Dispute Over Greene County Courthouse Location

   Last time I wrote about a dispute in Jasper County in the late 1890s over whether the county seat should remain in Carthage or be moved to Joplin or Webb City. Just a few years earlier, Greene County had a similar dispute, although the dispute wasn't between two different towns. It was between two different sections of the same town--Springfield.

   North Springfield sprang up as a separate town in 1870 when Springfield was trying to get a railroad and the depot was located north of town rather than in the heart of the city. The new town grew up around the depot, located on Commercial Street, and a rivalry quickly developed between Springfield and its upstart neighbor to the north. The two towns finally merged in the spring of 1887, when North Springfield became part of Springfield, but the rivalry wasn't quite over.

   Within months a controversy arose over the location of a proposed new jail. Some of Springfield's wealthy citizens and a number of county commissioners and county judges wanted to build it on Center Street (now Central Street), about halfway between the old town and North Springfield, and a lot of North Springfieldians, of course, favored this idea. However, most of Springfield's rank and file citizens and a majority of the people in outlying parts of the county thought the new jail should be built on or near the square, close to the courthouse. (Located at the northwest corner of College Street and the square, the old courthouse is pictured below.)

   To circumvent the argument that the jail should be near the courthouse, those favoring the Center Street location soon proposed that a new courthouse might also be built on Center Street. This caused the dispute to heat up even more.

   One argument put forth by those proposing to move the courthouse and jail was that Greene County did not own the land where the square was, because it was part of the original 50 acres donated to the City of Springfield by John P, Campbell in the 1830s. Moving the courthouse and jail to Center Street would place it outside the original 50 acres and, thus, on county land. Those opposed to the move countered that, if such a legal argument was correct, then nearly all the courthouses in southwest Missouri, such as the Christian County courthouse at Ozark, were not located on county property but on city property instead. Those who wanted to keep the courthouse and jail on the square said the plan to move them was just a scheme to line the pockets of some wealthy investors who had purchased lots on Center Street. "It is nothing but legal robbery," said one farmer from rural Greene County, "and the judges deserve hanging more than George Graham." (This was a reference to a wife-murderer who had been lynched near present-day Grant Beach Park about a year earlier. See my book Bigamy and Bloodshed: The Scandal of Emma Molloy and the Murder of Sarah Graham.)

   Those favoring the Center Street location soon won out on the question of where to build the new jail. It was constructed in 1889 in the northeast quadrant of Center and Boonville. The disagreement over building a new courthouse, though, continued for a quite a few years, before a new structure was finally built next to the jail between 1910 and 1912.