Ep. 74: History of Rolling Hills Asylum

This week we discuss the history of Rolling Hills Asylum, which was known as the Genesee County Poor Farm while it was in operation. Learn about the historical context that shows why poorhouses started in New York. Find out about the doctor that exposed the horrific conditions that poor and mentally ill folks were living in. Finally, discover when and why the Genesee County Farm became known as Rolling Hills Asylum.

All sources will be listed at the end of the episode transcript.

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Transcript

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to Behind the Walls of the World’s Psychiatric Hospitals! I’m your host, Dr. Sarah Gallup, and this week we’re headed back to the U.S. for a quick dive on the history of a county poorhouse that has become well-known for its paranormal activity. Now, I noticed in the process of compiling my notes for this series that there really isn’t too much history on this facility. Most of the information out there is about the paranormal activity and ghost hunting and the like. I’ll talk about that in the next episode. For today, I’m going to focus on the history. Since there’s not a lot of information out there, I’ll be providing quite a bit of historical context. So if it feels like we’re not really talking a lot about the facility – well, that’s because there’s not a lot of information about the facility. But hang in there – it should all come together by the end.

My main sources for this episode will be the Rolling Hills Asylum website and the Inmates of Willard website. All sources will be listed at the end of the episode transcript.

Trigger warnings for this episode include outdated, racist, and ableist language and extreme mistreatment of dependent adults.

So come on in and get comfortable as we go behind the walls of Rolling Hills Asylum…

The name Rolling Hills Asylum is a bit of a misnomer. That is a more modernized name for the facility, designed to sound particularly creepy, just like a true haunted house should be. But the truth of the asylum’s history doesn’t need to be exaggerated – it had to have been horrifying to live there.

To get an idea of why this institution was built in the first place, we need to understand the history of the area and the systemic changes that were happening in the early decades of U.S. history.

I’m going to read a really long excerpt from the book New York: A Guide to the Empire State that was originally written in 1940 by the New York State Historical Association. I found this excerpt on the Inmates of Willard website. Although it is quite long (about 12 minutes), it gives an essential historical context for why poorhouses were started.

“Public Welfare – Though privation and hardship were fairly general throughout the Dutch Colonial period, the number of actual dependents was small, and relief, when needed, was administered by the officers of the Dutch Reformed Church. Churches of other denominations were expected to care for their own poor, and in localities lacking a religious organization, relief was a function of the civil authorities. Funds for the poor were raised through church collections, individual donations, and court fines for misdemeanors and violations of the excise laws.

Soon after the organization of the Colonial Government, several sieck-entroosters, minor ecclesiastical functionaries, were sent to the Colony charged with the duty of visiting sick persons in their homes. These were the first social workers in what is now the Empire State.

For the dependent aged, almshouses were established by Dutch Reformed congregations at New Amsterdam, Rensselaerswyck, and other settlements, and a company hospital was erected in New Amsterdam in 1657 to care for sick soldiers and Negroes. Orphanmasters were appointed at New Amsterdam, Beverwyck (Albany), and Wildwyck (Kingston) to protect the interests of propertied widows and orphans, but when the latter became destitute, they were turned over to the care of the deacons.

After the Colony came under English rule, poor relief in the southern counties was regulated by the Duke’s Laws (1665), which made each parish responsible for its own poor and for raising funds by taxation. The few general poor laws enacted were directed against vagabonds, beggars, and others moving from their places of legal settlement. Until formally accepted as an inhabitant of a town, a newcomer might at any time be “warned’ to depart by the authorities. An undesirable was ‘passed on’ from constable to constable until her reached his place of legal settlement or the border of a neighboring colony.

The prevailing attitude toward dependency was stern, cold, and strait-laced; in many places, the pauper was made to wear a brightly colored badge on his sleeve inscribed with a large letter ‘P.’ No attempt was made to segregate the types of dependents; the insane and the physically handicapped, the aged and the young, the inebriates and the sober were housed together. The first public institution for ‘the employing of Poor and Indigent People’ was established in New York City in 1734 and opened two years later under the name ‘House of Correction, Workhouse and Poor House.’ The only method of caring for destitute children was through apprenticeship and indenture, by which children were bound out singly or in groups with the specification that their masters have them taught to read, write, and cipher.

