GROSS, Paul P.

Family History: http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=ed-co87110&id=I129371

GROSS, Paul P. (Cascade, IA, Nov. 26, 1922--Dubuque, IA, Mar. 25, 1986). According to officials of the DUBUQUE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY, the first DUBUQUE COUNTY HOME was constructed in 1848 and was eight miles outside the city limits. The facility, a home for transients and indigents, was replaced by a new facility in 1857. This burned to the ground in 1875. (1)

The county board of supervisors later purchased 200 acres of land near the Julien Depot for the present farm; the new care facility was built for $10,500. While the building provided shelter for the poor, the farm was their source for produce, meat and work. That was the way it was operated when in the early 1950s when Paul Gross and his wife, Lois, took over the operation.

Gross reported that the residents raised all their own vegetables and canned 3,000 gallons of beans, corn, tomatoes, rhubarb, and sauerkraut. They raised their own chickens and had laying hens for the eggs. At one point, the residents raised 700-800 head of hogs. The farm also had a herd of milk cows, but the supervisors later sold the herd. “Poor farms” evolved into “care facilities” and the clients they served were different. By the time the county built the new care facility, the book work had increased and the farming operation had decreased.

The board of supervisors began considering leasing the land once they sold the dairy cows. Gross served as the director of the POOR FARM until 1985. His final action as administrator was to watch the abandonment of the old facility in favor of a new one-story structure, the JULIEN CARE FACILITY. (1)

By leasing the land, Dubuque County joined the majority of Iowa counties that were getting out of the “county farm” business. Of the state’s 99 counties, 67 have care facilities, but only 23 counties still farmed them, said Cal Jacobs, president of the Iowa Association of County Care Facility Administrators.

Source:

1) "Another Conflagration," Dubuque Herald, November 23, 1875, p. 4. Online: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=uh8FjILnQOkC&dat=18751123&printsec=frontpage&hl=en

2) Blocker, Sue, "County Farm Sale Signals End of an Era," Telegraph Herald, April 7, 1985, Online: http://p8080-10.30.40.140.ezproxy.dubuque.lib.ia.us/ResCarta-Web/jsp/RcWebImageViewer.jsp?doc_id=76d75574-3467-4ecf-9df4-c2b7da149f1e/ResCarta/00000005/00021291