Appellate Courthouse IL389
APPELLATE COURTHOUSE

This building was constructed for the Southern Division of the Illinois Supreme Court, one of three divisions created by the Constitution of 1848. Court met in Lodge Halls of Mount Vernon prior to completion of the center section of this building about 1857. The 1870 constitution established a system of Appellate Courts and Mount Vernon was named the seat of the Fourth District. The Supreme Court shared the building until 1897, after which all of its sessions were held in Springfield.

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Carmi's Oldest House IL372
CARMI'S OLDEST HOUSE

This house was built by early settler John Craw prior to 1817. In 1835 it was purchased by John M. Robinson, U.S. Senator (1831-43) and Illinois Supreme Court Justice (1843). The house was later occupied by his daughter Mrs. Robert Stewart and his granddaughter Miss Mary Jane Stewart.

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Walter F. George GA152-5
Walter F. George was born 1.5 miles north in a sharecropper's cabin. George was a teacher near Preston, then a lawyer and judge. From the Georgia Supreme Court he ran for the unexpired term of Senator Thomas E. Watson in 1922. George served 34 years in the U.S. Senate and was member of 12 committees and chaired five. He chaired the Senate Finance Committee and guided legislation to finance W.W. II. As chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee he pushed for lend-lease legislation that kept U.S. allies strong in W.W. II One of Senator George's toughest re-election campaigns was in 1938. He had opposed some of President Roosevelt's New Deal policies and F.D.R. strongly supported his opponent Lawrence Camp. George defeated both Camp and Eugene Talmadge. Senator George never forgot his rural roots and supported rural legislation such as REA and TV/A. Throughout his career he returned to Preston and delivered speeches at the courthouse. Senator George was appointed as special ambassador to NATO by President Eisenhower after retiring from the senate in 1956.

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Jackson County Court House and the Scottsboro Boys (back) AL37
The United States Supreme Court overturned the verdicts and new trials were held in Decatur, Alabama. After a series of trials, convictions and overturned decisions, a compromise was reached in 1938, with some of the "Scottsbor Boys" freed immediately and the others release by 1950. In 1976, Governor George C. Wallace pardones the last living "Scottsboro Boy". Two landmark United States Supreme Court decisions arose directly from the case. In "Patterson vs. Alabama" (1932), the United States Supreme Court ruled the defendants were denied the right to effective legal counsel, and in "Norris vs. Alabama" (1935), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the defendants had not received equal protection under the law because Jackson County juror rolls excluded African Americans. Many consider the Scottsboro case and its aftermath one of the beginnings of the civil rights movement in America.

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Clay County Court House AL1
Clay County Court House Built 1906 The county's first courthouse burned in 1875. Anniston architect, Charles W. Carleton designed the present courthouse with Italian Renaissance elements. Contractor Harper & Barnes of Cleveland, Tenn., completed the building in August 1906 at a cost of $37,986. A Seth Thomas clock in the dome is dated 1907. The courthouse has the highest elevation of any courthouse in Alabama. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black began his legal career here in 1906. Congressman Bob Riley launched a campaign for governor on the westside of the courthouse, and in 2003 became the first county resident to serve as governor. This marking celebrating the centennial of the courthouse was unveiled August 12, 2006.

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Brentmoor: The Spilman-Mosby House C92
This classic Italian Villa-style house was completed in 1861 for Fauquier County judge Edward M. Spilman. James Keith, who later served as president of Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals (1895 -1916), acquired it in 1869. John Singleton Mosby purchased the dwelling in 1869. Mosby, a Confederate Colonel, commanded the Partisan Rangers (43rd Battalion, Virginia Cavalry) which raided Union outposts, communications and supply lines in Northern Virginia (1863 - 1865). Eppa Hunton, a Confederate brigadier general, lawyer, a member of the U.S. Congress House (1873 - 1881) and Senate (1892 - 1895), bought the house in 1877 and owned it until 1902

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Trail of Tears

In 1830, the US Supreme Court decided in favor of protecting the Cherokees land rights. However, one powerful person, along with his successor, was responsible for the forced removal of Indians west of the Missisippi.

Do you know who was responsible for the 'Trail of Tears'?

