It was a godsend when one of the prettiest courthouses in the state, the red-brick railroad-Gothic Hancock County courthouse, burned to the ground. They were able to reconstruct it precisely!
Posted on 03/01/2023 11:29:16 AM PST by DallasBiff
When President James Garfield was gunned down at the Washington, DC, train station in 1881, his assassination came at the hand of a man who was arguably one of history’s first incels: Charles Guiteau.
Guiteau wasn’t unable to find love only in the real world — he also failed to find it at the Oneida Community, an upstate New York colony that practiced “regulated promiscuity.” Traditional marriage was banned there, but the male and female members were all considered man and wife, meaning anyone could sleep with anyone who agreed. The problem for Guiteau is that not one woman at Oneida welcomed the short, excitable, redhead into her bed. Instead, the community’s fairer sex tagged Charles with a nickname: “Git out!”
“Sexual frustration . . . was the main cause of Guiteau’s misery,” writes Susan Wels in “An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a 19th-century Sex Cult and a President’s Murder” (Pegasus Crime)
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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He and Leibniz got into quite a quarrel over who invented calculus. A documentary I saw said there would have been enough glory for both of them, but as they acted, there was no glory for either.
Okay
I was surprised once, talking with a teacher, of a conservative type. He said if he had a time machine, he would go back and kill John Dewey.
You know, the guy who invented the “Dewey Decimal System” for cataloguing library books. Not for that, obviously. Dewey had some strange ideas about the ultimate purposes of Public Education.
People forget, prior to about 1940, there was no cure for Syphilis or Gonorrheah, er, Gonnorheah .. eh, the Clap. They were just like AIDS, more or less deadly, debilitating, and caused people to go crazy when it infected the brain.
The leftists always want to portray the “Puritans” or other proscriptions against casual sex as being “uptight” or they were all benighted religious freaks and the rest if it. There were very good reasons. Infidelity meant bringing home incurable diseases. The “French Pox”.
Mercury was the treatment of choice for Syphilis, if I recall my history. The dosage was considered about right, if mercury was seen oozing out of the scalp when squeezed. Historians/archaeologists look for traces of elemental mercury at suspected campsites of the Lewis & Clark expedition, as the captains treated most of the enlisted men for venereal diseases caught from the native damsels on their way up the Missouri into the pacific northwest. At one point some of the men had no buttons on their clothes, having traded them for sexual favors.
More common in the South, it being a poorer region most Southern counties had wooden courthouses rather than brick or stone. Not that brick courthouses can't burn (I know of a couple) but wood burns a lot easier!
I've hit a roadblock running the family of the man who sold me my farm . . . by family lore, they've had the land since it was opened to settlement, but Sherman burned the county courthouse here and the county was mostly hardscrabble farmers (we're in a not-quite-mountain region in GA and the soil is not ideal for farming!) so they didn't get the courthouse rebuilt until the 1870s. Heaven only knows what happened to any land deeds in the interim. But no records before 1884 (maybe people got out of the habit of filing deeds! But GA is a "first-filed" state, so most folks file right away.)
That’s exactly right. American Heritage magazine had an article long ago about the “Burned-Over Districts” and the movements that they spawned.
I love the old wooden Southern courthouses. The one in Bartow county to the south of you is still standing and a true gem. I’m trying to remember which movie filmed courthouse scenes there, but coming up blank. Not “To Kill a Mockingbird” but similar famous old movie. Guess I’m having a case of the “Sometimers” lol.
Take a look at it if you pass through Cartersville. It was replaced in 1869 with a fancy brick courthouse and no longer in use as a courthouse, but a true gem of an old Southern wooden courthouse. The inside is quite impressive, at least I found it so.
You feel such a great respect for the majesty of the Rule of Law and right to a trial by jury in those old courthouses. Like the people then took it very seriously, far more seriously than we do today. So different from the modern courtrooms that feel like a modern university classroom or something. I believe our architecture has a real effect on us, as well as reflecting our values.
The trouble with them, as you pointed out, is they could and did burn down. :( I had a similar problem with burnt courthouses and missing records in the Carolinas.
It was a godsend when one of the prettiest courthouses in the state, the red-brick railroad-Gothic Hancock County courthouse, burned to the ground. They were able to reconstruct it precisely!
When Catholic churches started being "Gospel Barns" instead of the work of architects and artists to the greater glory of God, something very important was lost. Our rector realized it, and our new church is very, very traditional in style. People come from all over to get married there . . .
Bartow Courthouse (1902) is also a RR Gothic - J.W. Golucke was the architect of it and numerous other courthouses in that style.
I know what what you mean about “gospel barns” lol. What a wonderful expression!
The Catholic Church close to my family home was one such. Abominable structure. It was known all over town as “the church of the jet-propelled Jesus” because of the huge and horrid painting hung behind the altar (donated by a rich parishioner).
Eventually, the rich parishioner died and the town grew by leaps and bounds and the horrid “gospel barn” was replaced by a beautiful cathedral. So beautiful and uplifting that people from other denominations (or none) came to look inside. And were converted! Yes, architecture does affect us.
Wow! That is one amazing Southern brick courthouse! I love how they kept the big tall windows as found in the old wooden courthouses. In addition to letting in lots or sunlight, they give courtrooms a church-like feel. As if to say “we invested in these very expensive windows because we take Justice as seriously as churches take the Gospel and, after all, our Rule of Law is ultimately derived from the Bible.”
I hope some folks who used our parish for a wedding venue were inspired to stay. We DO have the best choir in the city (if I say so myself). Our choirmaster/organist is an amazing talent, and just as nice and kind to amateurs as he can be!
It's Richardsonian Romanesqure Revival. Has a beautiful acoustic.
I see from the story that they actually found the ORIGINAL PLANS for the courthouse - an architect had borrowed them to restore the Watkins County courthouse (designed by the same firm)!
My great-aunt married a man whose family had been in Hancock County forever and ever. It used to be the very richest county in the state - when cotton was king. Now it is one of the poorest, if not THE poorest. Very sad.
But the people have pride in their heritage, and thankfully political correctness/wokeness never really caught on. It's the sort of county where you look out for your neighbors, and their color matters a whole lot less than whether they are good neighbors. There's a lot of hope ahead for the county.
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