Home Farm

Daniel S. Bietz was born in 1878 in the Ukraine. He immigrated to North Dakota with his parents when he was fifteen. He married Christina Unterseher. She and her family were also immigrants from the Ukraine. Daniel, Christina and their nine children lived on a 640-acre farm called the Happy Home Farm. It was located 75 miles south of the Canadian border and 9 miles southeast of Bowden, North Dakota. The family became Seventh-day Adventists. The children attended church schools and one of the sons became a pastor. This is an account of the family's history and life on the farm.

Many of us grew up hearing our parents exclaim 'you are driving me to the poorhouse!' or remember the card in the Monopoly game which says 'Go to the Poorhouse! Lose a Turn!' Yet most Americans know little or nothing of this institution that existed under a variety of names for approximately three hundred years of American history. Exploring the history of the 'inmates' as well as staff and officials in New England, this book connects contemporary times to the 'poorhouse' history as the homeless shelter, jail, prison, and other institutions again hold millions of poor people under institutional care, sometimes in the very same structures that were poorhouses.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.