CRAIG COUNTY
POOR FARM

The Craig County Poor Farm is located in Craig County, Virginia. It is now represented by a parcel of 145 acres, and occupies both sides of Sinking Creek, a tributary of the New River, and is owned by Tracy Roberts Frist and former U.S. Senator William H. Frist.

 

The farm, established in 1892, consists of historic contributing domestic and agricultural buildings including a superintendent’s house, a poorhouse cottage, a stone cellar, a granary/corncrib, and barns and other buildings. On the hill above the farm complex is the County Farm Cemetery. It began operating as a “Poor Farm” for poor and incapacitated individuals in the early 1890s and existed as such to the early 1920s when it was sold to a family for a private residence.

 

I interviewed four individuals who lived on the farm at various times: Jerry Jones, whose family owned the farm for the longest period of time (1922-2010), Zane Jones, Jr., Roger Eakin, and Jane Henderson, and edited the transcripts.