(insects chirping) (bird cawing) (insects chirping) - This place is of memory.

(gentle music) Of stories lost and found.

(gentle music continues) Of family and kinship.

(gentle music continues) Of birth and death.

(gentle music continues) And rebirth.

(gentle music continues) Of labor and rest.

(gentle music continues) For the youngest who was only 15 minutes old, to the oldest whose story started anew at 99.

Of teaching and learning and relearning.

(gentle music continues) (bird cawing) This place is of unspoken histories told as one story, but is diverse like pieces of a quilt.

(gentle music continues) This place is of invisibility (gentle music continues) talked about in hushed tones and whispers, now celebrated and honored and memorialized.

(gentle music continues) This place is of scars made by shame and struggle, (gentle music continues) now badges glistening with honor, purpose, and dignity.

(gentle music continues) This place is of home, (gentle music continues) common, unified and whole.

(gentle music continues) - I just love the Eastern Shore and I became captivated with this rural community and the beauty of the natural environment.

(dove cooing) I work as a designer and I've been here for 45 years now.

I was following the activities of the Barrier Islands Center since they got established.

I always thought this building was just beautiful, seeing it on the landscape in the distance.

And little by little over the years I ended up developing visual displays in most of the rooms of the museum here.

- The Barrier Islands Center is a museum that tells the beautiful coastal history of Virginia's Barrier Islands.

We have turned into a real cultural and educational center in this rural part of the Eastern Shore.

But there's one area that we don't know too much about and that's about the poor house history, the Almshouse history, and the buildings that house the Barrier Islands Center.

- How do you capture the essence of a human when there is an absence of their trail?

When there's an absence of their existence?

We know that in, you know, in all almshouses, not just here, but of course across the state, that there was an absence and that was intentional.

It was intentional for them to be absent because we didn't want to celebrate poverty, we didn't want to celebrate having children out of wedlock or mental illness or any of those things.

So it was an intentional erase.

- [Miriam] There's a lack of sympathy for the impoverished, a general disregard for those who have not accomplished something or have no certificate on paper to validate their lives.

Racial identity comes into that as well.

But I've always felt that it was still significant to stop and look at what's there and to reflect on the significance of any given individual's life.

(gentle acoustic music) - The high school from which I graduated is just a few short steps from here.

And I grew up not knowing anything at all about its existence.

Of course, I saw the big white house sitting across the field, but had no idea of its purpose.

I had no idea of its history.

(gentle acoustic music fades) - In the years after the American Revolution, there was a real need to develop infrastructure to meet the needs of the new nation, and one of those needs was how to house and care for those in society who were either poor or had fallen on to hard times.

Folks who might be bearing children out of wedlock, folks who might be suffering from mental illness, folks who might be veterans who were incapacitated.

So the Almshouse really became a broad spectrum social care phenomenon.

(gentle banjo music) - We knew just the basics about when the buildings were built and things like that, but we didn't know too much more.

And so Miriam Riggs, who is not only a talented artist and helps us with our exhibit designs, but she's also a deep researcher, really just dove in and took the time to go through all those records.

- The courthouse here in Eastville is well known as being the oldest continuous collection of public records in America.

I thought, "Oh, well I'll just go to the public records office, the clerk's office, and seek out some records about the Almshouse.

However, it wasn't that easy.

It took dozens of trips going to various offices.

I would find clues in one area and then that would cause me to go back to another repository of information.

It was definitely detective work.

And one day, at the end of a long day of negative results, I found this little drawer and it said "Overseer of the Poor Reports" on it.

There inside were these bundles of documents and they were tied together with strings and ribbons and it appeared that they had not been untied in 200 years.

I knew what I had been looking for.

I knew that if I found something of this type, it would be amazing, you know, it would be revelatory.

And it was.

It was.

(gentle music) The first reports I found were annual reports that were largely prepared by doctors who literally oversaw the wellbeing of the less fortunate.

It was their commitment as a medical professional to make house calls and rounds in the community to check on people and they would be the first ones often to identify the needs of the people who required additional care.

Could be an elderly woman whose husband had died and she was unable to live alone anymore.

Could be unwed mothers, orphaned children, people who were mentally disabled, people who were alcoholics.

All of a sudden I had insight into the lives of some of the most needy and vulnerable members of the community who had been long ago forgotten, and may not have been documented in any other stream of records.

(gentle music continues) - You can imagine that a person who actually arrived here at the Almshouse needing help would be incredibly humbled.

The fear, the isolation, the embarrassment, the shame that would go along with being in this space, while also being incredibly grateful that there was a space to go to.

- There were those who stayed resident at the Almshouse with their families for well over a decade.

There were those who would check in and out periodically, and there were those who came to the Almshouse for a moment of support, even as they sought to regain their footing in the world.

