Read time: 9 min.

A week or so ago, I shared plans to visit all thirty-seven of Indiana’s remaining county homes, poorhouses, infirmaries, and whatever other names they went by. What survives in Delaware County is only a modern addition, but the property it sits on carries a significant amount of history. Beyond the present structure, I’m convinced there’s more just waiting to be uncovered.

Delaware County was authorized in 1820, but it wasn’t fully organized until seven years later. By about 1850, county leaders began to confront a new reality: the growing need for a dedicated place to care for those who society forgot. The following year, commissioners ordered “that a notice be published in the Whig Banner that all persons desirous of selling land for a poor farm of Delaware County, to contain 130 to 200 acres, may hand to the board at their next June session¹.” 

Officials laid out firm ground rules: the site had to be at least a mile from Muncie, but no more than five². In response, Enoch Hagenbuck stepped forward in 1852 by selling commissioners roughly 196 acres north of the Muncie–Winchester Pike in Liberty Township four miles east of Muncie³. County commissioners soon named Samuel D. Andrews as the farm’s first superintendent, with an annual salary of $230. Dr. Samuel V. Jump of New Burlington was appointed physician to the poor farm, and he earned $50 a year to make biweekly visits and handle emergencies as they arose⁴. 

Over time, both conditions and attitudes toward Delaware County’s destitute began to soften. Even the language shifted as the poor farm gradually became known as the county “infirmary⁵.” The name suggested care for residents rather than punishment for inmates.

Unfortunately, physical details of Delaware County’s original infirmary buildings are largely lost to history. Based on comparable institutions of the same era -some of which survived in neighboring counties until fairly recently- it’s reasonable to assume that the first county infirmary was a simple, two-story brick building- sturdy and utilitarian. It was probably built to endure more than to comfort its residents.

A small cemetery was eventually laid out behind the infirmary, tucked into rough ground near the woods. Through newspaper archives, researchers have managed to put names to about eighty people buried there between 1883 and 1918! Tragically, brief, thumbnail obituaries are nearly all that remains of their stories. There are no markers or monuments to commemorate those peoples’ lives.

The first infirmary burned in 1891⁶. Its replacement -a $20,000 brick structure with pressed arches and stone trimmings⁷– featured forty rooms to accommodate eighty residents along with a private dining room and apartment for the superintendent⁸. By 1906, the grand building was the centerpiece of a self-supporting, working farm that was uniquely profitable thanks to several oil wells on the grounds⁹. 

That wasn’t enough, though. In 1913, commissioners approved a plan to modernize the twenty-two-year-old infirmary and add a $45,000 expansion⁹. The new building was finished and the older structure was remodeled, but the arrangement was heartbreakingly short-lived: on March 23, 1915, a massive fire tore through the 1891 section of the complex¹⁰. The blaze was catastrophic: thirteen residents -some of whom were said to have encountered locked doors as they desperately tried to escape¹¹– lost their lives. 

The aftermath was horrific. Contemporary newspaper accounts spoke of “charred, unrecognizable masses of flesh,” a basement reduced to a “seething cauldron of red-hot bricks and tangled structural steel,” and unidentifiable “trunks” that were sent to Moffit-Groman’s funeral home in Muncie¹². Many of the remains fit into a tiny kettle¹³. 

Among the dead were 74-year-old Wesley Studebaker and his 45-year-old son, William. Four days after the fire, their remains were among several placed in ten small boxes and buried in a single casket at Beech Grove Cemetery. Later, Wesley’s daughter paid $5 for a marker on the site of the mass grave. Sadly, the tombstone she bought only bears the names of her father and brother¹⁴. 

Beyond the remains interred at Beech Grove, local legend suggests that some of the fire’s victims were buried in the infirmary’s own small cemetery. If true, their graves were never marked. Unfortunately, those victims’ lives were reduced to hurried burials after the blaze. Their interments perpetuated the quiet anonymity that dogged the county’s forgotten residents in life and in death.

In the wake of the fire, county commissioners moved quickly by approving another $45,000 to replace the destroyed structure¹⁵. Designed to match the size and construction of the recently completed addition, the new wings adopted a “Spanish style of architecture¹⁶” though, to my eye, they read much more like Prairie Style. The plan featured two broad wings linked by a central hall. Fittingly, the addition tied into the west end of the surviving addition at the very spot where the flames were finally stopped¹⁷.

Eventually, the new Delaware County Infirmary settled. In 1931, it was a working farm with twenty milking cows and hundreds of laying hens. What’s more is that the residents produced 10,000 jars of fruits and vegetables from the 100-acre farm¹⁸! Despite its improvements, though, parts of the infirmary remained grim: nothing underscored that reality more starkly than what stood behind the main building. There, residents deemed too unruly to fit in were confined to cells with iron bars. With bare walls and barred doors, those rooms -simply known as “the jail¹⁹”- remained in use until 1968.

