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Dignity,
Decorum and Justice
Mark Texas' Courthouse Histories,
Except for the Fights,
Arsons, Thefts, etc
by Bill Morgan
Page
3
Previous PageOne
Man, One Vote (Maybe Two) |
Why
all the fuss over getting the county-seat designation? It was a magnet for growth.
A town boasting a railroad and a courthouse was the equivalent of today's cities
with a large airport hub and a convention center-sports complex. There's a good
chance that any county seat you visit today has the courthouse because of a bitter,
divisive election or even despite a bitter, divisive election.
A prime
example of the latter is Newton County.
In the late 1800s, Burkeville successfully challenged incumbent Newton for the
seat. Well, not exactly successfully - Burkeville won the election, 114 votes
to 102, but lost, three votes to zero, where it mattered. The sheriff, county
clerk and county treasurer all lived in Newton and refused to move, even after
being fined. Finally, the Texas Legislature called another election. Newton won
this one, but now it was Burkeville's turn to be obstinate: officials living there
refused to surrender county records it had accumulated.
More intrigue:
some unverified accounts have it that Newton citizens sneaked into Burkeville
and captured them under cover of darkness. |
| | The
1916 Blanco County Courthouse in Johnson City
Photo by John Troesser,
Sept. 2000 |
If you
drive along U.S. 281 through Blanco,
you'll see a beautifully restored Second Empire building on the east side of the
highway. It was so impressive that it lasted five years as the courthouse. Johnson
City beat bigger, established Blanco in an 1890 election to move the county
seat. In his book, The Texas Courthouse Revisited, author June Rayfield
Welch reports that he asked the old courthouse's then owner, Mrs. Thurman Roberts,
how the smaller town pulled off such an upset. Her answer: "The dead came out
to vote." Need we be reminded that Johnson City's favorite son, Linden Baines
Johnson, won a 1948 Democratic senatorial primary election amid charges that the
same thing happened in Duvall
County?
A few other examples of county-seat piracy: Citizens of Panola
County seat Pulaski awoke one morning in 1848 to find that folks from Carthage
had stolen all the county records during the night. Carthage became a thriving
little Northeast Texas town; Pulaski became a ghost town; The town of El
Paso trounced Ysleta in an 1884 El Paso County seat election by turning
out seven times more votes than it had voters. Real people voted, too - they happened
to be Mexican citizens crossing the border to work or shop. El Paso vote-getters
stood at the frontera and signed them up as soon as they stepped on U.S. soil;
And a story long in circulation tells of Henrietta and Cambridge both claiming
to be the Clay County seat through the late 1880s. They supposedly hit on a more
civilized way of settling the issue - they held a mule race with the winner getting
the courthouse. |
| LaVaca
County Courthouse
Photo by John Troesser, 2002 |
When
it comes to county-seat wars, none hold a cannon to Lavaca.
An election between Hallettsville
and Petersburg on June 14, 1852 set off a chain reaction. Loser Petersburg contested
the election, then several of its citizens stormed into the courtroom during the
hearing and tore up the ballots. The presiding judge resigned on the spot. Two
more elections followed with Hallettsville winning both. Petersburg refused to
surrender any county documents, so Hallettsville officials went to get them.
Instead, they got arrested and jailed. When they were released they rallied 200
Hallettsville partisans (one account says 500) and invaded Petersburg to free
the hostage court papers. They found Petersburg folks cooking up a barbecue feast,
a little quick on the draw in celebrating their victory. The surprised and outnumbered
Petersburg revelers fled in disarray and Hallettsville forces returned as home
as conquering heroes, with the spoils of victory in tow - both the county records
and the barbecue.
Anybody
Got a Match?
What's in a Name?
The Artists in Brick, Stone and
Mortar
But
arson was hard to beat for reliable courthousetrashing. When the courthouse wars
heated up, so did a lot of courthouses. I counted 106 Texas courthouses destroyed
or badly damaged by fire from the first in 1848 to the latest in 2001. next
page |
©
Bill Morgan
June 9, 2005
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