The Courthouses of Warwick County Past Traditional Cache

This cache has been archived.

CardinalReviewer: There has been no response from the CO. Without recent communication on future cache availability, we can not hold this area for you any longer and so this cache is being archived. Please pick up any remaining cache bits as soon as possible.

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Hidden : 7/12/2009
Difficulty:
1.5 out of 5
Terrain:
1 out of 5

Size: Size: micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:

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We just recently discovered this interesting area. This part of Newport News, VA was once someplace else not that long ago. Here's a toast to the ghosts of communities past, specifically to the ghosts of Warwick County past.

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The following information was obtained from the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for the Warwick County Courthouses, dated September 30th, 1988.

Warwick County was one of the eight original shires or counties formed in Virginia in 1634. The county seat was Warwick Town, located on a point of land on the north bank of the James River, bounded on the west by Warwick River and on the east by Deep Creek.

By 1807 the inconvenience of the courthouse's location, as well as its state of disrepair, led a number of the county's inhabitants to petition the General Assembly to authorize a change in the location of the county seat. The petitioners recommended relocating the courthouse to the land of the heirs of Richard Cary on Stony Run. The current courthouse, they claimed, had become “ruinous from the gradual Decay of Time;" besides, the fact that it was bounded on three sides by water made it inconvenient. The petitioners warned the General Assembly that a counter-petition would be forthcoming. Richard Young, a tavern-keeper at the courthouse who owned most of the land there, opposed the proposed removal and offered £100 to be divided among those who would join him.

The counter-petition, signed by Richard Young and others, soon arrived before the General Assembly. No mention was made of the £100 offer, but the arguments presented against removal were financial in nature. The petitioners wished to avoid the expense of moving the courthouse because the proposed site was not so much nearer the center of the county and a new jail had been built at the current location in 1798. Furthermore, the present courthouse was “supposed to be one amongst the Oldest in this state, and there has never been a petition for the removal before this." The General Assembly's Committee on Propositions, to which both petitions were referred on 23 December 1807, accepted the arguments of the first one and rejected the second, but no bill was passed authorizing the removal.

There the matter rested for two years; in 1809 both sides tried again. Richard Young and his adherents, who still were opposed to the removal of the courthouse, filed another petition denying the charges about his £100 offer. They charged in turn that their opponents had signed some names to their petition fraudulently. Those in favor of removal, in a separate petition, reasserted their accusations against Young and likewise claimed fraud. This time those favoring removal not only prevailed as before with the Committee on Propositions, but saw the General Assembly pass an act on 28 December 1809 authorizing the removal of the courthouse.

The act provided for the appointment of five commissioners "to sell the public property at the place where the courthouse now stands . . . to assess the value of two acres of land, belonging to the heirs of Richard Cary, deceased, at Stony Run . . . [and] to contract . . . to build a courthouse and jail on the Cary tract". The commissioners named in the act were Maurice Langhorne, William Garrow, William Digges, Thomas R. Dunn, and Humphrey H. Wynne. The new courthouse was constructed in 1810 by Thomas R. Dunn, T. Sandy, and R. Ratcliff. To the north of the east facing courthouse a small two-story jail was built; another small structure to the south served as the clerk's office.



The diminutive size of the court square and its buildings amused a Union soldier who encamped there in 1862. On 18 April he wrote to his brother;
“About sun set we came to a halt in a wheat field at a place called Warwick C.H. . . . A brick building about the size of a Smoke House which was used as a kind of County Clerk's office, the records and documents of the County were kept there. . . . Next is the Court house a brick building about the size of a carriage house up our way. The court room is about the size of an office. There are two wings to the building and each have one smaller room in, that is now a kind of commissary. Next is another little smoke house with grated windows which was the jail. These buildings are all in a line. The C.H. is the largest of the whole group. Altogether they perhaps cover a quarter of an acre.”

The soldier and some of his comrades rifled the clerk's office and took some early court records. Presumably the remainder had been sent to Richmond for safekeeping in the state courthouse on Capitol Square; the courthouse and its contents were destroyed during the Richmond evacuation fire on 2-3 April 1865.

After the Civil War, the resumption of commerce resulted in the expansion of railroad service. In 1881 the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad was extended to Newport News through Warwick County. The location of the Oriana station near the courthouse increased development pressures in the area; Newport News grew rapidly.

By 1884 the Warwick County courthouse and jail, in addition to being too small for the demands placed upon them, had fallen into disrepair. An act was passed by the General Assembly on 19 February 1884 authorizing the county to issue bonds in the amount of $10,000 to finance the repairs or, if necessary, to rebuild the courthouse and jail.

During 1884 a new large courthouse was built to the south of the old one. On 5 January 1885 the court ordered that H H Wynne clerk of the County & Circuit Courts of Warwick County be authorized & directed to remove all the books & papers & public documents & appurtenances from the present Clerk's office to the apartment prepared in the new Court House for the Clerk of said Courts. And ordered that hereafter the Courts of this County will be held in the new Courthouse building.



Only three years after the new courthouse was occupied, Newport News had so grown in population and importance that there was sentiment for moving the courthouse once again. An act was passed by the General Assembly on 2 March 1888 authorizing "a poll for the purpose of ascertaining the sense of the qualified voters of [Warwick] county as to whether or not the site of the courthouse of said county shall be changed from its present location to Newport News, in said county". The act further authorized the county government to sell the courthouse and jail then in use, in order to finance new ones in Newport News; if the town ever was incorporated into a city, then the county was to be reimbursed for the new buildings. In 1892 the courthouse was in fact removed to Newport News, where it remained until 1896 when the town was incorporated as a city.

From 1896 until 1958, when Warwick County was annexed by Newport News, the county's courts again were held in the 1884 courthouse, and the 1810 courthouse was used as a clerk's office. On 27 May 1909 the Confederate Monument standing in the square was unveiled in a ceremony at which Governor Claude A. Swanson gave the dedicatory address.



Following the annexation of the county by Newport News in 1958 the old court buildings were put to other uses.

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Please place the cache back exactly the way you found it. Please bring your own writing instrument.

Congratulations to tmberwuf65 for being FTF.

This cache has been approved by and registered with the Newport News Department of Parks, Recreation & Tourism. Registration # 0170.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Gnxr n fgrc hc.

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)


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