In 1976, ground was broken on a modern 48-bed addition to the old county home²⁰. Designed by Muncie architect Bill Cox, the million-dollar, angular structure extended west from the historic infirmary²¹. Unfortunately, the 1915 portion of the complex was abandoned altogether in 1987. 

When county commissioners leased the newer addition to an Indianapolis organization, the contract obligated them to tear down the old landmark after it was deemed unsafe. Demolition came in 1996, and it erased the last physical trace of the old infirmary²². Officials intended to memorialize the structure, but those plans never came to be²³.

Today, little remains to hint at the site’s past. The campus now holds a handful of old trees, the 1978 addition -still standing and operated by Envive Healthcare- and an enormous cell phone tower. Just to the east sits Delaware County’s highway garage, while a sheriff’s shooting range occupies the rear of the old infirmary grounds.

To my mind, the lasting legacy of the old Delaware County Infirmary isn’t any of those modern intrusions, though. Instead, it may be the small, forgotten cemetery tucked away at the far edge of the property unknown to nearly everyone.

That’s the piece that still matters most to me, and I’d like to find it, or at least spearhead an effort to. I briefly brought it up when I was on the board of the Delaware County Historical Society, but it would be worth making another effort.

Fortunately, I have an idea of where the infirmary cemetery lies. My notion is based on old descriptions, aerial photos, the lay of the land, and what didn’t get disturbed as the site changed hands. If so, modern tools like ground-penetrating radar could help confirm what the records no longer show! Fortunately, Ball State has one. Maybe a partnership could be forged among local institutions.

In my mind, memorializing the county home cemetery would give names, dignity, and presence back to people who were all but erased. If the infirmary once stood for care in life, then finding its burial ground may be the last act of care we can offer our forgotten friends and family in death.

If this new county infirmary project is about anything, it’s about paying attention- to what survives, to what’s been erased, and to what still quietly waits beneath our feet. Delaware County’s old infirmary no longer stands, but its story remains. It’s layered with compassion, tragedy, resilience, and neglect. 

I don’t really remember the oldest part of the Delaware County Infirmary, but those who had little in life still rest without names or markers somewhere behind the cell towers and modern buildings. Finding that cemetery wouldn’t change the past, but it could change how we acknowledge it. At the very least, it would say that these lives mattered!  For a place built to care for those society otherwise left behind, honoring what once stood and what may still be buried under its soil feels like the most fitting legacy of all.

Sources Cited
1 Haimbaugh, F.D. (1924). History of Delaware County Indiana. Historical Publishing Company [Indianapolis]. Book. 
2 (See footnote 1). 
3 1852 Delaware County, Indiana. (1852, January 28). Deed Book 14. p. 262.
4 Helm, T.B. (1881). History of Delaware countyounty, Indiana. Kingman Brothers [Chicago]. Book. 
5 (See footnote 1). 
6 (See footnote 1). 
7 Roysdon, K. & Walker, D. (1996, August 10). Graveyard site a mystery. The Muncie Star Press. p. 6. \
8 The New Infirmary (1891, June 18). The Muncie Morning News. p. 1. }
9 County Poor Farm Self-Supporting (1906, March 3). The Muncie Star. p. 5. 
10 (See footnote 1). 
11 Walker, D. & Roysdon, K. (1996, August 10). Infirmary fire claimed 13. The Muncie Star Press. p. 5. 
12 Three bodies Recovered From Infirmary Four More Probably In Smouldering Ruins (1915, March 23). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 1. 
13 Kettle of Bones Taken From The Infirmary Ruins (1915, March 26). The Muncie Star. p. 1. 
14 Walker, D., & Roysdon, K. (1996, August 10). Infirmary fire claimed 13. The Muncie Star Press. p. 5.
15 (See footnote 7). 
16 Appropriate $45,000 For New Addition (1915, June 4). The Muncie Star. p. 14. 
17 Plans For Co. Infirmary Are Moving Forward (1915, June 9). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 10. 
18 Roysdon, K. & Walker, D. (1996, August 10). Demolition of county home a reminder of past troubles. The Muncie Star Press. p. 1. 
19 Walker, D. & Roysdon, K. (1996, August 10).  Demolition of county home a reminder of past troubles. The Muncie Star Press. p. 1. 
20 Shepherd, S. (1976, May 3). County Home project bids over estimates. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 1. 
21 Groundbreaking at County Home (1976, May 25). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 7. 
22 Roysdon, K. (1995, January 30). It’s decided: Old county home will be razed. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 2. 
23 Roysdon, K. (2000, September 2). Work remains undone. The Muncie Star Press. p. 1.