USA > Indiana > Fayette County > History of Fayette County, Indiana : her people, industries and institutions > Part 16
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PRESENT COURT HOUSE.
The present court house has had a curious history-a history which has had few parallels in the state. It is the usual custom in most counties to tear down a court house when it has outlived its usefulness, but the thrifty people of Fayette county have not been so prodigal of their public money. When the first court house of 1822 and the subsequent two small county buildings were replaced by a substantial brick building in 18.49, the county had a court house which was one of the finest then in the state. This second court house, like a majority of the court houses of that period, also contained the jail as well as the sheriff's residence. The contract for its erection was let to John Elder, of Indianapolis, in the amount of $20.000, and he agreed to have it ready for occupancy by October 12, 1849. It was a handsome structure, with a wing on either side of the main body of the building. The front was adorned with six large columns, which were set on an extended front of the first story and extended to the gable of the building. From an artistic view-
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point the 1849 structure was a more handsome building than the present one.
This second court house was of sufficient size to meet all the demands of the county for several years without any additions or alterations. However, by the latter part of the seventies the local newspapers began to make fugitive references to the need of a new jail and court house, or at least a new jail. The agitation for increased quarters for county purposes finally resulted in the county commissioners ordering the construction of a jail and the remodel- ing of the court house. The jail was completed in the spring of 1881 and as soon as the prisoners were transferred from the cells in the court house to the new jail. the part of the court house formerly used for jail and resi- dence purposes was remodeled into offices. There were a few other minor changes made in the interior part of the court house, while its external appear- ance remained as originally constructed.
Nineteen years later the court house was completely overhauled and given its present appearance. It was at first proposed to tear down the old 1849 structure and erect a new building, but it was found possible to utilize the old building in its entirety-excepting the semi-Gothic spire-and this plan was finally adopted. The present court house therefore is nothing but the 1849 building with a few additions and the whole faced with new brick. An examination of the two photographs will show the difference between the 1849 building and the same after it was remodeled in 1890.
A granite block imbedded in the northeast corner of the court house informs the passerby when the building was given its present appearance, who was the architect and contractor, and who constituted the board of county commissioners. This tablet reads :
REMODELED A. D. 1890
O. A. MARTIN.
T. J. CALDWELL.
F. Y. THOMAS, Commissioners.
W. S. KAUFMAN, Architect.
DOWNS, READY & Co., Contractors.
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FAYETTE COUNTY, INDIANA.
FIRST COUNTY JAIL.
At a special meeting of the county commissioners, held March 6, 1819, the question of the erection of a county jail was favorably discussed and it was ordered that such a building should be built according to the following plans :
There shall be a jail built and erected on the public square on which the seat of justice is established, in the town of Connersville, in and for the county of Fayette, and on the west side of an alley running through the public square, nearly in a north and south direction, at or next to where the school house now stands; which said jail shall be hnilt on the following plan: To be built with logs thirty feet long by sixteen, hewn to a square twelve inches thick; two partition walls of logs of the same size; floor and loft to be laid of logs the same size aforesaid, the middle room to be twelve feet in the clear, the other two'rooms-seven feet each in the clear; the logs out of which said jail is to be built to be of good sound oak, cherry, red elm. honey locust, or ash timber; the logs when said jail is raised, to be let in by a halt dove-tail in such a manner as to let the logs as near together as conveniently can be; the upper and lower floor to be laid so as the timbers will touch from end to end; to be under-framed with good stone, one foot under ground and one foot above the surface of the ground; each room of said jail to be ceiled inside, except the under part of the upper floor, with oak plank an inch and a half in thickness, well seasoned, and not to exceed twelve inches in width, and to be well spiked with iron spikes at least four inches in length and not less than eleven in each plank ; said jail to be at least nine feet between the floors, and one round of logs above the upper floor, as before mentioned. on which upper round of logs the rafters shall so far be projected as to give an eave twelve inches clear of the wall; said jail to be cov- ered with poplar joint shingles not exceeding eighteen inches in length; two ontside doors to be made of oak plant, one inch and a half in thickness, well doubled and spiked with spikes at least four inches in length, to be placed not to exceed four inches apart and clinched in the inside of each door: each door to be two feet in width, two iron bars to be fixed to each outside door, which bars to be one-half inch by two inches, one end of each bar to be fastened to the logs on each side of the door by a staple, and the other end to be locked to a staple on the opposite side of the door; one window to be in each room, twelve inches by eighteen in size, iron grates, of an inch and a quarter in size, fixed in each window, two inches apart, said grates to be well plastered in at least three inches on the upper and lower part of each of said windows; said jail doors to be well hung with good and sufficient strap hinges; the whole of the work on said jail to be done in a workmanlike manner.
