25th — We went to Mary’s Uncle Jack & Aunt Mary’s for dinner. 12 of us went over the hill to the poor house in the evening in Jack’s wagon. After we got back, Jack drove us to Mary’s Grandma & Uncle John’s where we stayed all night.
Uncle Jack and Aunt Mary were living at 357 Mansur Street in Chillicothe in the 1900 federal census, so that might be where Jesse and Mary went to have their Christmas dinner.
John McCormick is Mary’s mother’s youngest half-sibling. He married Catherine Cusick in 1899, and in March of 1901 they had their first baby, Mary Geneva. In the 1900 federal census, John and Kate are living in Rich Hill Township running a farm with a business-partner housemate named Harmon Hildebrand. John might have converted to Catholicism for his wife and her Irish immigrant parents, and his obituary reports that he was very active with the Saint Columban Church. He is buried at the Saint Columban Catholic Cemetery in Chillicothe, but Kate is not listed with him. It is most likely that she is there since that is also where her parents are buried. Although beyond this diary’s timeline, John died on Christmas Day in 1947.
Mary’s Grandma mentioned here is Charlotte Burgett McCormick, her Grandfather Stephen McCormick’s second wife.
It is difficult to tell which poor house Jesse attended to on this day in 1901. It might have been a Catholic event, and they went to a Chillicothe poor house run by nuns on 11th Street and Trenton, very close to the Saint Columban Parish. They could have also attended the County Poor Farm, north of Chillicothe and west of Highway 65, although that site closed in 1901 and relocated to one mile southwest of Chillicothe close to the Burlington Railroad. Perhaps this group of a dozen volunteers went to check out this new one between Chillicothe and Utica.
A poor house or farm was a combination homeless shelter, hospital, and nursing home for indigent, homeless people with no family or friends to turn to, elderly or mentally ill people too difficult to handle for family, and unmarried pregnant girls. It could be privately run by an individual or couple opening their home to people in need, or linked to a church like the Saint Columban Parish, and it might receive tax dollars or donations from local residents. The population in the area was big enough and a need was recognized as early as 1871 when the County Poor Farm was established.