During the Revolutionary War, the local poor relief system broke down in many communities. Refugees from areas controlled by the British or ravaged by raids, not being chargeable to either county or town units, became the first ‘State poor,’ cared for by State commissioners. In the wake of the Revolution a great wave of humanitarian reform surged over the new Nation. Private philanthropic organizations were set up, the most important being the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism established in New York City. A sweeping revision of the penal code in 1796 reduced the number of crimes punishable by death from thirteen to two and established the first State prison. Corporal punishment, such as confinement in the stocks, whipping, and branding, was gradually abolished. Reforms were made in the laws against debtors. Public poor relief was completely secularized; the office of overseer of the poor was made elective instead of appointive; and towns too small to maintain individual almshouses were permitted to join others in town unions for the purpose of providing institutional care. Poor funds continued to be raised by local taxation supplemented by income from fines.

Several severe yellow fever epidemics at the turn of the century resulted in such public health measures as systematized quarantine, general sanitation, isolation of patients, and appointment of public health officers. The Ladies’ Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children was established in New York City in 1797 to help surviving dependents of fever victims. An offshoot of this Society founded the first orphan asylum in 1806. But child aid grew slowly, and for many years dependent children were herded indiscriminately with all other classes of dependents.

In the same period the insane were recognized as a separate social problem. In September 1792 the first mental patient was admitted into the newly opened New York Hospital, but treatment remained custodial rather than curative. The Bloomingdale Asylum, opened in 1821 as a separate unit of the New York Hospital, was the first institution for the insane in the State operated primarily on therapeutic principles. It received annual State grants for many years. The New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb-second of its kind in the United States-was incorporated in 1817 and later received State grants.

In 1824 the secretary of state, J.V.N. Yates, published under legislative authority the first State-wide poor law survey, which revealed that besides almshouse and home relief, the indigent were being cared for under the ‘contract system,’ whereby the dependent poor were let out to householders at a fixed rate, and under the ‘auction system,’ whereby the poor were bid off to persons offering to maintain them for the lowest cost. After summing up the chaos, cruelty, and waste arising from prevailing poor law practices, Yates recommended a State-wide system of county poorhouses, where all paupers were to be maintained at county expense, the able-bodied to be set to suitable work and the children to be given adequate education.

As a result of the Yates report the legislature in 1824 passed ‘An act to provide for the establishment of county almshouses’; but so many exceptions were allowed that, although poorhouses were established in all but four counties during the ensuing decade, the attempt to put the county system into effect eventually collapsed and relief was returned to local responsibility. However, the indiscriminate herding of dependents resulted in abuses so shocking as to lead to constant pressure for proper classification and segregation of different groups. The earliest effective changes took place in the field of child welfare. In 1824 the House of Refuge for Juvenile Delinquents, the first juvenile reformatory in the country, was established in New York City by the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents. It was supported mainly by State funds. In 1849 the Western House of Refuge (now the State Agricultural and Industrial School at Industry) was opened in Rochester as the first American juvenile reformatory under complete State financial and administrative control. The Asylum for Idiots (now the Syracuse State School) was established in 1851, the first of its kind to be opened under State ownership and control.

Several other important child welfare organizations were founded in the middle years of the nineteenth century, including the New York Juvenile Asylum (now the Children’s Village at Dobbs Ferry) and the Children’s Aid Society, which inaugurated the placing-out movement. The Thomas Asylum for Orphan and Destitute Indian Children was organized in 1855 under private auspices and taken over by the State in 1875. By 1866 the total number of privately managed orphanages exceeded 60.

A distinctive feature of this period was the development of State institutional facilities for the mentally and physically handicapped. The State Lunatic Asylum at Utica was established in 1836 and opened in 1843. The New York City Lunatic Asylum (now Manhattan State Hospital), founded in 1834, was the first municipal mental hospital in this country. The blind had received separate care as early as 1831, with the founding of the New York Institution for the Blind. In 1865 the State Institution for the Blind (now the New York State School for the Blind) was established at Batavia to serve the western counties.

