| |
Trinity
County Courthouse
Texas
Historic Landmark
Photo
courtesy Jim
King, September 2008 |
The Present
Trinity County Courthouse
- Groveton,
TexasDate
- 1914
Architect - C. H. Page & Brother
Style - Classical Revival
Material - Brick
Texas Historic Landmark
Trinity County Courthouse
"I
noticed that you have the architect listed for our courthouse as L. S. Green.
That is right and wrong. Our courthouse was built in two phases. The east wing
(Records Building) was built in 1908, and was designed by L. S. Green. It was
initially built as the county records building and is an exact replica of the
Polk County Records Building, built in 1905, and designed by L. S. Green. In 1914,
the Trinity County Commissioners hired C. H. Page and Brother to design a new
courthouse that was to incorporate the existing records building into the new
courthouse.
The old
courthouse, built in 1884, which you have pictured, was later demolished."
- Susanne Waller, December 02, 2004
Photographer's Note:
"In
January of 2008, Trinity County received a grant from the Texas Historical Commission
for $5 million towards the restoration of their courthouse. After seeing the condition
of the building during my initial visit in 2006, they will need every penny."
- Terry
Jeanson
Historical
Markers:
Trinity
County Courthouse Historical Marker
Trinity County Seats
Historical Marker |
 |
The
1914 Trinity County Courthouse today
Photo
courtesy Terry
Jeanson, 2006 |
The
1914 Trinity County Courthouse as it appeared in 1917
Photo courtesy THC |
The
1914 Trinity County Courthouse as it appeared in 1939
Photo courtesy TxDoT |
Trinity
County Courthouse Historical Marker
Photo
courtesy Terry
Jeanson, 2006 |
Trinity
County Seats Historical Marker
Photo
courtesy Terry
Jeanson, 2006 |
Another
view of the Trinity County Courthouse
Photo courtesy Barclay
Gibson, July 2003 |
|
The Courthouse Cornerstone
Photo courtesy Trinity County Historical Commission. |
The
Original Trinity County Records Building |
| Built
in 1908.
Designed by L.S. Green.
In 1914 C. H. Page designed the
Trinity County Courthouse incorporating this original "Records Building."
Photo
courtesy Trinity County Historical Commission. |
The
1884 Trinity County Courthouse |
Date - 1884
Architect
- Eugene T. Heiner
Style - Second Empire
Material - Brick |
Early
Trintity County motorists lined up for a photo in Groveton.
1884 Courthouse
in background. The same vintage picture is hanging inside the current courthouse
at the front entrance.
Photo courtesy THC |
Two
Courthouse Fires by Bob Bowman ("All Things
Historical")
Some
of the most delectable historical desserts of East
Texas are found in the yellowed documents of the thirty-plus county
courthouses scattered across the pineywoods.
One such morsel is the
little-known story of two courthouse fires in Trinity County, one of the rowdiest
of our early counties. From Anna Hester of Groveton
comes a pair of old affidavits by J.P. Stevenson, a frontier lawyer, and J.B.
Gipson, the son of a county surveyor. Both lived in the turbulent 1870s.
Their affidavits were transcribed in 1909, apparently in an effort to clarify
property deed records which may have been in dispute.
Stevenson
and Gipson recalled a November, 1, 1872, fire which destroyed most of the county
records at the first county seat at Sumpter.
The only surviving documents were some criminal records of a peace justice and
the surveyor’s records of properties in the county.
At the time, Gipson’s
father, George, was the county surveyor and was holding the survey records at
his home in Trinity, about twenty miles west of Sumpter.
Stevenson had
a good reason to remember the fire. As a lawyer in Trinity and Walker counties
since l868, his life revolved around the courthouse
and the records lost in the fire.
Why and how the courthouse burned is
not clear, but Sumpter was a hotbed of violence during the l860s and early l870s
when federal reconstruction gripped the South in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Out of this violent era came a Sumpter preacher’s son, John
Wesley Hardin, who killed three Union soldiers near Sumpter in 1868, and went
on to become Texas’ most notorious gunfighter.
When the Sumpter courthouse
burned, the county seat was located at Trinity
in 1873. It remained there only until 1874 when it was relocated at Pennington,
where, according to Stevenson, another courthouse was burned in 1876, again destroying
some county records.
The county’s land records and criminal documents,
however, were saved. J.T. Evans, the clerk of the local district court, kept the
criminal records in an iron safe, which survived the fire.
Evans also
carried the property deed records to his home the night of the fire after “a number
of bad parties had been indicted” and he became “fearful they would undertake
to destroy their indictments” by burning the courthouse.
Gipson said
his surveyor father saved the land surveys at Pennington
by entrusting them to deputy W.M. Freeman who kept them “in a safe place not in
the courthouse.”
“By reason of this fact, they were again saved from
fire at the burning of the courthouse at Pennington,”
wrote J.B. Gipson in his affidavit.
Although the Trinity County survey
records were saved from two fires, the records of the district clerk were stolen
on the night of March 5, 1880, and Gipson said other documents were later partially
destroyed “by rough, bad handling by parties who had access to them.”
Trinity County moved its courthouse from Pennington
to Groveton in 1882,
not only because it was a cental location, but Trinity County Lumber Company donated
the site for a town square and materials for a new courthouse.
It remains there today.
All
Things Historical September
5, 2005 Column
Book
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