Contributed by Jim Kuntz

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Trail of Tears - White River Trace MO185
White River Trace portion of the
TRAIL OF TEARS

The forced migration of the Cherokee Indians in 1837-1838 was a tragic episode in American history. As early as 1802, Thomas Jefferson proposed relocating southern tribes to land west of the Mississippi River, but it was not until the Indian Removal of 1830 that the plan became reality. The Cherokee Indians, who had established a newspaper, become prosperous merchants and farmers, and drafted their own constitution and laws, refused to sign a treaty agreeing to leave their native lands in northern Georgia. They won a decision from the Supreme Court that U.S. Government must provide protection for them and their property, but President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce the Courts ruling. During 1837 and 1838, soldiers forcibly moved the Cherokees...by land and water. Conditions on the 800 mile march were poor. G.S. Townsend, attending physician to a group of migrating Cherokee in 1837, wrote that "Nov. 25th, found the increasing number of cases (of fever) rendered in absolutely necessary....to discontinue in order that I might have some cl....to support with the formidable and overwhelming disease that seem...treat the party with destruction." It is estimated that 4,000 Cherokee perished on the march.

[This marker is severely damaged, several bullet holes, which allowed weather under the plastic and damaged the written material.]

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Texas County MO142
TEXAS COUNTY

Largest of Missouri's 114 counties, Texas comprises 1,183 sq. miles of Ozark Highland. With the same name as the largest of the 48 states, it exceeds the smallest, Rhode Island, by 125 sq. land miles. When formed in 1843, it was named for the explorer, fur trader, and first Lt. Gov. of Mo. William H. Ashley, but when formally organized, 1845, it was renamed for the Republic of Texas.

A seat of justice for the county was laid out in 1846 near the center of the county on Brushy Creek and named Houston for the first president of the Texas Republic. In the Civil War, the county was ravished by guerrilla warfare and the town was destroyed. Houston's modern development has been as trading center for a dairying, poultry, and livestock farming and lumbering area. The courthouse, built 1932, is the county's sixth.

Rugged hills, springs, and caves abound in Texas County. In the early 1800's William H. Ashley leached saltpeter from bat guano in a cave to the northeast for use in making gunpowder in his factory at Potosi. In 1818, explorer H.R. Schoolcraft visited the cave and named the area Wall-cave Valley.

Pioneers came to the Texas County area in the 1820's from Va., Ky., and Tenn., and set up saw mills along Big Piney River. Part of the county is now Mark Twain National Forest. Roamed by Indians into the 1830's, the area was part of the 1808 Osage Indian land cession. Indian paintings remain upon White Rock Bluffs over an ancient campsite.

In north Texas County is Licking, platted in 1857, and named for a deer and buffalo lick. There was Licking Academy, a noted early school, founded in 1880's. Congressman J.R. Lamar was academy principal in 1889. South is Cabool, laid out 1882, on the route of the Springfield & Memphis (Frisco) R.R., only town in the county on a railroad.

Pioneer educator of the Ozarks, William H. Lynch (1839-1924) was born near Houston. Davis H. Waite later governor of Colorado, taught school in Houston, 1859-60, and John T. White, Mo. Supreme Court Justice in the 1920's, taught here in 1878-79. Confederate Gen. James H. McBride made his home in the county, and on a farm near Houston, Emmett Kelly, creator of the famed circus clown, "Weary Willie," spent his boyhood.

[The first president of the Republic of Texas, was Sam Houston.]

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Prudence Crandall KS112
In 1831, Prudence Crandall, educator, emancipator, and human rights advocate, established a school which in 1833, became the first Black female academy in New England at Canterbury, Connecticut. This later action resulted in her arrest and imprisonment for violating the "Black Law." Although she was later released on a technicality, the school was forced to close after being harassed and attacked by a mob. She moved with her husband Reverend Calvin Philleo to Illinois. After her husband died in 1874, she and her brother moved to a farm near Elk Falls. Prudence taught throughout her long life and was an outspoken champion for equality of education and the rights of women. In 1886, supported by Mark Twain and others, an annuity was granted to her by the Connecticut Legislature. She purchased a house in Elk Falls where she died January 27, 1890. Over a hundred years later, legal arguments used by her 1834 trial attorneys were submitted to the Supreme Court during their consideration of the historic civil rights case of Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education.

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