Mass immigration in the nineteenth century brought in its wake grave problems of public health and poor relief. Large numbers of immigrants needed medical care upon landing; many were poverty-stricken; others were mulcted of their meager savings by thieves and swindlers. Without friends or funds, they soon found themselves drawn into the slums or the poorhouse, or were obliged to engage in the meanest forms of work for low wages and under conditions that exposed them to vice, disease, and death. Alarmed by the growing hordes of indigent aliens, poor-law officials demanded State and Federal legislation to protect local communities. In 1847 a State board was created to help and advise newcomers and to reimburse local communities for immigrant relief. Funds for this purpose came out of head taxes and indemnity bonds imposed on immigrants. The agitation against ‘alien pauperism’ culminated in 1882 in an act of Congress regulating immigration and containing a provision intended to exclude persons likely to become public charges.” (1864 Dr. Willard’s Poor House Report by County”)

It was in the context of the 1824 legislation for counties to provide poorhouses for their residents that the story of what is now known as Rolling Hills Asylum begins. On the Rolling Hills Asylum website, Genesee County historian Susan L. Conklin writes this history of the founding of the facility:

“On December 4, 1826, the Genesee County Board of Supervisors met in Bethany for the purpose of establishing a County Poorhouse. A brick building, originally a stagecoach tavern, located near the corner of the Bethany Center Road and Raymond Road was the site selected, as it represented the geographical center of the county. (Wyoming County wasn’t established until 1841.)

This official announcement, dated December 9, 1826,

appeared in an issue of the Batavia Times newspaper:

“Notice is hereby given that the Genesee County Poorhouse will be ready for the reception of paupers on the first day of January 1827 … The Overseers of the Poor of the several towns of the County of Genesee are requested, in all cases of removal of paupers to the county poorhouse, to send with them their clothing, beds, bedding and such other articles belonging to the paupers as may be necessary and useful to them.”

The following were eligible for assistance:

Habitual drunkards, lunatics (one who by disease, grief or accident lost the use of reason or from old age, sickness or weakness was so weak of mind as to be incapable of governing or managing their affairs), paupers (a person with no means of income), state paupers (one who is blind, lame, old or disabled with no income source) or a vagrant.

In 1828 Genesee County constructed a stone building attached to the Poorhouse for the confinement of lunatics and a repository for paupers committed for misconduct. The insane were also housed at the County Home until 1887 when the Board of Supervisors agreed to send “persons suffering with acute insanity" elsewhere in the state.

The Genesee County Poor Farm aka The County Home, was a self sufficient working farm and woods, spanning over 200 acres, providing food and fuel, thus the actual cost to care for each person was low, about $1.08 per week per resident, back in 1871.

Residents were referred to as inmates (no matter why they were housed there) and those physically able-bodied would work the farm and many actually built and made wares to sell to help offset some of the living expenses. The raising of Holsteins, pigs, draft horses, chickens and ducks, raising vegetable and fruit crops, canning jams, jellies, meats, were all part of the chores, there was a bakery and even a wood shop where coffins were made (for use as needed and for sale to local mortuaries).

The County would bury those who had no family, and records indicate there was once a cemetery located on the property, but the particulars are almost nonexistent.” (Conklin)

Conklin goes on to tell a little bit of the story of the cemetery that was on the grounds, but I’ll return to that later. For now, I want to pick up in 1864. By this point, it was clear to administrators and medical officials that the conditions of the county poorhouses around New York were in terrible shape. Inmates were living in horrific conditions and being treated criminally. But there weren’t many options for places to go. There was the New York City Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island that had opened in 1839 (“Blackwell’s Island”) and the Lunatic Asylum in Utica, which had opened in 1843 (“Utica Psychiatric Center”). But these facilities weren’t enough to house all the people deemed “mad” in New York.

