History of Clark County Courthouses

The first set­tlers in this area came out from Virginia and North Carolina in 1775.  Led by Daniel Boone under the ban­ner of the Transylvania Company, they formed a pio­neer com­mu­ni­ty on the Kentucky River at Fort Boonesborough.  Settlement on the east side of the riv­er, now Clark County, began in 1779 with the estab­lish­ment of John Strode’s and David McGee’s sta­tions.  Kentucky sep­a­rat­ed from Virginia in 1792, and Clark County was cre­at­ed that December, the 14^th out of an even­tu­al 120 coun­ties, and named in hon­or of Revolutionary War hero Gen. George Rogers Clark. 

First Courthouse

The coun­ty court jus­tices appoint­ed by Gov. Isaac Shelby met for the first time in March 1793, at the house of John Strode.  At their November ses­sion the court vot­ed to erect the pub­lic buildings—a cour­t­house, jail, stocks, and stray pen—on land owned by John Baker.  The court direct­ed the sher­iff to let a con­struct con­tract to the low bid­der for “a cab­bin with two rooms, one 20 feet square and the oth­er 10 by Twenty, one sto­ry high...of good oak or ash logs.  The Flowers below to be laid with good sound pun­cheons, and the floor above to be laid of good sound plank loose laid down.”

John Baker was award­ed the priv­i­lege of nam­ing the coun­ty seat, which he called Winchester after his home­town in Virginia. On July 22, 1794, the court met for the first time in the new cour­t­house.  Although there are no draw­ings of first cour­t­house, detailed sketch­es were record­ed for the jail and stocks.  Several Clark County pio­neers left descriptions.

“Winchester had a cour­t­house like a Tobacco house of open round logs in the midst of the cane.”  James Stevenson

“The Court House was of open round logs on the hill with a cab­in roof and a log par­ti­tion for a jury room.  Old Judge Robert Clarke, the Governor’s father, under­took the pub­lic build­ings.  A man that went to Virginia, talk­ing with some­one there, said he would bet him a treat he couldn’t tell how much Clarke Court House cost.  The per­son was guess­ing $2,000 and $3,000.  It cost just $16.”  Benjamin Allen

It was said that peo­ple out­side could watch the court pro­ceed­ings by “peek­ing through the cracks between the logs.”

Second Courthouse

By 1795 the cab­in court house could no longer meet the county’s needs.  The jus­tices adopt­ed detailed plans for con­struc­tion of a new build­ing.  It was to be “42 Feet long and 30 wide; the foun­da­tion walls of which to be two feet thick of Stone laid 18 Inches below the sur­face of the ground and 18 Inches above, from thence of Brick 14 Inches thick, two sto­ries of 9 feet high each; a Chimney in the end of said House, with two fire places there­in suit­able for Jury rooms; the Roof sheet­ed & Shingled with wal­nut or poplar heart­ed Shingles one Inch thick.”

The court room was to have a lob­by with bench­es for the pub­lic and steps to a gallery, a bar for the lawyers, a box for the sher­iff, and stairs to the seats for the jus­tices.  There were to be two jury rooms upstairs.  An adver­tise­ment for con­trac­tors was placed in the state news­pa­per of record, the Kentucky Gazette.  The con­tract went to Josias Bullock, broth­er of the first coun­ty clerk, David Bullock.

The court held its ini­tial ses­sion in the new build­ing in October 1797.  It was in this cour­t­house that Henry Clay began his law prac­tice.  He set­tled in Lexington in the win­ter of 1797, then on February 27, 1798, the 21-year-old Clay was admit­ted to the Clark County bar.  This pre­dat­ed his license to prac­tice in Fayette, obtained on March 20. 

Clay also served as the deputy state’s attor­ney for Clark County, equiv­a­lent to today’s coun­ty attor­ney.  Appointed to the post in April 1801, he pros­e­cut­ed crim­i­nal and civ­il cas­es before the coun­ty justices—Robert Clark, John Martin and Original Young.  He resigned the post in March 1802.

Third Courthouse

The May 1818 min­utes of the coun­ty court stat­ed that the sec­ond cour­t­house had been razed.  “The County Court House of Clark County hav­ing been demol­ished by the order of this Court, it is ordered That this Court and the Clark Circuit Court hold ses­sions of Court in the house occu­pied by John Ward as a Tavern.”

Then at their July 1819 meet­ing, the coun­ty court “Ordered that this Court and the Clarke Circuit Court hold their ses­sions at the new Courthouse on the pub­lic square untill fur­ther orders of this Court.”

