The Old Clay County Courthouse in Clay, West Virginia was designed by Frank L. Packard and built in 1902. The Beaux-Arts building was located on a hill overlooking the county seat. The courthouse was the site of three notable trials: the Sarah Ann Legg trial of 1905, the first trial of a woman in Clay County for murder, the Booger Hole trial of 1917, in which citizens nearly lynched the defendants, and the Oscar Bail trial of 1953, in which Bail was convicted of killing a mine guard in the Great Widen Coal Strike.
Since a new courthouse opened across the street, the old courthouse houses magistrate's offices and the county extension agent.
Famous quotes containing the words clay, county and/or courthouse:
“He is in the tailor mending my pantsuit.
He is in Boston, raised up by the skyscrapers.
He is in the bird, that shameless flyer.
He is in the potter who makes clay into a kiss.
Heaven replies:
Not so! Not so!”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Anti-Nebraska, Know-Nothings, and general disgust with the powers that be, have carried this county [Hamilton County, Ohio] by between seven and eight thousand majority! How people do hate Catholics, and what a happiness it was to show it in what seemed a lawful and patriotic manner.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“... research is never completed ... Around the corner lurks another possibility of interview, another book to read, a courthouse to explore, a document to verify.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)