My Genealogy Hound

J. R. Dunham, manager of the county poor farm, has been in charge since September, 1879. The farm of 112.5 acres was purchased by the county in 1872, and Mr. Dunham is its third manager, and has proved very efficient. There was only a small log house on the premises at first, but there are now three good frame buildings, and contain twenty-four inmates, nine of whom are insane and under guard. The average cost of maintaining the patients at first was 25 cents per day. Under Mr. Pierce it became 22 ½ cents, and under Mr. Dunham’s management it has been reduced to 16 ½ cents. Three hundred dollars a year is paid for rent, which nearly clothes the poor of the county. Mr. Dunham was born in Bedford County, Tenn., October 9, 1829, and was the second of nine children born to Henry and Sarah (Cunningham) Dunham, who were also Tennesseeans. The father was a farmer, and in 1833 came to Missouri and settled in Randolph County, where he died in 1839, his wife’s death occurring one week later. J. R. Dunham received a limited education, and at the age of twenty years began farming for himself. In 1853 he was married, in Moniteau Co., Mo., to Miss Mary Gammon, a native of East Tennessee, by whom he had seven children, only one of whom is living, Anna. Those deceased are: John, who died at the age of ten months; Henry, in 1861, at the age of four years; Walter, died when five months old; William, at the age of ten days; Rosa, died in 1875, aged four years; and Sarah, who died in infancy. Mr. Dunham served for nine months under Price in the late war, and since that time has voted the Democratic ticket. He and wife are members of the Baptist Church. Mrs. Dunham’s parents, Noah and Ellen (James) Gammon, were natives and farmers of East Tennessee. They came to what is now Moniteau County in 1843, and entered land in Walker Township, on which they remained until 1866, when they removed to California. He was city recorder for some time, and died in 1879, preceded by his wife in 1852.