Enter Dr. Sylvester D. Willard, who was the Secretary of the Medical Society of the state of New York at the time. I don’t know what the role of the secretary of the medical society was, but he ended up being authorized to investigate the condition of the county poorhouses around New York state. If this sounds familiar, it’s because we discussed Dr. Willard way back in episodes 24 and 25 in the series on Willard State Hospital.

In his letter to the New York legislature, Dr. Willard discusses the success of the Utica asylum but points out that it is insufficient to house everyone who needs care. He also outlines the importance of conducting the study and investigating the conditions of institutions around the state:

In order to make room for recent cases, and such as afford promise of relief or cure by treatment, and those are constantly urging for admission, and humanity demands that they shall not be turned away, it becomes necessary for that institution to return to the counties by which they have been supported at the asylum, many chronic and incurable cases. Such insane persons are therefore sent to the county poor houses where others are confined who have never been able to gain admittance at the State Asylum, or who have been untimely removed for new patients. In many of the county houses there are a large number of the insane inmates who have never been sent by the authorities to the asylum. Indeed the law gives county officers no authority to send cases of more than one year’s duration to the State Asylum. In many instances the counties have had little or no disposition to send recent cases there, prompted by the idea that they can be supported at a less expense in a county poor house. The State has grown immensely in population, and in due ratio the number of its insane have increased, until its State Asylum is filled to its utmost capacity, and the tide of its overflow has set back upon county poor houses; and they too, have become filled to an excess of human misery, degradation and wretchedness that wrings a cry of distress from the heart of every philanthropist. These evils have become so great and so glaring, that they are a stigma upon the class of our charitable institutions where insane poor are confined, upon our communities, and upon the fair name of our State. It is in vain that we any longer attempt to conceal the true condition of lunatics in county poor houses, or to pacify the pleadings of humanity in their behalf, with the excuse that a great war is involving our public attention, and that we cannot remedy their condition now. Humanity will listen to no such false representation. Truth will not bear testimony to such an excuse. The facts elicited by this investigation are too appalling to be forgotten, and too important to be thrown aside. Repulsive to our sensibilities, as many of the facts set forth are, the investigation was made in the summer when the suffering from want of care and clothing is less than in winter, and consequently it does not show the state of things as bad as they really exist at some seasons of the year. (“New York State County Poor Houses”)

It really sounds to me like Dr. Willard genuinely cares about this issue. It would have been easy at the time to just go along with what was being done – after all, these were society’s “undesirables.” But everyone deserves humane care and anything less reflects poorly on the leaders of the state.

So what Dr. Willard did is he sent off a questionnaire to each of the poorhouses, almshouses, insane asylums, and other institutions in the state and, well, hoped that whoever was in charge of them provided honest answers. Yes, he did go around to most of them to see the conditions for himself, but that wasn’t possible for all of them.

His questionnaire had 68 items for superintendents of each facility to answer. I won’t go through every question, of course, but here’s a sampling. And if you’ve listened to Episode 24 on Willard State Hospital, I specially chose different questions than I selected for that episode.

Some questions are about the buildings themselves:

21. Is the building in which the insane are confined of wood or brick?

22. How many stories?

23. What is the height of each story?

24. What is the length and width of each room?

25. What is the size of each window?

Other questions are about patient (or, rather, inmate) demographics:

1. What is the population of your county house?

56. Are any of the pauper insane cared for in private families?

57. Does your county take care of recent cases?

62. What is the greatest number [of inmates] ever there confined?

But most are about the management of inmates and the conditions in which they live:

13. What other means [other than mechanical restraints and handcuffs] are resorted to for controlling and managing the violent insane?

34. What is the greatest number, in any case, who sleep in one bed? 

36. How many sleep on straw alone, without bedsteads or beds?

58. What changes of under garments have each of the insane?

59. How many have shoes?

60. How many had neither shoes nor stockings during the winter?

[And probably most importantly] 68. Does each case receive care with reference to its ultimate recovery? (“New York State County Poor Houses”)

After Dr. Willard had collected all of the responses – except from the four counties that didn’t have poorhouses – he was disturbed, to say the least, by the conditions poor and mentally ill folks were living in.

