DO IT MY WAY Today, when some people are expressing concern with the situations in which our Court tend to do legislative work rather than to look after our discipline problems, I am reminded of a situation which took place two-hundred and twenty-six years ago in Rockingham County,Virginia.
When that court met on the 25th day of May 1779 they named three men of their group to of their body to see about building a new Court House. The record reads: "On a majority of the justices being present and comfortable to the resolution of the court in March last for fixing a place for the court house, the several members having proposed three different places, a majority were for fixing it on the plantation of Thomas Harrison near the head of the spring."
That would be the site where, today, an ornamental Springhouse stands to mark the spot on Court Square in downtown Harrisonburg, Va. to mark the site. The actual spring was, some years ago, diverted. The Court named three members who were to "lay off the bounds and make a report."
In November of that year of 1779, and again on the 26th of June 1780 the Court "ordered that Benja. Harrison, William Herring and John Davis, Gent. or any two let out the building of the Courthouse of square logs with diamond corners thirty feet long by 20 feet from out to out with a partition twelve feet in the clear across the room divided into two rooms, one 12 feet wide and the other 8 feet wide, the room 12 feet wide to have a heat stone chimney inside at the gavel end of it, the whole two to be floored with earth as far as the lawyer's bar and then to be raised with a plank floor to the justices bench which is to be raised three feet above the floor and the breast of the bench is to be studded with a rail at top, the pitch of the house is 10 feet clear ceiling and lofted with inch plank with two windows on each
side of the house facing the Clerk's table and one in each of the jury rooms, the windows 18 lights each, glass 8 by 10 inches with a door on (____?) just clear of the jury rooms."
As might happen today, changes and modifications were sent down by the Court - dated 26 June 1780: "It is ordered that Benja. and Wm. Herring, Gent. be empowered to agree with the undertaker of the courthouse to omit the portion of the east end of the house for the jury rooms and to sink the joist over the upper room from the gavel of the said east end to the joist over the front doors so as to make a jury room above with a pair of stairs in the corner, or two jury rooms if space will admit to it."
Got all that?
Now...where were we....? Uh....
It is amazing how our forefathers ever got anything built, isn't it?
A.L.M. July 24, 2005 [c522wds]
