Oregon counties once used poor farms to care for their neediest residents

A century ago, on Nov. 6, 1923, the Multnomah County Poor Farm in Troutdale admitted 64-year-old Andy Dunn as a new resident in need of public support. The publicly funded relief institution operated as a working farm housing indigent residents.

Dunn arrived in Oregon in 1898 from Missouri and had worked as a general laborer for years, usually for the railroad. Census reports listed him as a widower living in boarding houses. Poor farm records say he suffered from a skin disease, but there is no other information about his condition. Dunn died at the poor farm in 1925, and his body ended up in a local mortuary. There is no record of a gravesite.

Dunn is just one of the thousands of people who quietly lived and died in one of Oregon’s many county poor farms — a bygone refuge for residents with no other options.