The investigation shows gross want of provision for the common necessities of physical health and comfort, in a large majority of the poor houses where pauper lunatics are kept. Cleanliness and ablution are not enforced, indeed, very few of the institutions have even the conveniences for bathing, and many of the buildings are supplied inadequately with water. In a few instances the insane are not washed at all, and their persons besmeared with their own excrements, are unapproachably filthy, disgusting and repulsive. In some violent cases the clothing is torn and strewed about the apartments, and the lunatics continue to exist in wretched nakedness, having no clothing, and sleeping upon straw, wet and filthy with excrements, and unchanged for several days. The number of these cases may not be large, but there should be none such. There exists gross inattention to ventilation, and in frequent instances these unfortunates are denied even the fresh air of heaven. The buildings in many instances are but miserable tenements and were erected without any regard to ventilation. It is impossible from their very construction and arrangement to procure uniformity of pure air, and thus another great principle of health is denied. It will be observed that the returns not unfrequently mention the air of the rooms as “foul,” “bad,” “unhealthy.”

In some of these buildings the insane are kept in cages, and cells, dark and prison like, as if they were convicts, instead of the lifeweary, deprived of reason. They are in numerous instances left to sleep on straw like animals, without other bedding, and there are scores who endure the piercing cold and frost of winter without either shoes or stockings being provided for them – they are pauper lunatics, and shut out from the charity of the world where they could at least beg shoes. Insane, in a narrow cell, perhaps without clothing, sleeping on straw or in a bunk, receiving air and light and warmth only through a diamond hole through a rough prison like door, bereft of sympathy and of social life, except it be with a fellow lunatic, without a cheering influence, or a bright hope of the future! Can any picture be more dismal, and yet it is not overdrawn. (“New York State County Poor Houses”)

In comparison, Dr. Willard’s findings from the Genesee County Poorhouse seems relatively unremarkable – of course, we have to remember that these are the reports from the superintendents, not necessarily from Dr. Willard himself:

“The building in which the insane poor of Genesee county are kept is of stone, two stories high, with ceilings of eight feet. The rooms are 8 x 10, with windows 2 1/2 x 4 1/2. It has a supply of water and two bath tubs, and is heated by a furnace in the basement. The number of insane during the year was thirty-five, but only thirty-two were in confinement at the present time. Nine of the number were able to do labor. Six of the males do out of door work. The others were severally amused in singing, reading, playing pennies, swinging, &c. Twenty were destructive to their clothing, and eleven required occasional restraint by the use of straight jackets. They are all required to bathe twice a week, and to wash hands and face daily. The institution has iron bedsteads fastened to the floor. Only one sleeps on straw without proper bedding. The food, which appears sufficient, is carried to each by an attendant on plates. There is an effort to separate the violent from the mild cases. The sexes are separated, and a person (not a pauper) is employed in their care. The rooms are clean, and the ventilation said to be good. The county receives recent cases. Fourteen cases were admitted in 1863, and seven up to August, 1864. The building is designed to accommodate thirty-five patients. One escaped during the year who was not returned, and six were removed by their friends. Fifteen of the cases were filthy in habit, and nearly all the cases are excitable. Attention is directed to the ultimate cure of each case.” (“1864 Genesee County Poor House”)

He ends his letter to the legislature by outlining the economic benefits of providing additional resources (what I would call the boring but important part) and then ends with an impassioned plea:

I have thus accomplished the services imposed upon me by the Legislature of 1864. In presenting the result of my labors to your honorable body, I have to beg that you will accept it as a plea from those who, deprived of reason, locked in filthy cells, breathing impure air, neglected and destitute, cannot approach you; I present it in behalf of my profession, who are constant in urging the claims of humanity; I present it as a duty I owe the State of New York; nay, more; I present it as a duty I owe the Divine Master, who, when upon earth, healed the sick, visited the poor, and made the lunatic to appear clothed in his right mind.

