The Will County Poor Farm was a home for the less fortunate, terminally and mentally ill, elderly, and orphaned children. Hundreds resided there over the years and despite the closing in 1955, hundreds of them still remain, somewhere within the 180 acres.

Scanned images of the Will County poor farm register from 1870 to 1885.

The tombstones are one of two of the last remaining structures of the Will County Poor Farm that opened its doors in 1850. The Will County Poor Farm became an institution that relied on self supported resources in order to provide relief to hundreds of the county's less fortunate, mentally and terminally ill, elderly, and orphaned children.

By the early 1900s, the poor farm had become a ubiquitous part of America's social welfare system. Megan Birk's history of this foundational but forgotten institution focuses on the connection between agriculture, provisions for the disadvantaged, and the daily realities of life at poor farms. Conceived as an inexpensive way to provide care for the indigent, poor farms in fact attracted wards that ranged from abused wives and the elderly to orphans, the disabled, and disaster victims. Most people arrived unable rather than unwilling to work, some because of physical problems, others due to a lack of skills or because a changing labor market had left them behind. Birk blends the personal stories of participants with institutional histories to reveal a loose-knit system that provided a measure of care to everyone without an overarching philosophy of reform or rehabilitation. In-depth and innovative, The Fundamental Institution offers an overdue portrait of rural social welfare in the United States.