Eleven Years Older in Two Months

Every year, the commissioners of Grafton County, New Hampshire, printed a little paperbound report for the taxpayers. Most of it is money: what the county paid for flour, hides, lumber and doctors. But tucked between the accounts is a page that family historians should never skip, the superintendent's "List of Paupers" at the county almshouse, the county poor farm at Haverhill. Each line gives a name, a town, an age, a nationality, and how many weeks and days the county boarded that person during the year. Dozens of these reports, from the 1870s on, have been scanned by the University of New Hampshire and the New Hampshire State Library and are free on the Internet Archive.

Follow one name through them and a life starts to appear. Her name is Phoebe Simonds, of the town of Alexandria.

She turns up first, possibly, in the report for the year ending April 30, 1877. Under the heading "Paid for Aid to Paupers Not at the Farm," the county lists $37.50 paid to one man for "Phebe Simonds" in its Eastern District, the district that took in Alexandria, and on the next page $21.14 paid to another man for a "Phebe Simonds" in its Western District; ditto marks carry the words "support of" down both columns. That is outdoor relief: the county paying someone to keep a poor person in a private home instead of at the farm. Whether either entry is the woman in the later lists, or whether the two are even the same woman, is a reasonable guess, not a proven fact, since neither entry gives a town or an age.

By the year ending May 1, 1885, she is at the farm. The list for that year puts "Phoebe Simonds" of Alexandria near the top, American, boarded 52 weeks and 1 day: the whole year. Her age is printed as 58. Two lines above her is Webster Simonds, also of Alexandria, 69. A John M. Simonds of Alexandria, 67, is two lines below. The reports never say how, or whether, any of the three were related, so we cannot either.

Now turn a page in the next year's report. The farm changed superintendents on July 1, 1885, so the report prints a separate list for just the two months ending June 30, 1885, under the old superintendent. Webster Simonds is there, still 69. "Phœbe Simonds" is there too, and now she is 69. John M. has become "John W. Simonds," 68, boarded only 4 weeks and 4 days of the two months. The physician's list of deaths in the same report has a "Geo. M. Simonds," 68, who died June 1, 1885, of phthisis. Same age, and a stay that ends about that day: very probably one man printed under three first names, John M., John W. and Geo. M. That match is ours; no page says it. Phoebe gained eleven years in two months. One of those two printed ages is wrong, and the later lists show which.

In the list for May 1887 to April 1888 she is 73. For May 1890 to April 1891 she is 76. For the calendar year 1896 she is 82, for 1897 she is 83, and for 1898 she is 83 again. Line those up and they point to a birth between about 1814 and 1816, so the 69 of 1885 fits and the 58 is very probably a printer's slip, perhaps for 68. That conclusion is ours, worked out from the pattern; no page says it. The repeat of 83 is a reminder of something else: an age in a list like this is an estimate written down by a busy clerk, not a birth certificate.

The lists also show that Phoebe left the farm for a while. She is missing from the superintendent's list for July 1885 to May 1886, and the old superintendent's accounts include a $2 line that, read with its ditto marks, says "Expense, Phœbe Simonds away." Alexandria's own town reports pick up the thread. In the report for the year ending March 1, 1886, under the heading "County Paupers," the town paid a local man of the same surname $6.50 "support of Phebe Simonds." The next year's report lists him three times: $10.50 for "board of Phebe Simonds," then $9.00 and $6.50 for her support. Then, in the farm list for May 1887 to April 1888, "Phœbe Simonds," 73, is back, boarded just 3 weeks and 2 days. The list does not say which weeks; a return near the end of that year is one possible reading. In the later lists checked for this story, she is boarded for the full year, right up to 1898.

Webster Simonds stayed on the lists too, but his age did not keep pace with the calendar: 69 three times in 1885 and 1886, 71 in 1887 to 1888, 74 in 1890 to 1891, then 79 in 1896 and 79 again in 1897. The county physician's report for 1897 records his death on March 23, 1897, at 79, with no disease written in, and that year's list boards him just 11 weeks and 5 days, which fits. Again, an age is a clue, not proof.

The 1898 report, for the year ending December 31, closes Phoebe's story twice, in two different sections. The superintendent's "List of Paupers" puts her first: "Phoebe Simonds, Alexandria, 83, American," boarded 50 weeks and 3 days. The physician's report, a few pages later, adds her to the list of deaths: "Phebe Simonds, 83, Old Age, Dec. 19." Count from January 1 to December 19 and you get about 50 weeks and 2 or 3 days, depending on whether you count both ends. The two sections, written by two different officials, agree.

Not every entry in that same report agrees with itself. S. N. Page of Bristol is 85 in the superintendent's list and 59 in the physician's list of deaths, where he died January 14 of apoplexy. An inmate entered as "Miah Columbus," 83, French, in one section is "Miah Columbia," 84, in the other, who died September 17 of old age. Same report, same year, two clerks. Copy both versions, with the page each came from, before you decide.

The physician also wrote that the year's deaths were "the smallest in history of institution," and that most of the sickness he treated was "incident to the aged and those already broken in health by previous excess or deprivation." That is his general summary, not a word about Phoebe herself. For her, the record is the lists: more than a dozen years, and perhaps twenty, of a woman from Alexandria, boarded first in private homes and then at the county farm, counted in weeks and days.