USA > Wisconsin > Walworth County > History of Walworth county, Wisconsin, Volume I > Part 6
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February 5, 1840-Twenty-eight dollars and fifty cents paid as boun- ties for nineteen wolf scalps.
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WALWORTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
January 5, 1841-Wolf bounty raised to three dollars, until July Ist.
March 5, 1841-Resolved, that it is expedient and in accordance with the wishes of a majority of the people of the county to proceed to conclude the contract for building a court house in this county.
April 4, 1842-The board of county commissioners adjourned without a day.
With the coming of a larger order of county administration these now ex-commissioners were not mustered out of public employment. Their short service had tried and proved their quality and had trained them fairly for further public usefulness, as the several county and town records well show. The county board of supervisors, with nine members ( Major Meacham, of Troy. absent), met September 6. 1842, and chose as its chairman John M. Capron, of Geneva, a man of legislative experience, and as clerk, John Fish. In 1846 a member was added for the new town of Elkhorn, and the old town received the name Sugar Creek. In 1862, compliant with a statute of the previous year, the board was reduced to five members, one for each assembly district and a member for the county at large. This measure of policy or of economy-hardly a war measure-was in operation eight years. Members were elected biennially for a two-year term. In 1870 the old order returned, and the board met with twenty members, an addition of one member for each of the villages of Delavan, Geneva and Whitewater. In 1883 Whitewater, and in 1886 Lake Geneva became cities with ward rep- resentation, each having three wards. Thus, four members were added. In 1894 Delavan and Elkhorn became statutory cities of the fourth class, cach with three wards. Sharon village was incorporated in 1893 and the villages of East Troy, Geneva Junction and Walworth in 1901, each having its mem- ber of the county board. Thus, since 1842 the membership of this body has been doubled in number. Among the functions of the board is that of appointing three superintendents of the county poorhouse and insane asylum : since 1887 a soldier's relief committee of three members; and since 1901 a supervisor of assessments. The superintendents of the poor and insane choose a resident superintendent of the farm, buildings and inmates some- times one of the directing body. Many members of this board of thirty-two farmers and business men, representing the intelligence and public spirit of the towns, villages and cities, are so often re-elected for their terms of one year each that it never meets as a body wholly without experience in county affairs. As would naturally be thought. the names of several of these mem- bers appear in the lists of assemblymen and state senators. One member passed by rapidly succeeding steps, by way of the Assembly, to a seat of the mighty at Washington.
CHAPTER VIII.
COUNTY BUILDINGS AND POOR FARM.
An act of Congress, approved May 26, 1824, gave to counties in states and territories where public lands were situated a right of pre-emption to one quarter section of land for seats of justice. The county commissioners pre-empted, by permission of Mr. Rockwell's company, the southeast quarter of section 36, township 3 north, of range 16 east, in the Milwaukee land district, being the Sugar Creek corner of the town and city of Elkhorn. The certificate of this pre-emption was numbered 1144. The minimum lawful price, two hundred dollars, was paid February 5, 1839, by the commissioners acting for the county. President Tyler signed the patent March 3, 1843, and this instrument was recorded April 2, 1852, by Register Long at page 217, Vol. XIV of Deeds. A park was reserved as a court house site, and the rest of the land was laid out in lots and platted by the county surveyor, Mr. Norris, and Mr. Rockwell was empowered to sell lots in behalf of the commissioners. Some thoughtful persons secured lots facing the west and north sides of the park for a school house and a church. A few lots besides were sold, and, except a lot for the jail and a hotel, the rest of the county's quarter section became part of the court house contractor's payment.
The commissioners acted never more wisely and well than in setting off the park. It was part of a grove of nature's planting-mostly oaks of the black and burr varieties-so old that the earlier discoverers of the North American coast might have seen them as saplings had they but come this way to find mill sites and county centers. More than fifty years ago decay, lightning and high winds began to overthrow the aged and infirm among them, not swiftly, but too surely. So many of them yet live as to preserve the general appearance so long admired. Other trees, not oaks, have filled the vacant places, and the park, undisfigured by officious "landscape archi- tects," and little marred by the county buildings, which are partly hidden except at shortest distance, is a summer comfort and a thing of unadorned beauty to citizens and appreciative visitors. While this park is the property of the county and wholly within the county's control and the city mows its grass and rakes away its dead leaves and twigs, and provides lawn seats and
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electric lights, neither city nor county has yet become so super-civilized as to improve its natural charms by posting notices to tired feet to "keep off the grass." The dimensions are about six hundred and thirty-nine feet long from east to west and five hundred and ten feet wide between north and south. Its area is nearly seven and one-half acres. The court house stands near the park center; that is, a few feet east and north of that point. It is about sixty-two rods northwestward from the stake which determined the settle- ment at Elkhorn.
