The
At a special term of Court, a house was rented
from Joe Jernigan to serve as temporary courthouse. Records that were damaged
but readable were rewritten and rebound. Memories were used to duplicate
warrants that were drawn to replace those that had burned. The editor of the
"Conecuh Escambia Star", F.A. Monroe of Evergreen, replaced all
burned copies of the newspapers on file and five new fireproof safes were
bought on an installment plan.
The battle for the new courthouse began shortly
after the fire. Pollard wished to retain the county seat and Brewton saw it's opportunity to become the new county seat. Through an
act of Legislature a vote was taken and Pollard won the election but due
invalid votes a second act was passed by the Legislature and Brewton obtain the
county seat. At this time Pollard refused to turn over the records and county
offices were not moved to Brewton.
Emotions ran high between the citizens of
Pollard and Brewton and at one point of the controversy, a Brewton suporter, writing under the pen name of Jack Plane, wrote
in the "Brewton Blade": "Well as it 'tis, it 'tis, and can't be
any 'tizer. The courthouse issue has resolved into a Kilkenny cat fight. Brewton and Pollard have their tails
tied together and are hung across the beatline of the
precincts and on that line they will have to fight."
The next week a Pollard writer replied,
"If you propose to let the courthouse question be settled with a cat fight
here is our part of the cats, match them and turn them in." As it turned
out, "Our part of cats" was a boxcar load of cats and kittens shipped
into Brewton at night and turned loose on the town.
In January of 1882, Judge Hubbard ordered
another trial. Meantime, some Brewton citizens decided to take matters into
their own hands. They slipped in Pollard one night and broke into the temporary
courthouse and stoled the records. Once the records
were loaded on two wagons, the drivers headed toward Brewton. After getting a
short distance away from Pollard, the drivers decided to speed up to make their
get-away good. The wagon road was narrow and there was a sharp curve at the
bottom of a hill approaching a bridge which crossed a stream. The driver of the
second wagon, lost control of his team, and the wagon overturned, with some of
the records being tossed into the stream. Because the haste and darkness not
all the records were retreived. Between the fire and the
theft
The early January trial of 1882 did not settle
the controversy and a second trial was held in
Source: "History of
©2007 Kellie Crnkovich