History
The building, completed in 1886, was the second courthouse in the county. The first courthouse in the county, a 20-by-24 foot one-story stone building, was built in 1857. It served as the location for the trial of 392 Dakota Indians after the Sioux Uprising. Thirty-eight Dakota were simultaneously hanged in December 1862.
By the late 1800s, the county commissioners felt that the previous buildings were a "disgrace and gave strangers that we were behind the times. That the county was either poverty stricken or greatly lacking in enterprise." The new building combined a Second Empire roof and dome with Italianate features. The stone was provided by a local quarry, with various techniques giving it both rusticated and ashlar surfaces. The copper-sheathed dome is capped with a statue of Lady Justice.
Read more about this topic: Blue Earth County Courthouse
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (1735–1826)