(gentle bluegrass music) - My great-great-grandmother, Jane Doughty, she was born on Hog Island July 25th, 1851.

I traced her from the 1860 census all the way through the 1880 census, and the 1880 census showed her being placed here at the Machipongo Almshouse Farm.

(gentle music fades) I was coming here with only a question mark.

I didn't know if this is really the place.

I didn't know what I might find, if anything at all.

Well, in the log book here, my great-great grandmother, Jane Doughty is right here on the log, and little did I know, it also showed her registered here giving birth, I believe to my great-grandfather, Charles Lee Miller.

(gentle banjo music) I really don't know why that my great-great-grandmother, Jane Doughty, ended up at this Almshouse instead of in the household of a family member at least, especially being with child.

It was a place for the unfortunate and you really weren't in a very good situation when you had to end up here.

Now, her being from the Doughty family, it was a very prominent family on Hog Island and apparently she had my great-grandfather out of wedlock, and the fellow she did that with was also within wedlock with another lady already.

And so that's how she ended up here.

(gentle music continues) This story is my story, so therefore it means everything to me because it's all I have.

She was a person during her time that was kind of put to the side because of some things that happened, but overall I think it was too much to do that to her.

And I like the fact that I can mention her name in this documentary to give her name a light that it never had, that she never knew she'd ever get.

And that makes me proud.

(gentle music fades) - By looking at a land survey, which was done in 1938, we can get a general picture of where some of the older buildings should have been.

The barn is the hub of the farming operation and that was critical.

There was a Pest House that was established on this property that wasn't built until 1914.

However, there were quite a number of epidemics that ravaged the community before that.

(gentle music continues) Pest is short for pestilence and that's sort of a generic term that would apply to any number of communicable diseases like measles or diptheria, smallpox, et cetera.

The Pest House would be a quarantine house for those members of the community that came down with these diseases.

Adjoining the Pest House was a cemetery and we're even able to see the details of the spacing of these rows for the burials.

(gentle music continues) The list that we have here are actually documented names that have death certificates associated with them.

It has about 500 names.

However, we can assume that over a thousand, 1500, maybe 2000 souls are buried in that field.

(gentle music continues) There weren't just residents of the Almshouse that were being buried there, but many people from the community who couldn't afford any other place to be buried.

You may notice a cross at the edge of the field.

I put it there.

Carried it out there and planted it in the ground and it is meant to be a monument.

Children, grandparents, distant relatives may have been buried there and the records were simply lost or disregarded to verify where these people ended up.

And now we know.

(gentle music) - I am a bit of a history buff and I started looking at genealogy stuff on the internet and I saw that my great-great-great grandfather, Branson Dalby, was buried at this location here at the Almshouse.

(gentle music continues) So I pulled in to the parking lot and I was looking for a cemetery or a grave site.

I didn't see anything.

So I came in and Sally kind of gave me the history and said that if he's buried here, he is buried in the wooded area where the white cross is.

There's a window where you can see that area and they had the list of names of the ones that are buried there.

And sure enough, Branson Dalby was there.

And he passed away in 1888.

(wind gently whooshing) (insects chirping) I didn't know much about my family history at all.

I mean I knew my parents, when they lived here on Eastern Shore they both came from houses without running water.

So I knew that they were extremely poor, but I didn't know it went as far back as actually my great-great-great grandfather living in a poor house.

(gentle music) He was what they called an inmate and part of the conditions of living here was that he had to work the farm throughout the day.

Kinda hard to believe how you can progress.

I'm the first one to go to college and graduate.

And now I want to share this with my kids, my daughter and my son, so that they know where their roots are and where they came from and where they're at now, so that they can pass it along to the next generation after them.

It's very humbling.

And from that day I've had on my phone, I guess you call it the wallpaper picture, it's a picture of that cross.

And it kind of reminds me to stay humble and remember where you came from.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music fades) - At its founding in 1803 the Northampton County Almshouse was imagined as a combination workhouse and poor house.

It was there to serve the needs of the less fortunate, but it was also imagined as a self-sustaining agricultural operation.

(gentle bluegrass music) - [Miriam] Potatoes and sweet potatoes were big crops.

Many different kinds of beans, green beans, and peas.

- [Bernard] There was an expectation that people would contribute to the agricultural production of the Almshouse as long as they were able.

- [Miriam] During the heyday of the farming community here, these were the most prosperous farm communities in the entire country.

Accomack and Northampton counties were high producers.

We have many, many receipts for the produce as the excess produce was sold offshore and transported by train.

(gentle music continues) The inventory of the property at the Northampton County Poorhouse, and that's dated June 11th, 1849.

It goes down a list of the typical farm property that you might see, the number of pigs, cattle, horses, and then household goods, tables, chairs, et cetera.

