A unique feature of the American landscape is the county courthouse. Take a trip along the old major highways and you will often find at the center of a county seat stands a large, old, sometimes overly elaborate courthouse. At first glance, you may think that these ancient buildings have always marked the center of county government, but this is often not the case. All of our local counties have moved county seats.
Milton is the second known center of government in Santa Rosa County. In Escambia County, Alabama, Pollard once held the title, and Escambia County, Florida’s government for a short while during the Civil War, left the state. Each move of these governments has a story, but none is more interesting than that of Baldwin County’s “kidnapped courthouse”.
The town of Bay Minette, Alabama, began as a railway depot during the Civil War and within a few years was a boom town. It didn’t take much for the future thinkers of the time to plan for the town’s possibilities. In 1886 a town design was completed with a future courthouse location near the railway and then later, before 1900, a new plan moved the town’s center north to open land. At the middle of this new grid situated along Hand Avenue was Courthouse Square. The plan was great except for one thing - the county seat was not here.
Baldwin County’s first government was near its northern border at the lost town of Dumfries. By 1811 the government had moved to Blakely. Recurrences of yellow fever and ravages of the Civil War, power moved to the bayside town of Daphne in 1868.
Then, through an Act of the Legislature of Alabama, the county seat was transferred to Bay Minette on February 5, 1901. This little achievement by a powerful group at Bay Minette was largely unsuspected by the stunned officials at Daphne. As part of the state order, a new courthouse must be built without raising taxes and the old Daphne Courthouse sold.
The transfer of the county seat was put into the hands of the Bay Minette organization in charge of the new courthouse construction called the “building committee”. The citizens of Daphne were later enraged to discover that the building committee had overseen the somewhat discrete sale, at a loss, of the Daphne Courthouse and jail so it could be used as a school.
Aided with funds from this sale, by the first of July 1901 a grand celebration was held at the laying of the cornerstone of the new Bay Minette Courthouse. At the beginning of October, Baldwin County had a sold courthouse in Daphne and a new one sitting empty in Bay Minette. Several officials still objected to the county seat move. Among those was County Sheriff Bryant who refused to vacate the old courthouse and jail, or turn over county records.
The chairman of the building committee was JD Hand, a wealthy lumberman who had worked for years to move the county seat. It was he who paid for the second Bay Minette city plan. He also donated two acres of land for the courthouse at the center of the new town which was coincidently laid out mostly on his land. On October 10, 1901, Mr. Hand set into motion a plan to vacate the old courthouse. Although stories of the move vary, this is the overall tale.
It was about 11pm when as many as thirteen wagons left Bay Minette loaded with laborers and steelworkers and proceeded to Daphne where they camped on the edge of town. At 7am, JC Blackburn and OE McMillan of the building committee, along with almost forty Bay Minette men, notified the Sheriff on the courthouse steps that they intended to move the records.
JD Hand arrived immediately afterwards, dragging along a young man and said, “This man is a thief and I demand that you lock him up”. As the distracted Sheriff opened the building to secure the young man, several men, including the steelworkers with hidden tools, ran into the courthouse and refused to leave. Now seeing the ploy, Sheriff Bryant locked the entire group inside the courthouse and left, saying that he was going across the bay to Mobile and get an injunction against the move.
Soon afterward, the steelworkers broke the locked doors and began cutting the bars from the jail cells as the laborers loaded furniture and boxes of records onto wagons. Probate Judge Charles Hall oversaw the project, making sure that everything was properly moved including his office desk.
The emptying of the courthouse hardly went unnoticed; during the day it was reported that the activity prompted several fist fights among the citizens. It was nearly 4pm when the wagons finally reappeared, as they approached for a second load.
At this time lookouts were on the docks, ready to give the alarm if the Sheriff was seen. The few remaining courthouse items were loaded in record time, the last wagon pulling away as the lookouts reported Sheriff Bryant’s boat coming into view. It was nearly 5:30 in the evening when the escaped column of wagons arrived at Bay Minette, Judge Hall’s buggy at the rear, the county’s seal on the seat next to him.
The Sheriff’s threatened injunction never arrived. On October 24th, 1901 a notice was placed in the local newspaper saying “The courthouse at Bay Minette is ready for public business”. Town officials of Daphne later filed and won a suit against the move of the courthouse, but it was soon overturned by a higher state court. This legally ended the matter of the kidnapped courthouse.
The A.S.H.S. museums share an interesting story of our small town. They are open Saturdays, with personal tours by appointment any day, come see us.
