Newspaper articles and television news report the status of the homeless in these cold months of winter 2015. No longer do towns have “poor farms,” but some cities have homeless shelters. It seems there are never enough. Back in 1890, Maine law required all towns and cities to lodge “tramps” overnight. Tramps in those days were mostly men, oftentimes military veterans (Civil War). In Windham, the poor house or town farm was located on Town Farm Road. (The c. 1820 building is still standing, privately owned and renovated.)

There were state inspectors, who insisted that tramps should not sleep in rooms designated for the poor but should be given inferior quarters. Moreover, they must be required to work for their lodging. This wasn’t always successful, depending on health conditions.

Both tramps and residents ate well, if the inventories of the stock and provisions at the farm are any indication. In 1891, for instance, farm provisions included 25 bushels of potatoes, 250 pounds of pork, 100 pounds of beef, and 35 pounds of dried applies. In that year the farm was able to sell $434 worth of surplus butter, lima beans, corn and other produce.

Old timers we’ve talked with recall an occasional “tramp” or wandering homeless person, as late as the 1930s. They would knock on a farmhouse door, ask if there were any chores to be done – and as usual on a farm there were always chores!

My grandparents spoke of a man who came to their Windham farm in such a way. He ended up as what used to be called a “hired man” and worked for several years. He was even included on a census report, though it was discovered that the name he gave was not his – it was that of a fellow Scottish or British Navy man who had lost his life. The hired man at my grandparents’ had taken his friend’s identification and just assumed the name. No one (to my knowledge) ever discovered who he really was. One day, he just walked away from the Windham farm. By this time, the town’s poor farm had closed its doors.

In the old ledgers from Windham’s poor farm, safely stored and preserved at the historical society, there are innumerable lists of an “inventory” of tramps, who passed through the town in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Windham’s Town Farm (or poor farm), as seen in the early 1900s.Courtesy photoFormer Sawyer farmhouse on Webb Road, where tramps occasionally stopped during the early 1900s.Courtesy photo

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