will be shared with the Muscatine Welfare association.
Peak Hit 1934 The largest population ever residing at the farm came during the worst part of the depression in 1934 when 86 inmates lived at the home for a brief period. The population of the home now never drops below 65 even in summer.
A vegetable cave, construction of which will be resumed May 1 by WPA labor, will provide a place for storage of a large supply of vegetables. The storage cellar is expected to be one of the best in the state.
Besides Mrs. Kemp and her son, paid employees at the farm include Mrs. Rex Kemp, who serves assistant matron, Charles Daugherty, house assistant; Mrs. and Mrs. Clarence Cooley, who serve as hired hand and cook, respectively and Tom Fitzgerald, a night watchman.
Captions under Photos Matron at the Muscatine County Farm, Mrs. Eldora Kemp, pictured above is in charge of the women inmates and supervises the meals and care given the 72 wards now residing at the farm. She has been employed at the farm for the past 10 years.
Interrupted at work in the grape arbor, which last year produced about 30 bushels of fruit, Rex Kemp, steward of the Muscatine county farm is shown above as he appeared Thursday afternoon which a Journal photographer visited the farm.
Inmates of the home are given all the milk they want to drink and the Holsteins, pictured above, provide the supply. Inmates help in milking 12 cows.
The above inmate was photographed as he was doing chores on the Muscatine county farm. Much of the routine work is left in the care of inmates.
Two inmates were strewing food for the chickens at the Muscatine county farm when the above picture was taken. The flock in the picture contains about 285 White Wyandottes.
***** Note from Submitter: The lack of a complete date from the newspaper is my entire fault. I thought I had written it down, but I hadn’t. I tried to figure out when it might have been posted. The article mentioned that Mrs. Eldora Kemp’s husband died last year. Checking the 1930 Federal census found Eldora, as wife of Edwin Kemp, in Muscatine. His death was reported in Musser Public Library’s newspaper index as 1936. Edwin O. Kemp died July 26, 1936 and is buried in Grandview Cemetery in Louisa County. Also in the newspaper index was the marriage announcement of F. Rex Kemp to Marian Zimmerman on June 11, 1937. She was referred to as Mrs. Rex Kemp, assistant matron and cook. So this article must have been published sometime after June 11th. Naturally all clues from surrounding articles on my photocopy were cropped away. Could I find this article again in the microfilm at Musser Public Library? Noooooo! Yet it is such a good article about the County Poor Farm just had to share as it is. Update: Article appeared in the issue of April 23, 1939 on page 8. - Much thanks go to Joni Hindman for finding it!!
Page updated March 18, 2014
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Page created December 11, 2013 by Lynn McCleary