THE FIRST COURT HOUSE.
Before April, 1839, Mr. Rockwell had built for the county a small office on the north side of the park, at or near the northeast corner of Court and Broad streets. It was about eighteen by twenty-two feet on the ground, a low story in height, with columned porch in front, plain in its neatness, and was decently painted. It was occupied as a court room, a meeting place for the county commissioners, and an office for the registry of deeds and inort- gages. In 1840 Willard B. Johnson, of Whitewater, built a log jail on the county's land, a little north of the primitive court house. Its dimensions were fourteen by twenty feet, and it was fully seven feet between joints. This frowning bastile, with its full equipment of bars, bolts, locks and solitary cell, stood there twelve years; for it never had at one time enough inmates to lift up one side, upset the entire structure, and effect a general jail delivery.
SECOND COURT HOUSE.
At its session of March 5, 1841, as has been shown, the board of com- missioners had resolved to complete a contract for building a court house, but the scanty record does not show the steps which had led to such decisive ac- tion; nor, beyond two services added to the contract, and some advance pay- ments to contractor ordered, does the record tell of later steps taken. Doubtless, papers now not to be found were filed. As nearly as now under- stood, it was planned to build a public house at the hotel corner of Wisconsin and Walworth streets and to derive some revenue for the county from its rent- al to worthy and well qualified landlords. No citizen of the county had means and skill needful for performing such work as was required by the plans and specifications, or, if he had, none such cared so to invest his skill and means. Col. Edward Elderkin knew one James Farnsworth, Jr., at or near Fond du Lac, who was called hither and who came with Richard Hogeboom and Ben-
(5)
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jamin Arnold. To these men the contract was let, considerable timber and other materials were brought and some payments made. The contractors found themselves unable to take the next steps, and they assigned their con- tract to Levi Lee, a then somewhat roving contractor, who came here from the lower Rock River valley. He fulfilled his contract, made seats for the court room, and was directed to buy a "ten-plate" stove with twenty-four feet of Russia-iron seven-inch pipe at cost of not more than thirty dollars. As part payment he received the unreserved and unsold parts of the county's quarter section of land. He became a citizen of Elkhorn, served the village and his own interests in various ways, and died on Christmas day, 1875.
The court house was thirty-six feet wide by fifty-two feet long. two stories high, gable-roofed with four fluted and voluted hollow columns sup- porting the front gable, which projected as a porch, and with a belfry. It was painted white, and had green blinds. Its upper floor was the court room. with stairway at the rear, and the bench and bar, which were well built of walnut. in front. The pine seats and the floor were painted. Its lower floor gave a little more than elbow room to part of the county officers and two rooms for jury's use. It was for some years one of the best court houses in the state. It was dedicated in due form May 10, 1843, by lawyers and citizens, Exper- ience Estabrook serving the occasion as chairman and George Gale as secre- tary. On the following Fourth of July it was dedicated again "to the blind goddess of justice." in a speech by Charles M. Baker, which Judge Gale described as an excellent oration. Before 1860 the court room was so re- arranged as to seat the judge and counsel at the back end, the inside stair- way having been pulled away. A false floor disfigured the classic colonnade : but the outside stairways, mounting each way from the lower entrance, were as useful as homely and gave a few more square feet to the court room. In 1874 this court house was moved southward to give way to another temple to the blind goddess, and the next year. thirty-two years after its dedication. it was sold at auction to Colonel Elderkin for little more than the price of two sparrows. He moved it to the Walworth and Broad street corner and planned in various vain ways to make it rentable. A little later its front wall was pushed forward, displacing its Tonic columns, its outside was bedaubed with the muddiest of colors and its inside filled with barb wire, horse rakes and corn planters. Its last owner was Edward H. Sprague, who in 1900 set it out into the street to make way for a new building, and the next year the old house was pulled down and reduced to second-hand lumber and kindling wood because nobody knew of better use for it.
