Blog note: this article references a 1906 (not a typo) grand jury report on the poor farm.
Two young Lucas Valley residents have launched a campaign to raise the visibility of a forgotten graveyard where many of Marin’s poor were buried from 1880 to 1955.
There are currently no elaborate headstones or signs to indicate that the site, in Lucas Valley near Marin County Juvenile Hall, is the final resting place for more than 287 people. The only grave markers are some concrete blocks with brass tags attached, each bearing a different number.
Many of the people buried there were residents of a poor farm that Marin County operated next to the site — together with an attendant hospital for the indigent — from 1880 to 1963. But anyone whose body went unclaimed after dying in Marin or whose family lacked the money for a more auspicious interment might have ended up buried there.
Burials with causes of death recorded between Feb. 11, 1924 and Nov. 11, 1924 included one stillborn baby, three drownings, a gunshot suicide and a death whose cause is listed simply as “alcoholism.”
Georgia Lee, 17, and Mitchell Tanaka, 18, neighbors who have known each other since middle school, made a short documentary on the graveyard.
“We didn’t want to just stop there,” said Tanaka, now a student at Chapman University.
Lee said, “So now Mitchell and I are using our documentary to really push for the marking of the graveyard.”
Lee and Tanaka have posted a petition on Change.org calling for some kind of signage to denote the graveyard. So far, more than 4,100 people have signed the petition. Lee met with Supervisor Damon Connolly last week to discuss the feasibility of their request. She said Connolly is supportive of the idea but wants to consult with residents in the area to make sure there are no objections.
It was Tanaka who came up with the idea of doing a mini documentary on the poor farm graveyard. He first learned about it last year when taking a Halloween walk in the area sponsored by the Marin County Open Space District.
“It was a presentation that was half spooky Halloween stuff and half actual facts about the surrounding area,” he said.
Tanaka said the idea of a “poor farm” was a foreign concept to him at the time.
Lee said, “This whole thing was a huge learning experience for both of us.”
Marilyn Geary, an oral historian for the Anne T. Kent California Room at the Marin County Free Library, said poor farms were sort of the 19th century alternative to homelessness.
“It was a place where people could go when they ran out of money and they needed support,” said Geary, one of the few to write about Marin’s poor farm since it closed.
The poor farm was a working dairy farm where residents produced much of their own food. According to a March 9, 1893 article in the Marin Journal, about 30 of the farm’s 100 acres were in cultivation. An abundance of apples and prunes were raised in a small orchard as well as “quite a quantity of vegetables.”
The article went on to say, “The inmates have all the fresh bread and butter they want three times a day. They have meat in some form twice a day.”
It was common for articles written then to refer to poor farm residents as “inmates,” although they were free to come and go as they pleased, and some did occasionally leave and return.
Geary said it was typical for about 100 people to live at the poor farm at any one time but the facility had the capacity to accommodate up to 135 people. The farm included two buildings designated as “pest houses” for patients with contagious diseases and their families.
The hospital, which was in a separate building close to the farm, was only for the poor. Patients with money went to Ross General Hospital or Cottage Hospital. The Poor Farm hospital employed 24 nurses and could accommodate up to 40 patients. Some patients suffered from mental illness and others had incurable disease such as tuberculosis.
Geary said she became interested in the poor farm because of the contrast it provides to the way society cares for the poor and homeless today.
“How in the past there was a concerted effort to take care of people; that is what drew me to it,” Geary said. “I wish we could do something more like that today.”
Local news stories written when the poor farm was in operation, however, indicate that the disdain that some harbor for the poor today existed then as well.
The Feb. 1, 1906 edition of the Marin Journal included a story on a grand jury report on Marin’s poor farm and the county’s indigent poor.
According to the story, “The committee finds the Poor Farm in as good condition as can be expected, but recommends painting and other necessary improvements.”
The story includes a list of 30 indigent individuals receiving monthly county stipends ranging from $4 to $15. The story reported that the grand jury found all the subjects worthy but recommended that a Mrs. DeWolf of Tiburon and her daughter “be removed to the Poor Farm as the daughter is a sight and frightens people.”
Lee and Tanaka made their documentary on the graveyard when they were both studying film at the Marin School of the Arts.
The documentary notes that among those buried at the poor farm graveyard was Miran Buddy Thompson, who was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison on Dec. 3, 1948 after he and five other inmates tried to break out of Alcatraz Prison.
The failed escape attempt, later dubbed the Battle of Alcatraz, lasted almost two days and resulted in the deaths of three convicts and two corrections officers. Another 13 corrections officers were wounded.
Thompson was serving life plus 99 years for kidnapping and the murder of a police detective in Amarillo, Texas. Prior to the Battle of Alcatraz, Thompson — who also conducted armed robberies in four states — had broken out of jail successfully eight times.
The poor farm burned down in 1911 but was rebuilt. It was finally closed in 1963 because the county was unwilling to spend the money to strengthen the buildings to withstand an earthquake.
Lee and Tanaka are getting some support in their bid for recognition of the graveyard from Ron Marinoff, who has lived in Lucas Valley since 1963.
“For the first 30 years I lived here, I had no clue there was anything there,” Marinoff said.
He said after he discovered the graveyard a number of years ago he talked with county officials about the possibility putting a split-rail fence around the site.
“Nobody seemed concerned or interested,” Marinoff said. “And they still weren’t until this young lady decided to do her project. She’s the spark plug, an amazing young person.”
January 22, 2019
Marin Independent Journal
By Richard Halstead
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