KINGSTON – Top Ulster County officials announced on Wednesday efforts to create a Poorhouse Memorial at the Ulster County Fairgrounds Complex near the county pool in New Paltz.
Between 1828 and 1976, the property was the site of the county Poorhouse, a tax-supported residential institution where people lived if they could not support themselves without community assistance.
Thousands of people historically classified as the indigent, the destitute, the insane, the intemperate, transient farm workers, freed slaves, unemployed canal and aqueduct builders, “debauched” women, unwed mothers, the friendless, the elderly, the disabled and the sick, called the site home.
County Executive Michael Hein, County Clerk Nina Postupack, County Legislature Chairman Kenneth Ronk, County Historian Geoffrey Miller, New Paltz Town Historian Susan Stessin-Cohn, sculptor and artist Trina Greene and members of the Poorhouse Memorial Committee are all collaborating on the project.
Stessin-Cohn said after 20 years of research, she is “pleased to have a place that will represent the thousands of people in need who lived and died at this historic location. It is important to remember the past and bring attention to the plight of those in need today.”
County officials remember a part of history from the 19th century
