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:
“I steer my bark with Hope in the head, leaving Fear astern.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“It would astonish if not amuse, the older citizens of your County who twelve years ago knew me a stranger, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working on a flat boat—at ten dollars per month to learn that I have been put down here as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“If alms were only given out of pity, all the beggars would have starved to death.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Borrow a child and get on welfare.
Borrow a child and stay in the house all day with the child,
or go to the public park with the child, and take the child
to the welfare office and cry and say your man left you and
be humble and wear your dress and your smile, and don’t talk
back ...”
—Susan Griffin (b. 1943)