When you go further down the list, it's surprising to see at the bottom of the list a number of slaves listed.

Joe Blue, who's 17.

We've got Louisa, who's 15.

We've got Custis Brickhouse, who's eight.

Nat Brickhouse, who's six.

And they are all listed as possessions or property of the Northampton County Poorhouse.

- It is hard to imagine that a person did not own anything, not even himself.

And more than that, they were confined to the dank darkness of the basement.

It's almost like the passage from Africa to this country was repeated.

How Africans were chained together belly to back in the bottom of a ship.

The cruelty of that kind of existence.

- The people of color may have been African Americans and they may also have been Native Americans as well, and that included slaves as well as emancipated Black people.

The change took place when the superintendent of the poor passed away and his wife was left to take charge at that time.

And she said it was, "too dark and too unhealthy for anyone to live in that cellar."

And they heeded her word and said, "Okay, we're gonna take lumber from the trees grown on the Almshouse farm and add it to the west end of The Quarter Kitchen building."

And so that was an 18 by 20 addition with the loft up above, and that was in about 1844.

- The accommodation for African American inmates was never at the same level as that provided for white inmates.

They did not have bedsteads, but rather slept on pallets on the floor.

Each had a chair and each had their own basic cooking implements, so that they were working on that little fireplace in that room as a cooking hearth.

At the same time, laboring in the adjacent kitchen part as if it were an old style plantation kitchen.

(wind gently blowing) - [Miriam] And then in 1910 with greater social awakening, the current building that you see outside was built.

- The Almshouse is important to understanding history.

We can see how a stratified society came into existence and rolled itself out.

Today, we still live in a time and in a place where people are divided against themselves and other people.

How do we begin to correct the mistakes of the past?

How do we begin to recover, to heal?

(gentle music) - We always referred to it as a poor house.

I never recall that we ever said Almshouse, but Grandmom and Pappy were the ones who were working here and they were proud of that.

Pappy worked for the agricultural department in the state.

He was an inspector.

So he was not here, you know, every day or anything like that, and so Grandmom basically ran it.

And they were told that they ran this place more efficiently than anybody else had.

She was pretty good at pinching pennies.

They raised four children here.

(gentle music) My mother was always a real giving person and she was always trying to help somebody out.

I don't know if that's a part of her having lived part of her life here at the poor house.

But it was full just about all the time.

I mean, people had hard lives back then.

There was a need for this place.

(gentle music continues) My grandfather retired and they moved from here to Chatham.

(gentle music continues) I believe my grandparents were the last superintendents here.

There wasn't a need for it anymore and so it was dissolved.

(gentle music continues) - The Almshouse closed in 1946.

There was increasing pressure from the county homes to consolidate care for the poor.

They decided it was much more efficient to move the poor and elderly to the city home in Norfolk, Virginia.

(insects chirping) This particular room that I'm working on now has been used for an office, so for the past number of years, since the building was restored about 10 years ago.

But it's become obvious that we need to return at least part of the building to a semblance of what it might have been.

I want it to have a contrast from the remainder of this building, which is white walls, white wainscot, perfectly varnished floors, recessed lighting.

I want this to be at least evocative of stepping back in time.

It's important to look at what was considered a step up from the previous structure that was here to house the Black residents.

I feel like this room is going to be a point of community outreach.

(gentle banjo music) - Life at the Northampton County Almshouse, or I would argue almost any other poor house that was operating in a rural community like this was complicated.

It was neither necessarily all dire and Dickensian, nor was it necessarily a positive.

- One thing that the research turned up is that there were a lot more children that lived here than I thought before.

And that always strikes me too, when I walk around the museum and turn the lights on in the morning or off in the evening and you just think about that there were children that were living in these rooms.

And that always kind of strikes me and kind of tugs at my heart.

(gentle music continues) - [Miriam] Do these people's lives matter?

Did they matter when they were born?

Did their parents love them or long for them when they were born?

- As we celebrate the lives of the people who lived here, it is embracing that, that they also are members of the community.

That they're not on the outside, they're not on the fringe.

It should be an opening, an embrace to join the rest of the group or for us as the larger group to stop putting them on the fringe.

(gentle music continues) - I'm looking forward to thinking with others, to find a way to properly remember, acknowledge, affirm the humanity of all of these lost souls.

And to say, "We appreciate you.

We are glad that you were born, and we are glad that you lived in a way that made it possible for me to live a life that is a little better than yours might have been."

(gentle banjo music continues) (gentle banjo music fades) (no audio) (gentle bluegrass music) (gentle bluegrass music continues) (gentle bluegrass music continues) (gentle bluegrass music continues) (gentle bluegrass music continues) (gentle bluegrass music fades)