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WALWORTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
SECOND JAIL, AND REGISTER'S OFFICE.
The board of supervisors met in special session April 21, 1851, with all members present except David Williams of Geneva, for whom appeared Richard B. Flack, of the town board. This body, as a committee of the whole. having inspected the jail. Mr. Harrington moved to condemn it. The motion prevailed by a vote of thirteen ayes to three noes. Mr. Barlow mnoved to build forthwith and Messrs. Barlow, Bell, Coon, Fish and Harrington, as a committee on ways and means, were directed to consider and to report by the next day. Mr. Cotton moved to choose (or accept) a site at Delavan. Voting by roll call. the ayes were seven: Messrs. Barlow, Bell, Birge, Coon, Cotton, Gillet. Snell (representing respectively the towns of Delavan, Lafay- ette, Whitewater, Walworth, Darien, Hudson and Linn). The noes were nine : Messrs Clark. Dickson, Fish, Flack. Gage, Harrington, Lauderdale, Powers, Stewart (respectively of East Troy. Sharon, Richmond, Geneva. Spring Prairie, Sugar Creek, Lagrange, Troy, Bloomfield ). The next day a motion to repair the jail and to build a house for the sheriff was tabled. The committee of five reported that a jail might be built, partly by tax and for the rest "on the pledged faith of the county," and this was the sense of the board, and was quite practical common sense. Mr. Cotton moved to appropriate four thousand dollars and to build the jail on the site of the old one according to a plan and specifications (prepared by Lemuel Bailey ) then on file. This motion was carried, and February 1, 1852, fixed for completion of the work. Messrs. Cotton, Harrington and Flack were named as building committee. The contract was let to Levi Lee and Richard B. Flack, and Chairman Winsor, of Elkhorn, took the latter's place on the building committee.
The old site, though now dry ground, was then found boggy and un- suitable and the jail was built at Court and Church streets, facing southiwardly. It was of stone and home-made brick, nearly square and of two stories height. The sheriff's house in front and jail in rear were brought under one roof, for some time very leaky, but afterwards tinned and made water tight. A cor- ridor on all sides of the jail room parted cells from outer walls, and it was thought that oaken plank with a few bits of boiler plate would make all secure from within. But escapes became so frequent as to annoy the sheriffs, and a few years later the cells were rebuilt of oak joists so liberally spiked cheek to cheek as to defy pocket saws and badly-tempered table knives. About the same time, say 1858. a wood-built wing, for household uses, was added east- wardly. This building. too, was in its turn condemned, though in plan and
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construction it was as good for its purposes, most likely, as any built that year in Wisconsin. It was sold, with its now valuable lot, to Miss Amanda Bulkley, who pulled away the wing, tore out the cells, and made the original build- ing a dwelling. In no long time Hugh Dobbin, a dealer in old houses and stores at Clinton, Delavan, and perhaps elsewhere, bought and occupied the property. By one more sale its ownership passed to Mr. Flack, one of its builders, who died under its roof in 1887. In October, 1845, the board con- sidered the need of a fire-proof office for the use of the sheriff. Sheriff Bell was directed to let a contract for such a building, its cost not to be more than twenty-five dollars in excess of four hundred and twenty-five dollars, and the work to be finished in 1846. The contract was awarded to Gen. Sheldon Walling. Just how this office was made fire proof is not now known. Its outside was of wood, but may have been brick-laid between its studding, and its floor may have been of bricks. It was one story high, dark, inconvenient, and in time judged unsafe. It was occupied by the register of deeds and the county treasurer and may have had a corner for the sheriff. At the board's session of November 18, 1865, the need of a better building was declared and January 18, 1866, Messrs. Crumb, Ray and Allen were instructed to procure plans and bids. At a special session February 5th, one bid was received and accepted, that of George Dewing, bricklayer, Alexander Stevens, plas- terer, and Squire Stanford, carpenter, joining their proposals in one bidding at four thousand two hundred and sixty-five dollars. The new office was of hard yellow brick with tin roof, and floored with a lower grade of brick. Except for the small entry way and stairway each floor was a double room, parted by high, wide double doors of softest pine. with casings of the same nearly incombustible material. The stairs and hand rail were of harder wood. Pine was also the material of the filing cases and shelving. These offices were well lighted and were usually overheated by coal stoves. The upper floor was assigned to the county judge and the lower one to the reg- ister of deeds. In 1890 both offices were tile floored and partly equipped with steel furniture.
