One of our current projects is the Poor Farm cemetery located in San Mateo County. This facility was first opened in July 1876.

Patients with diseases like tuberculosis, rheumatism, malaria, diabetes, asthma, chicken pox, heart problems etc. were treated in the hospital. Patients requiring surgery were transferred to the hospital in San Francisco and patients with mental disorders were transferred to facilities like Agnew's State Hospital.

The impoverished were housed in adjacent housing and were considered inmates. These inmates were required to grow vegetables and tend the livestock to feed themselves as well as the hospital patients. Some produce was also sold at the local markets.
Record books for these facilities are in San Mateo County historical archives under the name "Register of Inmates San Mateo County Hospital and Poor Farm." Starting from 1876, they list all the inmates that came to the poor farm and died there.

The Poor Farm Graveyard was first established in 1894, when the first dead were buried and their names, places of origin, age and the reason for dying were entered into a logbook. Some 542 graves are listed there but we have seen wooden markers with 600’ numerals still legible. A few of the markers are still standing but most were burned, removed or vandalized. Numbers that had been painted on the grave markers have weathered and most have become illegible over the years.

In December of 2001, we made our first visit to explore the poor farm. We found a few grave markers still standing but had no idea where the boundaries were. Research led us to the city of Belmont Historical society and San Mateo County archives where we learned about the existence of Register of Inmates San Mateo County Hospital and Poor Farm documents.

Spring of 2003
Currently we are working on the Poor Farm project with the University of Santa Clara Anthropology and Sociology Department. This project will involve students from these disciplines and they will focus on:

• Life in state institutions at the beginning of twentieth century (prisons, “poor farms,” mental institutions)
• The national origins of the San Mateo Poor Farm inmates, their length of stay and cause of death
• Learning how to map an archaeological site
• Mapping previously unmarked graves that the dogs have indicated
• Protocol involved in opening some of the graves to verify information *
  
  Our plans are to continue the partnership with the University of Santa Clara and their Archaeology and Anthropology departments. We hope to continue offering this unique site to students in both archaeology and anthropology classes, document their findings and establish the fact that trained dogs are a different type of resource and a useful tool in detecting historical human remains.

* This part of the project is waiting approval. The students will study the information about the individual buried there and attempt to correlate it with the hospital and nursing logs.