Very respectfully your obedient servant,

SYLVESTER D. WILLARD. Secretary of the Medical Society.” (“New York State County Poor Houses”)

As a result of D. Willard’s long investigation, additional state facilities were opened to alleviate crowding and provide treatment for the mentally ill. In 1869, the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane opened but quickly became overcrowded. For more information on this facility, you can listen to episodes 24 to 29 for stories about the history and people of this hospital.

As I mentioned at the very beginning of this episode, there isn’t a lot of information on the Genesee County Poor Farm other than its current haunted lore. We know that it remained the Genesee County Poor Farm until 1938 when an infirmary for tuberculosis patients was added (“Rolling Hills Asylum”). In 1958, a separate nursing home was added for geriatric patients (“Rolling Hills Asylum”).

The Genesee County Farm remained open until July 20, 1965, when it closed after 138 years (Conklin). The Genesee County Nursing Home remained open for almost 10 years afterward, finally closing in 1974.

And remember the cemetery on the grounds I mentioned earlier? Here’s what Susan L. Conklin says about burials at the poor farm:

The County would bury those who had no family, and records indicate there was once a cemetery located on the property, but the particulars are almost nonexistent. An 1886 Proceeding states “The burying ground we have improved by building a fence in front and grading and leveling the ground as much as could be done without injury to the graves.”

The cemetery for the County Poorhouse has faded away as the stones crumpled, the grass grew and the forest replanted. No one was around to care for those who had so long ago been forgotten. These people, though they were poor, ill and sometime abandoned, do deserve to be remembered. An actual cemetery register or plot map has yet to be discovered.

A memorial site was created in the Genesee County Park and on June 6, 2004 when five headstones, dated from 1887 to 1888, were returned to the County. The Genesee County Historians dedicated a historical marker honoring those who died while living in the County Home from 1827 until the facility was closed in 1974 (residents were relocated to new facilities in Batavia).

In 2010, 36 years after it closed, the Genesee County Farm was resurrected, if you will, as a tourist attraction and paranormal destination (Conklin). This is when it was officially dubbed Rolling Hills Asylum, as it is known today. So it was never actually called Rolling Hills while it was in operation – only afterward.

Next week I will discuss the phenomenon that is Rolling Hills Asylum as an attraction. We’ll talk about the many paranormal investigations that have taken place there, as well as the enduring legends and lore that stem from the history of the County Farm. Even if you’re not into paranormal stuff (cough cough, I’m not), you’ll probably enjoy the stories that at least stem from truth. So stay tuned for that episode!

As always, thank you for listening! You may have seen on the Facebook and Instagram pages that we just passed 75,000 downloads, which is just amazing to me. Thank you so much for being a part of that! Every listen is really important to me.

Extra special thanks this week to Amy for subscribing on Buzzsprout and Katelyn for subscribing on Patreon! Remember you can support the show either on Buzzsprout or on Patreon, but on Patreon you get the extra bonus content, which is always fun. If there’s anything specific that you’d like to see on the Patreon site as bonus content, be sure to let me know. I’m open to ideas.

Thank you so much for listening! And remember the words of Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.” Until next time…

“1864 Dr. Willard’s Poor House Report by County.” Inmates of Willard, 26 Nov. 2014. https://inmatesofwillard.com/2014/11/26/1864-dr-willards-poor-house-report-by-county/

“1864 Genesee County Poor House.” Inmates of Willard, 19 Sept. 2013. https://inmatesofwillard.com/2013/09/19/1864-genesee-county-poor-house/

“Blackwell’s Island (Roosevelt Island), New York City.” National Park Service, 5 Apr. 2021. https://www.nps.gov/places/blackwell-s-island-new-york-city.htm

Conklin, Susan L. “Days Gone By: The Genesee County Poor Farm.” Rolling Hills Asylum, 2024. https://www.rollinghillsasylum.com/about-rha/history

“New York State County Poor Houses – Dr Sylvester D. Willard’s Report 1864.” Inmates of Willard. https://inmatesofwillard.com/new-york-state-county-poor-houses/

“Rolling Hills Asylum.” Visit Genesee NY. https://visitgeneseeny.com/destinations/rolling-hills-asylum