The building of this jail is to be set up and offered at public sale and outcry to the lowest bidder at the public square in the town of Connersville on the 13th of this instant | March 13, 1819] to be completed by the first of September next at the expense of the county.
The sheriff was commissioned to represent the county in the letting of the contract. Jonathan John was the successful bidder and the building was completed within the time specified. The jail was duly examined and accepted by the county commissioners in August, 1819, and the contractor was allowed seven hundred and sixty-four dollars for its construction.
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FAYETTE COUNTY, INDIANA.
SECOND JAIL.
The first jail served well its purpose for a few years, but, with the gen- eral trend of progress, a more substantial building was needed. The agita- tion for such a structure began in the spring of 1834 and in May of that year the county commissioners offered a prize of ten dollars to the person submitting the best plans for a jail of three rooms. John Sample, Jr., was awarded the prize. There seems to have been a difference of opinion con- cerning the erection of a new jail, because at the fall term of the circuit court the judges recommended the refitting of the old jail according to plans sub- mitted by Elijah Corbin. However, this recommendation was not heeded, for in November, 1834. George Frybarger and Gabriel Ginn were appointed superintendents to supervise the building of a brick jail, to be a story and a half high, and to have three apartments, two below and one above. The building stood on the south side of the public square and was erected by Philip Mason at a cost of eight hundred dollars.
THIRD JAIL AND FIRST SHERIFF'S RESIDENCE.
In January, 1849, the court house and the clerk and recorder's office ( second) were sold to .A. B. Conwell for five hundred and seventy-five dol- lars and the jail to Sherman Scofield for ninety-six dollars. The old court honse bell was sold to the Presbyterian church for one hundred and seventeen dollars.
The second court house, the third jail and the first jailer's residence were all combined in the one building erected in the summer of 1849 by John Elder, of Marion county. Indiana, at a cost of twenty thousand dollars. The center apartment was occupied by the jail and the jailer's residence. There were six cells for prisoners, who could be taken to and from the court through a rear passage hy a door entering immediately into the court room.
FOURTII JAIL AND SHERIFF'S RESIDENCE.
In 1881, improvements were made upon the interior of the court house and the space that had been utilized for the jail was converted into rooms for the use of the county officials. But previous to the remodeling, work had been started on the new jail located on Fourth street, directly opposite the court house. The building, erected by J. W. Perkinson, of Indianapolis, was completed in the spring of 1881 at a total cost of fourteen thousand nine
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hundred dollars. The rear of the building forms the jail; underground is the dungeon, consisting of a cell about ten feet square. The jail contains ten cells, four on the lower floor and six on the upper, two of which are for women.
BENEVOLENT INSTITUTIONS.
One of the most striking evidences of our Christian civilization is the care and protection which is extended to those who, for one reason or another, are unable. to care for themselves. The state of Indiana provides schools for its blind, its deaf and dumb, its feeble-minded and the orphans of its soldiers and sailors; it provides institutions for the insane, for the epileptic, and for those whose deeds have temporarily placed them in such a position that the demands of society necessitate their, incarceration for definite periods of time.
While the state thus cares for its dependents, defectives and delinquents, each county of the state has its particular institutions of this character main- tained at the expense of the county. From the beginning of the history of Fayette county it has had its share of dependent people and one of the first acts of the county commissioners was to appoint overseers of the poor and provide means for taking care of the indigent. This relief was a mat- ter largely of township supervision at first, the county not having an asylum of any kind to honse these unfortunates.