PRESENT COURT HOUSE.
In 1873 the board of supervisors calculated plausibly that a panic period, by reason of lower prices of materials and a scarcity of employment for me- chanics and laborers, was a favorable time at which to build a new court house. Limiting the cost to twenty-five thousand dollars, the building com- mittec, Newton M. Littlejohn. James Aram, Charles Dunlap, Alexander Fraser and Ely B. Dewing, were to move in the matter at once. The con-
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tract was made with Squire Stanford, who joined George Dewing's bid on the masonry with his own for nineteen thousand two hundred and forty-nine dollars. The men broke ground early in 1874. Monday evening. September 20, 1875, the lawyers and an audience of citizens met in the new court room to dedicate it with many words from Judges Spooner and Wentworth, Fred- erick W. Cotzhausen, of Milwaukee, and Messrs. James D. Merrill, of East Troy, Thompson D. Weeks, of Whitewater, and Colonel Elderkin. James Simmons, of Lake Geneva, read twenty-nine and one-half inches (in non- pareil or six-point type) of ten-syllable verse. Whatever Mr. Simmons did, in his calling or out of it, was well done and in the manner of a liberally- educated and kindly-feeling gentleman.
Though neither architecturally beautiful nor structurally perfect, the courthouse is a fairly good building for its purposes. Court room, library room and jury rooms fill its upper floor. Below are two safety vaulted offices, the one for the clerk of the court, the other for the county clerk and the treasurer, a sheriff's office, poor-superintendent's office and a super- visor's room. Alterations and improvements have been made, and the whole house is now steam heated and electric lighted. Much of the office furniture is of steel. Water is conveniently supplied by the city's works. It may even now be nearly or quite forgotten (so false and fleeting is human memory) that the tower and dome once held aloft a colossal figure of Justice carved of wood by an artist of Milwaukee-who may have loved his work too well for his domestic peace-its stature nine feet or more, decently clad and law- fully equipped ( with sword and scales), as to features as awfully beautiful as a Lithuanian Medusa, her petrifying gaze turned sternly toward the state line -as if frowning upon a rival beauty similarly perched at Woodstock. Her scale pans were soon blown away, but she kept her right hand on her sword until 1884 when an irreverent thunderbolt reduced her to chips and splinters.
THE PRESENT JAIL.
It was evident to the board of 1877 that a better jail and sheriff's house were indispensable, and it appropriated ten thousand dollars and ordered a change of site. Newton M. Littlejohn. Henry G. Hollister, Samuel 11. Stafford, John Matheson, and Lucius Allen served as building committee. The site chosen is opposite the southwestern park corner, facing eastwardly. The plan was of Milwaukeean design and the work of Janesville contractors. The outer work is of quarry stone and good brick. The sheriff's house is of two high stories, set upon a basement story of cut stone ( to give a noble front ele-
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vation and to make life a burden to the sheriff's family). As a whole, it is neither unsightly without nor very inconvenient within. The jail, adjoining rearwardly, has two tiers of cells and corridors, all of soft and hard steel bars riveted together cagewise. Jail makers of St. Louis supplied the metal work. City water, steam heat, electric light and a new barn have since added sensibly to its cost and value. The state board of control, which is constantly receiving, absorbing and reflecting new light on state and county building equipment, already urges rebuilding in a manner more fully compliant with scientific sanitation's last revelation. A few years after this jail was finished the board authorized an experiment with tramps and petty delinquents. A shed was built, stone-hammers were bought, a few hundred loads of cobble stones were delivered at the jail yard, Samuel Mitchell, of Elkhorn, was ap- pointed overseer, and these prisoners were set at work to make road material. Some sale was found for their product, but at no great distance from Elkhorn, and the plan was soon dropped. From legislation and other causes, far fewer tramps are committed than in the years between 1870 and 1890.
