Shown is a sketch of the structure engraved for “The People’s Defender” upon its completion in 1895.
Lore, Legends & Landmarks of Old Adams
By Stephen Kelley
It was April 23, 1895 – a day of celebrating for Adams County officials. The new county jail was finally completed and formally accepted by the county commissioners. Everyone had agreed that it was time to replace the old jail which stood on the west side of the courthouse. It was a brick and stone structure completed in 1858 and had proven woefully inadequate on January 10, 1894. It was on that evening when a mob of men from Cherry Fork and Winchester broke down the jail door, overpowered the sheriff and his deputy, and removed Roscoe Parker from the cell. The black teenaged Parker was taken north of Cherry Fork and lynched – writing one of this county’s darkest chapters in history.
It was this event that seemed to prompt the county commissioners to replace the aging jail with a new, modern structure which would keep prisoners in and unwanted visitors out. Samuel Laird of Cherry Fork – a Civil War veteran who served as captain of Company G of the 172nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry – was employed as Supervising Architect of the new jail and John O’Connell of Hillsboro, Ohio, won the contract to build the structure. So certain of his construction abilities was Mr. O’Connell, that he bragged he would give one hundred dollars – a considerable sum in the “Gay Nineties” – and a new suit of clothes – another worthy prize for that era – to the first man who could break out of the new “lock-up.”
Work began in earnest on the new jail in 1894. The country purchased the home and office of Dr. B.V. Hoghland which stood behind the courthouse on the northeast corner of Mulberry and Cross streets. Soon, the old house was demolished and the basement for the new jail was being excavated. Locally quarried dolomite was used to lay up the basement walls. Dates and initials of some of the workers carved into some of these stones can yet be seen inside the basement today.
As the months passed, thick brick walls grew high on top of the stone foundation and tons of the stone foundation and tons of steel bars were installed in the rear of the building. By the spring of 1895, a huge steel weather vane could be seen crowning the gray slate roof as construction drew to a close.
When officially presented to the commissioners, the new jail consisted of living quarters for the sheriff and his family in the front of the building with two floors of jail cells in the rear including a segregated cell to house women prisoners – a feature no previous county jail had possessed.
Within two weeks after the acceptance of the new jail, the incumbent sheriff – Marion Dunlap – and his family moved in. Dunlap was to be the first of twenty county sheriffs who would call the building “home.”
