A Frugal Man's Fortune Builds a Home for Widows and Orphans
In its Thanksgiving editorial the Statesman counts the city's blessings and buries the biggest news in the middle: Joseph Stubblefield's lifetime savings will endow a home for indigent widows and orphans to the tune of about $135,000.
Through the toil and privation of the late Joseph Stubblefield, who accumulated a fortune by his savings of many years, Walla Walla is to have a home for indigent widows and orphans, which will probably be located at the W. W. Baker home with its forty-acre tract southwest of the city. This institution will have an endowment of about $135,000, and there is reason to hope that in time it will become a great charitable institution, receiving support from the states of Washington and Oregon and having its endowment greatly augmented by donations from other men imitating the philanthropy of grand old Joseph Stubblefield.
“…there is reason to hope that in time it will become a great charitable institution, receiving support from the states of Washington and Oregon…”
Before Social Security, mothers' pensions or anything resembling a public safety net, a widowed mother's roof depended on private bequests like this one — and on how generously a dead man's executors read his will. Stubblefield's $135,000 was an enormous sum in 1903 and still only served a fraction of the widows and orphans who needed a bed; every era discovers the same gap between private charity and universal need.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.