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:
“Water. Its sunny track in the plain; its splashing in the garden canal, the sound it makes when in its course it meets the mane of the grass; the diluted reflection of the sky together with the fleeting sight of the reeds; the Negresses fill their dripping gourds and their red clay containers; the song of the washerwomen; the gorged fields the tall crops ripening.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“In the County Tyrone, in the town of Dungannon,”
—Unknown. The Old Orange Flute (l. 1)
“... 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)