History
Tiffin Home
By Allan B. Kernan
Oct 15, 2003, 16:44

 The Junior Order United American Mechanics National Orphan’s Home, known as the Jr. Home, was significant in American history as an example of self-contained residential institutions that flourished in latter 19th and early 20th century America. The Jr. Home was a place “associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of America’s history.”

The Jr. Home was maintained by The Junior Order of United American Mechanics, an organization which began as the native American Association, a preeminently American society that had it’s origin in the anti-foreign movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Jr. Order of United American Mechanics was organized in May, 1853, in Philadelphia, PA, and quickly grew into a nationwide brotherhood inspired by the principles of Virtue, Liberty, Patriotism. With a total of 2,950 councils, the Jr. Order in 1930 was given the distinction of being called the leading Patriotic Order of the United States.

The Jr. Home Orphanage was established in 1896 and closed in 1944. The orphanage grew from a single farm residence into a self-supporting community, populated by as many as 1,200 residents during its peak years of the 1930-1937 area.

As a self-sufficient community, the complex included a wide range of structures; residence cottages, a chapel, a gymnasium, grade and high schools, a vocational (trade) school, a hospital, a central dining hall, a bank and a post office, a nursery, a library, a laundry, a cannery, a power plant and an administrative building. All structures were brick with stone or concrete trim, except the cannery, which was stucco covered, the greenhouse, which was glass, and the chapel, which was constructed of grey limestone.

By 1930, all the major campus buildings had been erected, numbering approximately forty (40) buildings. The residential cottages were planned according to the three (3) distinct architectural designs over a period of thirty (30) years from 1897 – 1925. Each was sponsored by and named for various state councils of The Junior Order of United American Mechanics.

The self-sufficiency aspect of the Junior Home is evident in the construction of the Kentucky Memorial Hospital in 1908. Until 1928, the Junior Home hospital was the only hospital in the area and was opened to serve the local citizens of Tiffin, Ohio and surrounding communities until 1915. The canning factory was constructed in 1913 to can the surplus fruits and vegetables from the ever-expanding farm. The cannery was valuable to the Home, both financially and educationally, as courses in food preservation were offered as part of the Junior Home Vocational program. In 1920, for example, the canning factory packed 995 cans of pears, 15,140 cans of corn, 2,673 cans of beans, as well as large quantities of tomatoes and kraut. Other vocational training consisted of home economics, auto mechanics, art fiber weaving, baking, cement construction, electrical work, farming, dairying, animal husbandry, greenhouse and garden, laundering, motion picture operation, painting, printing, plumbing, practical nursing, stationery secretary, engineering, shoe repair, woodworking, carpentry, newspaper work, proof reading, instrumental music, sewing, store clerking, and cooking.

The Junior Home campus was approximately 200 acres. Farmland and woods were approximately 448 acres. This complex grew from the original 117 acres and farmhouse purchased in 1896 by The Junior Order of United American Mechanics.

During its' (48) years of operation, The Junior Home had been “Home” to over 5,000 children from over twenty-eight states of these United States of America. It is obvious that with 850 acres and (50) buildings, The Jr. Home was, indeed, a unique experience in the annals of human endeavor.

“We have written of events rather than of people, portraying what has been built, rather than the architect. Architects there have been – many of them – and they have builded, not on the sands of the sea that are soon washed away, but upon the firm rock of human understanding, and that which they have built will long stand as monuments to their endeavors!”