B.F. Weber at New Ulm ruled for the county April 20. According to the Redwood County Historical Society (2008), the board had taken possession of the land on May 1, 1899, and planted grain instead of building a poor farm. It can be observed by reading the Redwood County Commissioner’s financial expenses in the meeting minutes that during the time without a poor farm, those in need were either provided for in their own homes or in the homes of others in the community. For example, the following lines appear in the July 8, 1907 proceedings. The following bills were paid in full: However, it was at this meeting in 1907 that the board passed a resolution by unanimous vote to purchase land to build a new home for the county poor. On July 24, 1907, Redwood County purchased twenty five and three quarters acres for three thousand dollars. It wasn’t until a Special Session convening on June 2, 1908 that the County Board accepted a bid of sixteen thousand four hundred fifty dollars for the construction of a county home. Here, records conflict; the Spanish-style home was open for “inmates” either on November 1908 or September 1909. Ole Bollum became the first superintendent of the site in 1912 when he moved into the home with his wife and two children. “It was general practice to keep horses, cows, and chickens, and carry on General Farming” including having a large garden. The home itself could house approximately ten to fifteen “inmates”. Admissions As with many institutions, there was most likely an admission process; however, this documentation as noted above is not currently available. However, it is possible to know something about the admission processes for poorhouses from exploring the current attitudes of the era. The first step in the admission process was likely to be determining the eligibility of applicants as it was believed that “persons and families every way competent to provide for afflicted members of their household seek to place them under public care, as a mere riddance from disagreeable duty or personal responsibility”. The next step in the admission process would be to register an individual, recording “name, age, sex, condition, nativity, ancestry, education, civil relations, personal habits, causes, either immediate or remote, of present condition of dependence, and of anything, everything, in the history of the individual, calculated to direct as well as justify the public