The state board of control having condemned the jail as "out of date and no longer a credit to the county," a committee of the county board was instructed at the session of December, 1910, to examine and consider the matter. At the session of November, 1911. the committee recommended the sale of the jail property and the building of a new jail and sheriff's house on the park, westward or northward of the other building, with a central heating system for all of them. Messrs. Stewart and Thayer, of this committee, with the county clerk, were instructed to call for bids for the present building and lots and to procure estimates of the cost of a new building and equipment.
FIRE PROOF VAULTS.
For the security of the bulky and priceless county records, and because of duties added by recent statutes to those of the county judge, a better building was necessary. In 1905 the county board provided for really fire-proof offices for the county court and the registry of deeds. The total cost was about thirty-five thousand dollars. Upon a basement wall of dressed limestone, forty-four by eighty feet, a structure of cement, with steel- rod reinforcement and a facing of pressed bricks was raised, and roofed with terra cotta tiles. The floors are of small hexagon tiles. Each story has a large fire-proof record room, and desks, tables, roller shelving and file cases are of steel. The county judge has the lower floor and. except three small jury rooms, the register of deeds has the upper story. In 1908 one of
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these small rooms was placed at the service of the Grand Army posts of the county for deposit of such records and relics as they may choose to leave there. In 1909 another of these rooms was set apart for the use of the super- intendent of schools. The basement, beneath the lower record room, at present stores the collection of the County Historical Society, as permitted by statute.
CARE FOR THE POOR.
The helpless poor were, in the earlier years, left to the immediate care of their several towns. This led to laying bills of cost before each county board for its audit and allowance. In 1852 the time was ripe for a more efficient county system and the board of that year chose three superintendents as a governing commission for the county house and its farm. Authority was given to buy not more than one hundred and sixty acres in section 4 of the town of Geneva, within three miles of the court house. An improved farm of eighty acres, with buildings, was chosen and at once applied (in 1853) to its present use. By successive extensions this farm now contains four hundred and eight acres. The house, too, was extended, but later needs soon outstripped this temporary provision. Late in 1872 a fire cleared the ground for something greatly better. The new house was built at a cost of ten thousand dollars, and it was then regarded, taken with its management, as one of the best of its kind in Wisconsin. The contractors were John Trum- bull, carpenter, and Charles Bonnet, mason, both of Whitewater. In 1883 and 1887 other buildings for the care of the incurably insane-a house for each sex-were built, each at like cost. In 1900 a new house, beside that of 1873. was built and the latter became a general dining hall for the institution. With barns and other buildings, and with recent improvements (including steam heating and electric lighting) together with the value of the land at one hundred and twenty-five dollars per acre, it is now estimated that this county property is worth two hundred thousand dollars. The yearly ap- propriation for the care of the poor and insane has become sixteen thousand dollars, including one thousand dollars for permanent improvements. The county board visits the farm in a body each year, and its superintendent and the resident manager are men whom the humane citizens of the county can trust. In the earlier half of the past forty years the management anticipated and even bettered the suggestions of the state board of control; and in the reports of that body the example of Walworth was laid before the citizens and boards of other counties of Wisconsin. Dr. William H. Hurlbut was ap- pointed county physician in 1882 and he served until 19H1, when he resigned and Dr. Edward Kinne was appointed. Before 1882 Dr. Charles S. Bur- bank had served for a year or two.
CHAPTER IX.
THE BENCII AND BAR.
It may never be known how President Jackson and the consenting Senate induced Hon. David Irvin to leave forever behind him the elegancies of a Virginia gentleman's home and drop to the semi-barbarous fare and informal manners of primitive western hotels: to exchange his brilliant prospects of professional or political promotion for the dull routine of frontier courts. It is only certain that he accepted the territorial judgeship for Wisconsin, and that late in April, 1839. he dismounted his horse (not improbably at Hollis Latham's hospitable mansion ), placed his gun in temporary safety, and soon afterwards, with his dog, found his way to the county building, north of the park and at or near the northeast corner of Court and Broad streets. Here, with Sheriff Walling's help, he opened in due legal form the first court term for Walworth county. The clerk's journal tells the day's story best :
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