In 1824 the General Assembly passed an act which provided for a more uniform system of taking care of the poor. This act of January 30, 1824, set forth the following provisions :
Section 1. That the commissioners of the several counties shall, at their first or second session in each and every year, nominate and appoint two substantial inhabitants of every township within their respective counties to be overseers of the poor of such township.
Section 2. It shall be the duty of the overseer of the poor every year to cause all poor persons who have or shall hereafter become a public charge to he farmed out, on contracts to be made on the first Monday in May annually, in such manner as the said overseers of the poor shall deem best calculated to promote the general good.
Fayette county followed this law in all particulars for the following decade, but the experience of the various counties of the state-and Fayette was one of them-showed that the "farming out" system, as it was generally called, was not conducive to the best interests of society. This method of caring for the poor was a development of the old indenture system, with. modifications of the apprentice system. This system actually sold the poor to the highest bidder and left the poor creatures to the mercy of their owner.
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FAYETTE COUNTY, INDIANA.
The whole system of poor relief was changed in the early thirties, Fayette county changing its system as the result of the legislative act of Janu- ary 23, 1834, entitled, "An Asylum for the Poor of the Counties of Franklin, Fayette and Union." This act did away forever with the idea of selling the services of a poor man and made provisions for a central home where the poor should live together at public expense, that is, the county as a whole became responsible for its poor and not some few individuals who might exploit the unfortunates in some such manner as the slave owner in the South.
On December 26, 1834, the commissioners of the three counties named met at Fairfield, in Franklin county, for the purpose of jointly erecting an asylum for the poor of the three counties. On January 25, 1835, a farm of two hundred and eight acres located in township 13, range 13, Jackson town- ship, Fayette county, was purchased of Thomas Clark for two thousand and fifty-three dollars. The commissioners met thereon, August 10, 1835, and agreed to build an asylum which was to be in readiness by May, 1836. The building, which was of brick, was completed in the specified time and the farm let to the highest bidder.
On May 9, 1836. Isaac Gardner, of Union county, was chosen as the superintendent of the institution at a salary of five hundred dollars a year. The first board of directors was composed of Joseph D. Thompson, Martin Williams and Zachariah Ferguson. The paupers of Fayette county were ordered removed from the several townships to the asylum in May, 1836. The maintenance of the asylum was prorated among the three counties in proportion to their voting population. The first year of operation ( 1836) Franklin had 1,800 voters, Fayette had 1,555, and Union had 1.279. The total expense of keeping up the asylum for the year 1836, and up until Febru- ary 9, 1837, amounted to one thousand seven hundred and nine dollars and forty-one cents. From February 9, 1837, until March 6, 1838, the total expense of the asylum was one thousand forty dollars and sixteen cents, of which amount Fayette county's apportionment was three hundred and forty- nine dollars and three cents. The superintendents of the asylum while con- trolled by the three counties, and in the order given, were Isaac Gardner, 1836-40; William Riggsbee, 1840-44: William Barnard, 1844-55: Thomas Curry, 1855-56: Samuel Henderson, 1856.
This joint institution remained in operation for twenty years ( 1836-56), but by the latter year it was felt that better results could be obtained by a separate asylum for each county. Of course, during these two decades each county still extended relief to many poor within their respective counties who
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were not inmates of the asylum, but no longer were they "farmed out" to the highest bidder.
The report of the board of directors of the asylum to the county com- missioners of the three counties on March 3, 1856, the last report of the joint asylum, gives the following interesting facts (the record from which this was taken is in the Franklin county, court house at Brookville) :
Number admitted during past year ( 1855) 47
Number dismissed 2.4
Number of deaths 8
Number in asylum February 26, 1856 64
Number from Franklin county 3.5
Number from Fayette county 17
Number from Union county 12
During the winter and early spring of 1855-56 the commissioners of the three counties reached an agreement to dissolve the contract under which they had been maintaining the joint asylum for the previous twenty years. The final settlement of the matter was made on June 12, 1856, the counties then entering into an agreement whereby they were to sell the entire prop- erty and prorate the proceeds, the land and buildings being disposed of to private parties. The counties were, however, to retain possession of the prop- erty until March 10, 1857, at which time the agreement was to go into effect.
