The Fayette County Court House, the third courthouse building in the county, opened on May 1, 1885. Ohio artist Archibald Willard, best known for the patriotic painting "The Spirit of '76," was commissioned by the firm Cooks Brothers to paint and create fresco work for the interior walls. He did not sign his work, and his identity remained unknown for nearly 75 years until it was confirmed in August 1956 through his cleverly disguised name in the delivery address of the letter in "The Spirit of the U.S. Mail" mural. Other primary murals, "Spirit of Electricity" and "Spirit of the Telegraph," adorn the third floor corridor. On October 16, 1894, a crowd gathered outside the courthouse intending to lynch alleged attacker William "Jasper" Dolby, and Governor William McKinley ordered Ohio National Guard troops to subdue the crowd. The mob was initially thwarted, but on October 17, while Dolby awaited transportation from the jail to the courthouse, the rioting intensified. Despite Dolby's guilty plea to rape and a 20-year sentence, the crowd rushed the courthouse doors seeking vengeance, ignored warnings to disperse or be fired upon, and continued battering the doors until Colonel Alonzo B. Coit ordered his troops to fire through them, killing five men. Coit was indicted for manslaughter and acquitted at trial, and afterward McKinley declared that the law had been upheld, though at fearful cost, and that lynching could not be tolerated in Ohio. Bullet holes from the gunfire are still visible in the courthouse's south doors.