About five miles west of Waynesburg, just off Route 21, sits a large rock, framed by a graying split-rail fence and weathered by decades of wind, rain and snow. It rests on a small hillside, jutting skyward as if propelled through the earth by some geological event.
But most likely it was placed there by members of the Greene County Historical Society. Frankly, it doesn’t take much of a sleuth to figure that out because there is a metal plaque screwed into the rock’s face that informs the curious that in 1928 the history buffs attached the plaque to let everyone know this was the site where the first Greene County court was convened.
It wasn’t a pasture on Jan. 2, 1797, when Judge Alexander Addison convened this first court proceeding. The judicial activities of the day were held in the tavern home of Jacob Cline of Muddy Creek.
Early court records said, “It was a modest log cabin, and the first case placed on the docket was that of Neal Gillespie v. Luke Wapole, a confession of judgment in the amount of 457 pounds.” It doesn’t make clear, however, whether it was Gillespie or Walpole who won the judgment; nor does it say what the judgment was for.
The second court was held at the same place on April 3, 1797, and it was an Orphans’ Court proceeding involving the sale of lots belonging to the estate of a James Carmichael, who had laid out a town on the waters of Muddy Creek in Cumberland Township.
Apparently, a number of the lots had been sold, but “many remain undisposed of.”
Well, Judge Addison, in a decision prior to his infamous impeachment, ordered the sale of the remaining lots to most likely form what is now known as Carmichaels Borough.
There is no hard evidence to suggest that either of these court decisions was made while any of the parties helped themselves to Cline’s tavern offerings.
But on the same day the second proceeding concluded, “by unanimous consent of the court and county commissioners,” the court was moved to Waynesburg to a two-story log structure built by George Ullom and George Graham at the southwest corner of Greene Street and Whiskey Alley.
Whiskey Alley? Hmmm. What’s up with that? No doubt it was just coincidental that the court left a tavern and moved to a courthouse on Whiskey Alley.
It seems the reason the two court cases were held at Cline’s tavern was the county commissioners were waiting to acquire land for the county seat to build its first “real” courthouse.
Greene County Historical Society has renovated that log structure, in reality Greene County’s second courthouse, and it remains at its original location on Greene Street.
This building was used until about 1800 as the courthouse.
Early records of the construction of a third courthouse on the present site on High Street are incomplete and very meager, but it appears “that a brick courthouse of a very modest dimension was first erected around the same time, to which the business of the county, including the courts, was moved.”
The present courthouse was built in 1850-51 on the site of that 1800 two-story brick courthouse on the public square in
Waynesburg.
And while the present courthouse, with its massive columns, cupola and statue of Gen. Nathanael Greene standing guard over High Street, is impressive, it seems to lack the intrigue of what took place in Cline’s tavern 211 years ago.
Just imagine going back into time and watching the lawyers, litigants and judges raising a mug of Cline’s fine brew, and then deciding to create a borough.