In September, 1856, the commissioners of Fayette county purchased a portion of the present infirmary farm adjoining Connersville on the west and at once contracted with Sherman Schofield for the erection of a building to cost seven thousand dollars. It was a two-story brick building and was ready for occupancy in August, 1857. The sixty years which have elapsed since the present site was chosen have seen the farm increased from time to time until it comprised one hundred and seventy-two acres, but some of it was later sold and at the present time it contains only one hundred and forty acres. The building erected in 1856-57 continued in use until 1916, when the present beautiful structure was erected. The contract for the building was let June 16, 1915, to S. E. Miller, a contractor of Connersville, for the sum of $21,992.33. A bond issue of $22,200 was authorized to cover the cost of construction. The building was completed and occupied for the first time in January, 1916.
There have been only nine superintendents of the asylum between 1857 and 1917, the present incumbent of the office being Harry Smith, who was appointed by the county commissioners in 1914 for a term of four years at
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an annual salary of nine hundred dollars. The previous eight superintend- ents served in the following order, the dates of tenure of the first five not being given: William Custer, Peter Reed, William Morse, Jacob Ridge, John B. Salyer, E. M. McCready ( 1887-97), J. M. Sanders ( 1897-1906), and George A. Ostheimer ( 1906-14). The salary in 1897 was fixed at six hundred dollars; in 1906 it was increased to seven hundred dollars; in 1914 it was raised to nine hundred dollars. In every instance the wife of the superintendent has served as matron.
The last financial statement showed that the receipts for 1916 were $1,046:66, while the county still owed $17,233.23 on the new building and its equipment. The inmates vary in number from year to year, but there is usually a sufficient number ot able-bodied men to take care of the farm. The last report ( January 24, 1917) of the superintendent gives the number of inmates as follow: Six males, nine females and six children. The chil- dren are held in the institution until they may be placed in homes.
HOME FOR DEPENDENT CHILDREN.
Fayette county has never maintained a separate home for its dependent children. When the Legislature passed the law in 1901 forbidding the keep- ing of children in the poor asylum, Fayette county decided to place its depend- ent children in homes in other counties rather than erect a separate building for their housing. The law made provision for such a procedure, it being very evident that many counties would not have a sufficient number of dependent children to warrant the erection of a special building for their care. For a number of years the county contracted with Mrs. Mary A. Cotton to keep the poor children in her own home. The general supervision of the children is placed in the hands of a county board of charities, appointed by the circuit judge. At the present time ( 1917) the county has contracts with the boards of charities in Delaware, Miami and Marion counties for the care of the dependent children of the county. The home in Miami county is located at Mexico, the homes in the other two counties being at the county seats.
FAYETTE CENTENNIAL MEMORIAL HOSPITAL.
The history of the present city hospital of Connersville may be traced back more than eighteen years and during all of these years there has been some kind of an institution in the city that might be called a sanitarium which also did hospital work. In the nineties there came to Connersville Dr. D. D. McDougall, who opened a sanitarium on Central avenue between
(12)
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FAYETTE COUNTY, INDIANA.
Fourth street and Fifth street. He was not a regular practicing physician, but had been trained in a Battle Creek (Michigan) sanitarium and seemed to have been well qualified to conduct such an institution as he proposed. He made free use of electricity, massaging, baths and such treatments as are now associated with mechano-therapy. He installed electric machines as soon as their efficacy was demonstrated, and, if statements of persons treated by him are to be credited, he was well worthy of the extensive patronage he enjoyed.
