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Dignity,
Decorum and Justice
Mark Texas' Courthouse Histories,
Except for the Fights,
Arsons, Thefts, etc
by Bill Morgan
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Rites
All right, who ate the pig's ears? |
Texas
grew up riding horses and herding cattle, so it's not surprising that farm and
ranch critters played a big role in the building of the ornate courthouses of
the late 1800s. One that wasn't so ornate was located in the old Angelina County
seat of Homer, eight miles east of present-day seat Lufkin.
On hot days, court was held under a tree on Isaac Dunagan's place. Everybody sat
on split-log benches. One steamy summer day a man was on trial for stealing a
neighbor's pig and butchering it. The trial turned on the porker's ears, the only
physical evidence available. Tempers ran as hot as the thermometer and a fight
broke out. After officers separated the combatants and restored order, the judge
was forced to drop the case: during the confusion a dog sneaked up to the bench
and ate the evidence.
The original Cooke
County log courthouse was built in 1850 and cost $30, which averaged out to
ten bucks a year. It would have lasted longer if Jim Dickson's bull had stayed
home. A rancher who lived down thestreet from the courthouse, Dickson kept his
breed bull in a pen behind the house to protect it from rustlers. One day heel
flies so tormented the bull that he brokethrough his fence, galloped down the
street and through the open front door of the 16-by-16-foot courthouse. With his
full head of steam, the bull rammed the far wall and brought the building down
around him. Minutes of an emergency commissioners court meeting on January 15,
1853 stipulate that a new courthouse "shall be built so strong that Jim Dickson's
bull or no other damn bull can butt it down." And so far no other damn bull has.
Horses
have generally been more courthouse-friendly - they've even helped build a few.
Most of the counties the Legislature created west of the present Interstate 35
weren't yet organized in the late 1880s. Once a county's boundaries were defined
by the Legislature, Texas law required one more step before it could set up shop
- an organizational petition with 135 signatures. Several Plains
and Panhandle counties couldn't
scrape up 135 individuals unless they counted horses, cows and dogs. So civic
leaders counted horses, cows and dogs, including those under the legal voting
age.
Haskell County
organized in 1859 by signing horses and dogs on its ranches. Lubbock
County allegedly made the number in 1891 when Rollie Burns added the names
of the horses on the IOA Ranch. That same year Castro
County's petition went over the top with the addition of Billy, Jug and Blue
Carter, three hard-working cow ponies on James Carter's 7-Up Ranch.
Not
all the political skullduggery in West
Texas relied on livestock, though. Quanah
didn't vote horses in its 1890 campaign against Margaret for seat of Hardeman
County, possibly since both towns had about the same number of livestock. The
Fort Worth & Denver Railroad ran through Quanah, so the town bestowed legal residency
on any man who had his laundry done there for six weeks. Train crews dropped off
their laundry in Quanah and picked up the well-scrubbed results on the return
trip. After six weeks of getting their laundry done, the trainmen voted in the
county-seat contest. Predictably, Quanah cleaned up on election day.
In
a clear case of pork-barrel politics, Anahuac
dislodged Wallisville as Chambers County seat after the latter held the title
for 50 years, thanks to swine. A Wallisville city ordinance outlawed pigs from
roaming the streets. Anahuac had no such restrictions and it's been argued ever
since that 1907 election that farmers bringing their pork on the hoof to market
didn't cotton to the restrictions. If you've ever seen the stunning 1900
Harrison County courthouse in Marshall,
say a thank-you to pigeons. On June 8, 1899 a maintenance man climbed to the roof
of the existing courthouse. It was his third attempt to scare pigeons away from
the ornate showplace by setting fire to their hangout. Good news and bad news
- he scared off the pigeons, but he burned down the courthouse. |
| | The
1900 Harrison County courthouse is now the Harrison County Historical Museum.
Photo by John Troesser, June 2000 |
Some
purists might say Hopkins
County got into the courthouse business by rustling cattle. But the judge
saw it differently - the Hopkins County judge. Hopkins got along without a courthouse
for the first six years after it organized in 1846. Then someone discovered that
only cattle owned by Texas residents were allowed to graze on Texas open land.
So Judge William S. Todd confiscated 300 head belonging to a Louisiana man and
turned them over to the county. The county in turn sold the herd for a dollar
a head and used the $300 to start building its first courthouse.
One
Man, One Vote (Maybe Two)
Anybody
Got a Match?
What's in a Name?
The Artists in Brick, Stone and Mortar
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. next
page |
©
Bill Morgan
June 9, 2005
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