The Ontario County Poor House serving the town of Naples, NY

by Kenton Poole

In 1789, New York State created the first poor house to accommodate those who through disease, misfortune, financial failure, were no longer able to support themselves and had no family or resources to turn to. The Ontario County Poor House built in Hopewell stood where the Ontario County Government Center now sits, and was once a very large farm. Every county in New York State was required by law to maintain a poor house.

As you will see by the list (below) of Naples Town Residents buried there, I would surmise that most suffered from the economic instability following the Civil War. A rise in interest rates for borrowed money, the withdrawal of farm subsidies, a fall in food prices, all combined with an aging population, made farming impossible for small farmers. Those who had no alternatives found themselves in the “Poor House.”

The Ontario County Poor House, like Willard Psychiatric Center, attempted to defray its costs by having the ”inmates” work the farm. Most had come from a farm background so this was not unfamiliar work. Not only did they put food on the institutional table which housed up to a 100 people at any given time, farm products were sold on the open market to raise funds.

Behind the farm was a cemetery. By a stroke of clerical fortune we know who was buried there. Because they were “poor" there were no headstones nor is there an existing burial map indicating where they were interred. Those who died and had fought in the Civil War were given marker stones and they are still standing to this day. Over time, those with treatable specific maladies were transferred to more appropriate facilities, leaving those who were truly indigent to work on the farm. By 1966, Ontario County Social Services had developed more appropriate and less costly services to aid those in need and the facility was closed.

Listed below are those from the Town of Naples who are buried at the Ontario County Poor House Cemetery. It is my hope that this may help a few find relatives who disappeared.

Name                 Age    death date

Carroll, Sall            67    6/5/1885

Ellsworth, Robert         75        10/3/1891

Ellsworth Mary Ann      49        12/18/1886

Ellsworth Stewart         82        8/16/1938

Gilbert Steve             81        10/30/1882

Johnson, Mary         34       9/2/1896

Johnson, William        71      7/11/1940

McClellan, Edward        64       5/6/1905

Pritchard, Eliza         68       10/30/1888

Rose, Sarah             50       2/4/1890

Rose,Daniel             52       10/10/1883

Rose Sherman         n/a       2/17/1933

Walling, Kate             66       5/30/1903

The first engraved stone was Onsimous Covel also from Connecticut who married Hannah Allen. He died young in 1823. His wife moved west and Onsimous is buried adjacent to his father in law Horace Allen. Onsimous had a many siblings who also settled the area and they are buried in Rose Ridge Cemetery. Sewell and Julia Cleaveland owned the land the cemetery was located on. In that barn, in reasonable weather, one of the Cleaveland daughters started a school. Many of the Cleavelands children are buried here. His son Alexander and his family are buried just outside the lines of the cemetery’s on the original family property. The Cleveland’s weren’t the first to be buried here. According to Freedom Parish in a Naples Record article he is quoted as saying the first was a young black girl from the area. I believe her unmarked sandstone is the large one still standing at the foot of cemetery near Clement Road. Sewell and Julia Cleaveland are reportedly buried in a raised square bed that was once marked by a maple tree. Their actual gravesite is unmarked with a stone. The entire site is less than one quarter acre and adjoins the corner plot that overtime has served as School House #6, a town hall and church. Today it is, as it has been since the School District sold to John Richards of Rochester in 1939 for $175 when Naples School District centralized as a private residence.

The Cemetery is loosely organized by family, with each family sharing a plot. As families inter married this structure started falling apart. Some of the oldest names in Naples such as the Suttons, Clements, Cleavelands, Johnsons, Smiths, Covel, and Hatches are buried here. The cemetery also contains many unaccompanied children who died from the diseases of the time, were buried here and often their families moved on. When Rose Ridge Cemetery opened after the Civil War many families in Naples opted for its closer proximity and the burials tailed off. In fact it is said some were removed from West Hollow and reinterred in Rose Ridge. The last burial was Emma Diedrick Proper in 1942. Her husband Barney, a livestock farmer, who did some caretaking work at the cemetery, was buried there previously in 1923.

In the summer of 2024 Naples Historical Society members and former residents of Naples Ken Poole and David Bloom renovated the cemetery with the permission of the Naples Town Board.

Inventory of residents