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1853 — the line runs to today's Byron Wellness Community
Founding: Before Fort Wayne had a charity, it had a county obligation. In June 1853 Allen County bought land in Section 29, Wayne Township — the Waynedale area, near present-day Elmhurst — for an asylum for the poor, contracted with John A. Robison to build a house for 750 dollars, and on 9 December 1853 employed George L. Parker to keep the paupers at the poor farm for a year for 600 dollars. The Fort Wayne Daily News's 1907 retrospective on "first things" in the city preserves the sequence.
Course: At the height of the Civil War the institution moved closer to the city; a new infirmary, completed in June 1865 for 14,468 dollars, became its centerpiece, and the place took the name Allen County Asylum — its keepers insisted the proper name was the Allen County Infirmary. William H. Johnston's superintendency (1908–1920) is remembered in a family memoir reprinted from the Old Fort News, a rare inside account of poor-farm life: farm labor, plain food, and a self-supporting institution. Registers of residents survive for 1853–1939 at the Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library, and a register of the Allen County Home runs 1853–1973 on microfilm.
The line forward: In 1916 the facility moved to Lima Road, where Fort Recovery, an anti-tuberculosis tent hospital, was established; that work became the Irene Byron Hospital, named for Irene Byron, the Anti-Tuberculosis League's executive secretary, who died in service in the First World War. The institution was licensed as a nursing home in 1966, renamed the Allen County Health Center, and in 1974 merged with Irene Byron Hospital as Byron Health Center. In 1995 the county commissioners agreed to its operation by a private nonprofit — described in its own history as the first Indiana county facility of its type to make that change. It moved to a new building at 1661 Beacon Street in May 2020 as the Byron Wellness Community. The city's oldest relief institution is, by direct descent, still operating.
Sources:
- Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana (ACGSI), "Poor Farm — County Asylum — Poor Asylum" — the June 1853 purchase, the Robison contract and the Parker engagement from the Fort Wayne Daily News, 2 May 1907; the register holdings.
- Carl C. Johnston, "I Was Raised at the Poor Farm," Old Fort News (1986), via The History Center and the Waynedale News — the 1864–65 move and infirmary, the Johnston superintendency 1908–1920.
- Byron Wellness Community, "Our History," as copied by ACGSI — 1916 move, Fort Recovery, the 1966 license, the 1974 merger, the 1995 nonprofit operation, the May 2020 move.