A Jailor is Jailed

A Jailor is Jailed. . In 1781, the Spotsylvania County Jail was along the Po River, about 2½ miles west of this site. In 1809, a new brick jail was constructed there; and in 1838, a fire destroyed the nearby courthouse., After the fire, Lewis Rawlings donated to the county 10 acres of his "Tavern Tract" for public buildings, and a new courthouse was built on that land. The county sought to also build a jail at the site using materials from the old structure on Po River., But Thomas Hicks, longtime custodian of the old jail and clerk's office whose family operated a tavern nearby, didn't want to relocate the buildings. When he refused to relinquish the buildings and their contents, Rawlings and a group of armed men eventually forced entry to take the jail's rafters, joists and other components., Nowhere to be found was Hicks, who had already taken items from the jail, including the stove, blankets, locks, and keys. However, he was later charged with contempt and briefly jailed after impeding attempts to remove more materials., Eventually, the entire 1809 structure was moved to the new site and Rawlings became the jailor. The two-story jail, which burned down in 1853, comprised six cells., A new jail was built in 1855, and that structure, pictured in the background and at right, remains standing by the courthouse., (Photo Captions) , A circa-1860 lock-and-key set is an example of what was used inside the early jails of Spotsylvania County. Courtesy of the Spotsylvania Historical Association, Shown here is the interior of a cell inside Spotsylvania's old jail, built in 1855.