Goochland County’s courthouse square preserves the historic public square where the county’s courthouse was received on August 20, 1827, by commissioners William Miller, G. Woodson Payne, and William Bolling, who recorded that the elegant and excellent building erected by Dabney Cosby and Valentine Parrish was used by the court for the first time with Bolling presiding. The square, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, retains the bounds of an important center of public life in early Virginia, where the courthouse square included buildings required for the administration of justice, including the courthouse, clerk’s office, and jail. Monthly court days brought legal business such as trials and punishments, but also drew citizens from across the county to gather around the square and nearby taverns to discuss business and politics, exchange gossip, and take part in entertainments ranging from horse races to horse trading. The brick wall around the grounds was built in 1844 to define the square and keep out grazing animals. The angled portion of the wall at the southeast corner accommodated Office Road, shown on a plat dated 1822 and still in use. In the fall of 1824, during his return to Virginia, the Marquis de Lafayette passed through Goochland on his way to Monticello to visit Thomas Jefferson; after being welcomed by citizens on the courthouse square, he is said to have spent the night at Benjamin Anderson’s tavern on the southwest corner. That old tavern later became the home of Major James A. Graves in 1923, then housed the newly formed Bank of Goochland for two years while Graves served as its second president, before the building was eventually taken down when the state highway was widened.