In 1964, when Robert and Doris Sturtevant became superintendents of the Carbon County Home, it had long changed both in purpose and appearance from its 1855 conception as a Poor Farm where Carbon County’s unemployed could find relief and work during periods of unemployment, to the role it currently serves as a nursing home at its new facilities at Weatherwood in Weatherly.
 
Doris Sturtevant, who will be 91 this month, remembers the last years of the Carbon County Home and the transition to Weatherwood, which the Sturtevant’s supervised for its first year.
 
Although they lived in nearby Weatherly, Doris and her late husband, Robert, had never previously visited the Carbon County Home complex before arriving in January 1964 to begin their duties as superintendent and matron. What they saw was a 950-acre farm with a grand Administration Building, separate dormitory buildings for men and women, a chapel, a barn, and several smaller buildings.
 
The main buildings were constructed of stone. The Sturtevants lived in the Administration Building, a three-story 35-room structure that was constructed to house the twenty-five plus staff that worked at the home. Separate stairways led to the men’s and women’s sleeping areas. By the 1960s, the staff commuted to the Home and most of the rooms were closed.
 
The men’s and woman’s dormitory buildings once housed over two hundred people in the early 1900s. During the period supervised by the Sturtevants, Doris estimates that there were about one hundred patients—divided equally between men and women.
 
“By the time we got there, they were not farming,” said Doris. “There had been animals in the barn and they farmed the land. It had been discontinued.”
 
The patient population was all adults with most being seniors and the rest, younger adults that because of physical or mental reasons were unable to take care of themselves. Although Doris worked in the office, she would, from time to time, visit the wards. 
 
 “I was talking to a woman out there.” Said Doris. “She told me that you get attached to the people there.”
 
“I said, ‘I don’t think so,’” Doris replied. “But you really do get attached to the patients.”
 
“For them, it was the end of the line,” Doris added. “You knew they wouldn’t be leaving.”
 
After the patients transferred to Weatherwood in 1972, the Carbon County Home closed. In 1975, the property was sold to the Pennsylvania Power & Light Company. PP&L razed all the buildings during the summer of 1978.
 
The Laurytown property is now a tree nursery. In 1986, the Dolinsky brothers purchased 632-acres of the property from PP&L. The only remains of the Poor Farm/Carbon County Home are several overgrown building foundations and a shack that houses an artesian well. According to Bill Dolinsky, the well is still in operation.
 
Laurytown, a hilltop tract overlooking Rockport, was once owned by the Moravians. The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company purchased the land for timbering and built several sawmills there. In 1836, Laurytown had a post office and a tavern. By 1844, the town had 30 cabins. After the trees were cut, the land was used for farming.
 
Carbon became a county in 1843 and like its sister counties had to administer a system of providing work to the unemployed and help to the disabled and indigent.
 
The common practice was to select a group of men to raise taxes and use this money to pay for support of these people. Typically, the responsibility for their keep was auctioned off to the lowest bidder—with $1.70 per week being the going rate in the Carbon County area.
 
In 1855, Pennsylvania passed an act to create a “House of Employment in Carbon County.” Each township could either join the program or continue to “farm out” their needy.
 
Banks, Lausanne, Mauch Chunk, and East Mauch Chunk Boroughs, and Mauch Chunk Township joined to initiate the project. They raised $5,550 and purchased 381-acres from several adjoining farms in Laurytown.
 
A temporary wooden building was erected in April 1856 and the first poor people moved into the Laurytown Almshouse.
 
When the first permanent stone building was completed the following year, the residency increased to fifty-four people. In 1862, three townships in Luzerne County joined the project and it was renamed the “Middle Coal Field Poor District.”
 
Most of the residents of the Poor Farm were able bodied and willing to work—but no work was available and these people had no savings. From the beginning, the plan was to give these people work by making the farm self-sufficient.
 
Over the years a barn was constructed, burned, rebuilt, burned again, and was rebuilt again. Dormitories for men and women were constructed.
 
Senator and coal barron, Eckley Cox, and his wife, Sofia, wanted to give something back to the community and took on the Poor Farm as a personal project. The Coxes donated money toward construction of a hospital, chapel and sun parlor.
 
The complex continued to expand with the addition of a 200-foot deep artesian well, a greenhouse with a hot water heater, a slaughterhouse, and a sewage disposal plant. The buildings were upgraded with gas and in 1915, a power line was run from the Weatherly Borough Electric Plant.
 
The resident population peaked at over 200 after the turn of the century and, by 1925, was remodeled to more comfortably serve 175.
 
In the 1960s, Luzerne County built a new County Home in Wilkes-Barre and opted out of the project. Carbon County took over the home and changed its name to the “Carbon County Institutional District Home.” Later, the name was shortened to the “Carbon County Home.”
 
The mission of the property changed, over the years, from a house of the able but needy into a nursing facility. It was replaced by the Weatherwood Nursing Home in Weatherly.
 
Special thanks to Jack Koehler for providing historic information.