Their first ses­sion at the new cour­t­house was held August 23, 1819, although the build­ing was not com­plete­ly fin­ished at the time.  While few details have been found in the min­utes of the coun­ty court, it appears that the cour­t­house was com­plet­ed by November 1821, when the fol­low­ing item was list­ed in the coun­ty levy. 

“For fin­ish­ing the new Courthouse, putting gut­ters and pipes of Copper to said Courthouse, enclos­ing the Courthouse yard with a fence—to be paid to Thomas G. Jones, Samuel M. Taylor, Chilton Allan & Samuel Hanson who are here­by appoint­ed Commissioners to super­in­tend the same—$800.”

Soon after­wards, small brick build­ings were put up on each side of the cour­t­house, one for the coun­ty clerk and one for the cir­cuit clerk.  I. N. Massie gave a vivid descrip­tion of the third cour­t­house in his rec­ol­lec­tions, “Winchester in Olden Times.”

“In my vision I see the old square brick Court House, with its one sto­ry brick offices for the clerks.  Sam Taylor was Circuit Clerk and James Bullock was County Clerk.  The first floor, or stand­ing room, was paved with brick.  The next room, about one-third of the court room, was fenced off with a pal­ing fence to keep the peo­ple out of the jury rooms.  Four large columns sup­port­ed the upper floor, which was divid­ed by a large hall, on both sides of which were rooms for juries to retire to make a verdict.”

Henry Clay made his last speech here in 1847 in the cel­e­brat­ed will con­test of Joel Quisenberry’s heirs.  After the wealthy Quisenberry died, his daugh­ters brought suit to break his will on grounds of incom­pe­tence and undue influ­ence by his sons.  A ver­i­ta­ble Who’s Who of attor­neys rep­re­sent­ed the par­ties.  Henry Clay appeared for the plain­tiffs (daugh­ters).  In his open­ing speech, Clay “allud­ed feel­ing­ly to the fact that fifty years before he had made his debut as an attor­ney at the bar of Winchester.” 

Another Winchester native, I. N. Massie, recalled that when he was a boy “Alfred Bowren was jailor and did all of the pub­lic whip­ping in front of the Court House.  There was a block in front of the Courthouse where the own­ers of slaves put up and sold them to the high­est bid­der at pub­lic outcry.”

Fourth Courthouse

In the spring of 1852, a spe­cial committee—composed of “prac­ti­cal Mechanics, Stone masons, Brick masons, and house Carpenters”—inspected the cour­t­house.  Their report stat­ed that they “found it to be in a dan­ger­ous and dilap­i­dat­ed con­di­tion, with faulty foun­da­tion and bad superstructure.”

They con­clud­ed that repairs were imprac­ti­cal and rec­om­mend­ed “that the present build­ing be tak­en down and a new cour­t­house erect­ed.”  The court appoint­ed com­mis­sion­ers to receive pro­pos­als for a new build­ing, and ordered that the cour­t­house walls be suit­ably propped up in the inter­im.  That November the court accept­ed the plans sub­mit­ted by John McMurtry. 

McMurtry’s work is well known in Kentucky today.  Both an archi­tect and a builder, he designed and/or con­struct­ed over 200 build­ings, includ­ing Lexington’s Botherum, Christ Church Episcopal, Elley Villa, Floral Hall, Sayre Female Institute and Loudoun House, just to name a few.  He has been called the man whose work is most rep­re­sen­ta­tive of 19^th cen­tu­ry archi­tec­ture of cen­tral Kentucky.

The court also hired McMurtry to con­struct the build­ing, which was to be topped with a bell tow­er, clock and cupo­la.  McMurtry fin­ished the new cour­t­house in the fall of 1855.  It was said that he under­took the work for the sum of $25,000, but it ulti­mate­ly cost him over $40,000 to com­plete.  The coun­ty award­ed him an addi­tion­al $10,000, which still left him with a heavy loss.

The build­ing has a stone foun­da­tion with brick mason­ry bear­ing walls sup­port­ing a wood-framed floor and roof sys­tem.  There is a fin­ished sand­stone cap on top of the foun­da­tion.  The orig­i­nal build­ing was T‑shaped (before a 1938 addi­tion) with the main entrance fac­ing Main Street. 

The coun­ty jail stood behind the cour­t­house.  The stone jail was sur­round­ed by an 18-foot-tall stone wall that gave the name to the adja­cent Wall Alley.  The jail was locat­ed here until a new jail was built across Wall Alley in 1912.  A sad affair occurred in March 1880 when “Ben Johnson, of col­or, alias Plunkton, was tak­en from jail at mid­night and hanged to a maple tree in the Courthouse yard.” 

