MORNINGS ON MAPLE STREET

HOME | ABOUT JOE MANNING | TABLE OF CONTENTS | ARTICLES, STORIES & POEMS | NORTH ADAMS, MASS. | LEWIS HINE PROJECT | PHOTO GALLERY | OLD NEWSPAPER ARTICLES | OLD PHOTOS PROJECT | BOOKS & CDS | LINKS

Poor All Her Life

Poor All Her Life

There died at the county home a few days ago a woman remarkable in one respect, and that is that she in all probability held the world record as to successive days spent in the almshouse. Her name is Lynn Anderson and she was about 80 years old, and about 76 of those years had been spent in the Union county home for the aged and infirm. When the county home, the poor house it was then called, was established three miles out of town about 76 years ago, Lynn Anderson, her mother and sister, were its first inmates. From that day to the day of Lynn's death, she never spent a day away from the county home, and there was not a night she did not spend under its roof. She moved twice during those long years, the site of the county home being changed that many times.

Lynn Anderson was weak in mind but personally strong, and she had just enough sense to do the hardest kind of drudgery, and in the days of her strength she did that willingly. If all the water that Lynn Anderson drew from a deep well out at the county home could be turned into a stream, it would be large enough to float a gunboat; and if all the wood she carried in her arms from the woodpile to the fireplaces could be put in one pile, it would be as high as the courthouse. Poor old Lynn, she is better off.

-Gastonia Daily Gazette (North Carolina), December 18, 1920

Back to Old Newspapers Articles

joe@sevensteeples.com

All rights reserved. This website, and all of its contents, except where noted, is copyrighted by, and is the sole property of Joe Manning (aka Joseph H. Manning), of Florence, Massachusetts. None of the contents of this website may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including copying, recording, downloading, or by any other information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Joe Manning, or his rightful heirs.