Jacob Culp was related to the other Culps featured on this site. All of them descended from the German couple Christophel Kolb and Maria Caterina Leise. Their name became Culp within a generation, and one of the children of that couple owned the farm that included the hill now known as Culp’s Hill. Jacob was the same generation as Esaias Jesse Culp but not from the same line. Jesse came from Christophel’s son Christian, while Jacob descended through from Christian’s brother Peter.

Of all the Culps in the area, next to Wesley, Jacob is mentioned in the local press more often than nearly all others. Why? From 1858 through the end of his life, Jacob was steward of the Adams County Alms House—that is, he, his wife Margaret Stallsmith, and the majority of their nine children lived on the Alms House property, and Jacob oversaw all affairs.

The intent of alms / poor / work houses was reasonable enough–help provide for people who couldn’t take care of themselves and put them to work doing labor that they could manage. The reality? Not good. In practice, they were a catch all for the criminally insane, the disabled, the poor, the ill with no family to provide for them, and recovering drug and alcohol addicts (yes, there were drug addicts in those days, too). The Adams County Alms House had five buildings for lodging, eating, and, uh, “restraints.” Yes, restraints. Of the five buildings, three were the main centers: one an infirmary, another for the poor and elderly, and the final for the “insane.” An 1886 document refers to orderlies putting difficult inmates into the “dungeon.” Other records indicate that the “very insane” were frequently chained to huge metal balls, possibly for years on end (you may recall two men in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol saying that many people would “rather die” than go to the poor / work houses, which inspired Scrooge’s infamous retort, “They’d better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”).

For the standards of the day, Jacob was considered an efficient, frugal, and effective steward. Each year, the papers printed a report from county auditors like the following (this particular report was Jacob’s first—he had just taken over from the previous steward who had passed away).

These were repeated in all the local papers each year. But they were hardly the only instance when Jacob might turn up. Buying or selling just about anything might merit him a paragraph on a slow news day, as would the start of construction on a new building. In the following case, the big goings-on were about two hogs.

Jacob’s time at the Alms House would have overlapped with at least some of the time that Captain James Wade spent in the facility where a census record described him in 1860 as “very insane.”

Not only were the audits in Jacob’s tenure clean, reports from other committees frequently praised the clean and “humane” conditions of the facilities and farm. In this instance, the local grand jury was convened and had so few criminal cases to consider that they took a tour of the Alms House.

Before his time as steward, Jacob and family lived on East Middle Street, and Jacob was a man about town. He was a blacksmith whose services turned up in papers various times in the 1820s and 1830s. He was also appointed to the town’s Committee of Vigilance. In that era, such a committee was an extra-judicial group of men seeking to enforce laws in areas where law enforcement might be weak. In the North, such committees often participated in abolitionist activities, including helping move the escaped along the Underground Railroad. In the South, such committees were often just slave catchers.

Beyond that, Jacob was at various times an election official, and at least once, he ran for town council.

In 1865, the last audit report of Jacob’s stewardship appeared in the town papers. A few months later, in January 1866, Jacob passed away at the age of 66.