When a government agent inspected the Horton (Greenwich) poor house/farm in 1891, there were 22 inmates.

In the history of Kings County, A. W. H. Eaton referred to these inmates as the poor and needy. They were the elderly as well. A sign posted recently at the Greenwich poor house indicates that one of the residents was 85 when he died there in 1915.

This was George Pickles, origin unknown. I read his name aloud when I visited the poor house cemetery recently, and he stirred my curiosity. What was his story? He lived to an exceptional age at a time when the average life span was around 60. Was he infirm? Was the poor farm a last resort in his later years? Perhaps he was challenged in ways other than physical.

We may never know. Like most residents of poor houses that sprang up in King and Hants County in the 19^th century, Pickles was just a name on a list.

The Horton poor house opened in 1822 and closed a century later. Some of the residents during that period were abandoned women and children, and anyone physically and otherwise impaired. Before the poor houses opened, men, women and children needing assistance were boarded in private homes that were subsidized by county grants.

Within a few decades of the arrival of the Planters in the Annapolis Valley, almost from the start, the relief and support of the poor became necessary. How could this be? The Planters supposedly were a prosperous people. Yet in the history of Kings County, Eaton notes that in 1777 the “Town Meeting voted to raise 20 pounds for the support of the poor in Cornwallis”. A larger amount, 70 pounds, was raised a few years later, “for the poor’s support.”

Some people ended up in poor homes through circumstances beyond their control. For example, a farm accident took the life of Josiah Smith in 1899, leaving behind a wife and daughter who soon became residents of a poor house. A Billtown farmer, a distant relative, found his farm couldn’t support his large family and he kicked out his 16-year-old son – I found his name on a list of residents of the Billtown poor house.

As for George Pickles, he may not have been entirely forgotten. Recently there was an Internet search for George Pickles whose family lived in Horton Township. The birth date of the Pickles searched for would make him 85 on his demise – the year the sign in the Horton poor house cemetery indicated George Pickles died.

I attempted to contact the person instigating the search for Pickles, but the link had been removed. As before, George Pickles forever remains a name on a list of long-forgotten poor house residents.