Doctor McDougall continued in charge of his private sanitarium until about 1903, when he associated himself with a group of Seventh-Day Ad- ventists, most of whom were non-residents of Connersville, in an association for the purpose of establishing a permanent sanitarium. A board of direc- tors was constituted to manage the institution, five of whom were members of the religious denomination, while the two remaining members were B. F. Thiebaud and E. D. Johnson, the idea of the promoters of the sanitarium being to establish an institution not only for members of the Seventh-Day Adventist church, but also for the public at large. Shortly after this second institution was put into operation the members of the church conceived the idea of making it the state sanitarium for their church.
With the idea of enlarging the institution and increasing its usefulness the directors planned to secure the present home of the Elmhurst School for Girls, when that building was placed on the market in 1905. This effort, however, proved unsuccessful, the building finally being bid off by George B. Markle, and the Adventists at once gave up the idea of trying to make Con- nersville the home of their proposed state sanitarium. They abandoned the sanitarium in Connersville and selected Lafayette as the site for their insti- tution, and the second chapter in the Fayette sanitarium project thus came to an end. Soon after this change came, Doctor McDougall, who had been prominently identified with the sanitarium work in Connersville for more than ten years, located in Cincinnati, where he is still engaged in sanitarium work.
MOVEMENT FOR PUBLIC HOSPITAL.
When the Seventh-Day Adventists left the city the local organization came to an abrupt end, but it was felt by the citizens that some provision must be made at once to provide some kind of a public hospital. Interested citizens took up the matter and the Commercial Club and others were induced to ask some one who was competent to manage such an institution to locate at Connersville. After considering the offers of several persons, arrange-
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ments were finally concluded with W. P. Schuster, a reputed sanitarium expert, to superintend and conduct a sanitarium and hospital in the former residence of E. W. Ansted. This building was rented from the owner by Mr. Schuster for the nominal sum of twenty-five dollars a month and the manufacturers of the city and the city council agreed to give five hundred dollars each, annually, for charity purposes toward the maintenance of this institution. Schuster remained in charge only two years, disposing of his interests to the Sahli sisters, both of whom had been trained in sanitarium methods at Battle Creek.
The Sahli sisters managed the institution until March 1, 1912. When they assumed control in 1907 the Commercial Club appointed an advisory board to assist in supervising the affairs of the hospital, the manufacturers and city, at the same time, agreeing to continue their annual appropriations of five hundred dollars each. During their regime the institution enjoyed a reasonably prosperous career and maintained a reputable standing for the character of its work. When the Sahli sisters decided to give up the work in the spring of 1912 the citizens of the city, under the leadership of the late Alvin E. Barrows, raised about one thousand dollars by subscription to pur- chase their interest in sanitarium and hospital apparatus. The investment included the amount they had paid Schuster, together with such equipment as they had installed during their five years of occupancy. The home of the hospital was still in the old Ansted home, where it had been established in 1905. From the time the Seventh-Day Adventists abandoned the sanitarium project in Connersville until the citizens purchased the entire sanitarium and hospital outfit from the Sahli Sisters in 1912, the institution was a private affair aided and assisted by the city council, the Commercial Club and the manufacturers of the city.
FAYETTE SANITARIUM ASSOCIATION.
G. L. Brown, the present superintendent of the hospital, assumed charge on March 1, 1912. He was appointed by representatives of the Com- mercial Club, the city council and the manufacturers, after making a thor- ough investigation as to his fitness for the position. Mr. Brown received his training in sanitarium and hospital methods in an Eastern institution where the Battle Creek sanitarium methods were employed. He had had extensive experience in managing hospitals and superintending nurses be- fore he took charge of the local instittuion in 1912.
In 1914 the present association was perfected under the laws of the state. A charter was secured under an act by the 1909 Legislature, the
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passage of which was largely due to the efforts of the citizens of Richmond, who were interested in securing aid for the maintenance of the Reid Memorial Hospital. This act provided that city councils and county com- missioners might make appropriations for charitable purposes to a hospital coming under this provision, the appropriation so granted to be used for the maintenance of any hospital in a county which might apply for aid. In compliance with this act the city council of Connersville appropriated five hundred dollars and the county commissioners fifteen hundred dollars annually for the support of the institution.
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