After a fire, the justices of the Buckingham County Court appointed commissioners to oversee the design and construction of a new courthouse and to preserve usable materials from the old one. Letters between Colonel Charles Yancey and Thomas Jefferson in 1821 show that Yancey asked Jefferson to draft a courthouse plan for a building between 48 and 52 feet square, and Jefferson replied that his design exceeded those dimensions, apparently in length rather than width. Archaeological evidence identified Feature 1 as the builder’s trench of the east wall of Jefferson’s 1822 courthouse, with brick foundations harvested for reuse and unusable bricks discarded in the trench, indicating efficient salvaging of the earlier structure’s materials. This evidence also indicates that Jefferson’s courthouse was 52 feet wide, making it 12 feet wider than the courthouse that replaced it in 1873. Other excavated features identified the east pavilion, a brick walkway possibly marking a side door, and foundations for the portico, main columns, and lesser colonnade, with surviving column capitals and bases further supporting the reconstruction of Jefferson’s courthouse design.