Multnomah County Poor Farm
The link below is the index to the Multnomah County Poor Farm Ledger.
To obtain a copy of the records, access the Multnomah County Poor Farm admissions register. The county also has a very useful research guide to those records.
The poor farm records, covering the years 1884 to 1971, are kept at the County Archives in eight large ledger books. There are only 61 records covering 1884 to 1899. There are duplicated and misspelled names in the ledgers, so do look closely at the list.
Some of the records pertain to the County Hospital as well as the poor farm and will be noted on the record. The copy you receive from the county archives will have any medical information redacted due to current HIPPA laws. The records may contain the following information: date of entry, age and/or date of birth, place of birth, domestic relation, occupation, religion, father's name (possible place of father's birth), mother's name (possible place of mother's birth), name and address of friends or relatives, how long in Oregon, how long in the US, a citizen of what country, a former address, when discharged, date of death, funeral home, disposition of remains. Some of the entries have considerable information, and others, not so much.
Lack of age or birth date probably means re-admission to the poor farm. A number of people were discharged only to return at a later date, often multiple times. Be sure to check all spellings of the surname since entries were made by different clerks. The extraction team left the spellings as found.
As with all records, the amount of the information is relative to how much the individual knew or was willing to tell.
