ASHLAND — The Ohio Channel highlighted Ashland County’s 95 year-old courthouse recently as part of an online video series.
The eight-minute video published Jan. 13 and features comments from Judge Dave Stimpert and Jennifer Marquette, the executive director of the Ashland County Historical Society.
Together, they share a history of the courthouse situated on “courthouse square” — or “jail hill” because of its adjacency to the old jailhouse — along Second Street.
The first courthouse doubled as a stone methodist church from 1846 to 1853, when another building was built. It served as the county’s courthouse until 1928. The building still standing today was dedicated in September 1929.
Famously, the old courthouse was the site of Ohio’s last public hanging.
About 8,000 people flocked to the courthouse to witness the hanging of George Horn and William Gribben. Both were convicted of first-degree murder in 1884 of Harry Williams.
Many precautions were taken before the hanging, including the construction of an 18-foot wooden fence between the courthouse and jail. Around 350 National Guardsmen and several other sheriff deputies provided crowd control for anticipated rioting.
Only 150 people were allowed to purchase tickets to be inside the fenced area to witness the hanging, enraging the other thousands who came to watch.
The incident led to the passing of a state law in 1885 requiring all executions to happen at the penitentiary in Columbus, Marquette said.
Another prominent event involved Louis C. Bromfield as a star witness in a case which accused boxer dogs of killing a farmer’s sheep.
Bromfield, a Pulitzer prize-winning author who lived at Malabar Farm, had a penchant for box dogs.
“(Bromfield) felt that there was no way that these dogs could have killed these sheep,” Marquette said.
Bromfield, in the witness stand, told a jury boxer dogs have a snout too short to take hold of a sheep and kill it.
“They brought four boxer dogs into the courtroom and they asked the sole witness to identify the dog that killed the sheep. But he could not identify any of the dogs,” Marquette said.
The case was dismissed.
Stimpert referenced a Bible from the late 1800s that belonged to a former Ashland County judge. When he died, the Osborne family presented it to the courthouse.
“Each outgoing judge writes a small paragraph as they leave for the next judge, which is a pretty neat artifact,” he said.
Stimpert described the courthouse as giving off a “small-town court feel.”
“You can get a title for your car, record a deed, pay your real estate taxes. People call it a courthouse but it’s much more than that. It’s the center of the county,” he said.
The courthouse’s future
The Ohio Channel’s video comes as commissioners are working to construct a separate building to house non-courthouse offices, such as the recorder, title, treasurer and auditor offices.
The ultimate plan is to build a new, 13,000 square-foot administrative office building for the auditor, treasurer, recorder and tax map departments — all of which currently occupy space in the courthouse.
When those offices move out of the courthouse, commissioners would renovate the old building to better accommodate court proceedings.
The new building will be constructed nearby, along Cottage Street at the 1.7-acre lot that used to house the former Ashland Middle School. Commissioners bought that property in October for $400,000.
Commissioners said the administration building and courthouse renovation could cost up to $7 million. They hope to issue bid guidelines for the administration building project in a month or so.