Spotsylvania Courthouse and Jail

A formal system of adjudication and punishment has existed in this county since the first court was seated in Germanna in ~1722. Over the years, the county seat and court building moved four times before reaching this site at the intersection of Courthouse Road and Brook Road in 1839 on land owned by Lewis and Ann Rawlings and offered to the county for public buildings. Contractor M.T. Crawford completed a new court house, clerk's office, and jail there. The court house survived several key Civil War battles but was badly damaged, and during and after the war it served as a hospital for wounded Confederate soldiers. Because the damage was judged too severe to renovate, a new court house was built with less expensive ivory-colored bricks from a quarry in Alexandria, Virginia after rising red-brick costs made other plans impractical, and it was completed in 1901 as the sixth court house used on four different sites. In 1877, while documenting communities affected by the Civil War, Massachusetts photographer W.H. Tipton took the only known photograph of the Spotsylvania County jail in use, showing two young African American sisters, Mary D. Waller and Jennie E. Boggs, who had awaited trial for almost one year on charges of felonious assault, grand larceny, and housebreaking when they posed for him on May 6, 1877; ten months later, the attorney for the Commonwealth declined further prosecution and they were set free.

Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia · United States