In 1923, the Clark County Historical Society pub­lished a descrip­tion in the Winchester Sun.

“The present build­ing, up till the time of its remod­el­ing about thir­ty-four years ago, was sur­round­ed in front and on the north and south sides by a tall iron fence with a dou­ble iron gate in front, swung on heavy con­crete pil­lars.  This fence and the gates and pil­lars now adorn the front of the res­i­dence and grounds of Mrs. Susan G. Anderson.  [The fence stands today at 245 S. Main St.] 

“In one cor­ner of the Court House yard was locat­ed the pub­lic well and in the oth­er cor­ner a large cis­tern, both of which were freely used by the gen­er­al public. 

“Shortly after the com­ple­tion of the present build­ing William Lindsay and Daniel Scott plant­ed maple trees in the front yard of the Court House and they soon attained large size and afford­ed grate­ful shade in the warm months to the cit­i­zens and offi­cials who were wont to con­gre­gate around the Court House and dis­cuss the events of the day. 

“Up to and includ­ing the year 1877, the­atri­cal enter­tain­ments were fre­quent­ly held in the court room on a tem­po­rary stage erect­ed each time for the per­for­mance, on the south side of the court room.

“In the year 1889 it was decid­ed by the Justices to remod­el the build­ing and place the court room upstairs where it is now locat­ed, the sec­ond sto­ry before that hav­ing been occu­pied by jury rooms and rooms for the clerks of the County and Circuit court. 

“The orig­i­nal tow­er or cupo­la on the present build­ing was an addi­tion­al sto­ry taller than it is now and was sur­mount­ed by a large gild­ed globe or ball about two feet in diam­e­ter, though it appeared from the street to be only about the size of an orange, and this in turn was sur­mount­ed by a large weath­er vane which all the old­er inhab­i­tants observed dai­ly for indi­ca­tions of a change in weather. 

“Clark coun­ty was not­ed through­out all Eastern and Central Kentucky as hav­ing the finest pub­lic build­ing in the State, out­side of Louisville.”

As men­tioned above, the orig­i­nal tow­er was replaced in 1889 with one designed by E. N. Lamm.  The posi­tion of the clock was raised to pro­vide bet­ter vis­i­bil­i­ty from the ground.  The tow­er had a brick base, a lou­vered col­umn sur­round sec­tion, a clock sec­tion and final­ly the cupola.

In 1938 the cour­t­house was remod­eled under the direc­tion of John Gillig, one of the best archi­tects then prac­tic­ing in Kentucky.  Gillig’s large addi­tion on the west side of the cour­t­house turned the T‑plan into an H‑plan.  The design and mate­ri­als match the old sec­tion, and with the brick paint­ed white the addi­tion is not read­i­ly appar­ent.  A new base­ment entry was added along with a twin curved stair­case to the first floor. 

Over the years the cour­t­house was the home for a num­ber of local agen­cies, includ­ing the health depart­ment, coöper­a­tive exten­sion office, emer­gency ser­vices and a library.  The cour­t­house was list­ed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. 

In 2017 Clark County Fiscal Court approved a mea­sure to replace the clock tow­er that had become unsta­ble over the years.  The fol­low­ing year a new clock tow­er was raised—topped by a gild­ed dome.

The Courthouse Today

The his­toric cour­t­house today hous­es offices of the Clark County Judge Executive, Treasurer, County Clerk, PVA, and Geographic Information Services.  The Fiscal Court Room, on the first floor, is lined with por­traits of our past coun­ty judges.  Circuit Court Room, jury room, law library and cir­cuit judge offices are on the sec­ond floor.  The walls of the Circuit Court Room are graced with a por­trait gallery of notable persons—Gen. George Rogers Clark, Gov. James Clark, Chief Justice James Simpson, sculp­tor Joel Tanner Hart and numer­ous others.

The first floor hall­way has a bust of Daniel Boone and a por­trait of Boone at Pilot Knob, both by Jack Hodgkin.  At the front entrance are plaques com­mem­o­rat­ing Clark County Revolutionary War vet­er­ans and the City-County Joint Resolution on Racial Harmony.  The cour­t­house lawn is home to three Kentucky Historical Markers (Clark County Courthouse, County Named 1793, Confederate Raids in Kentucky), a Doughboy mon­u­ment, a Vietnam Memorial, the old cour­t­house bell, and a map of the Winchester African American Heritage Trail.

The coun­ty has nev­er suf­fered the loss of a cour­t­house by fire and, thus, coun­ty records—from the begin­ning in 1793 until today—are essen­tial­ly intact, sur­pris­ing giv­en that that record­keep­ing began in a log cabin.