Jefferson County Alms House

The Jefferson County Alms House, also known as Snow Hill Farm, located near Leetown, West Virginia, is an historic Federal style house. Snow Hill was built circa 1813 for John Hurst, son of James Hurst, a prosperous local landowner. In 1857, Snow Hill was purchased from the Hurst family for use as a farm for the local poor. By 1931 the Alms House (also known as the County Infirmary) had declined to the point that it had become a local disgrace. Corrective measures were taken, and the Infirmary survived until 1959, when its last nine inmates were moved to other quarters.

The property now houses a number of County agencies.

Famous quotes containing the words jefferson, county, alms and/or house:

    We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty, in a feather-bed.
    —Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    I could draw Bloom County with my nose and pay my cleaning lady to write it, and I’d bet I wouldn’t lose 10% of my papers over the next twenty years. Such is the nature of comic-strips. Once established, their half-life is usually more than nuclear waste.
    Berkeley Breathed (b. 1957)

    If alms were only given out of pity, all the beggars would have starved to death.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

    The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square
    With the new city street it has to wear
    A number in. But what about the brook
    That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)