DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, every good jail story starts before the jail — and this one's no different. When the Blanco County seat was moved to Johnson City, they had to put prisoners somewhere, and the somewhere they chose was a basement.
A damp basement. An unhealthy, damp basement. You can imagine the commissioners court didn't hear the end of that for long.
So in 1893, they did what Texas commissioners courts do: they ordered something built. A proper jail this time. Something with walls a man couldn't argue with.
They hired J. E. L.
Dildine for the job — went by Kergie, born in 1853 — a rock mason who'd made his way down to Blanco County from Kansas back in the 1880s. And Kergie Dildine did not come to play. He laid that jailhouse up in limestone, course by course, the kind of stone that doesn't apologize to weather or time.
The work was finished the following year — 1894. Now here's where the story gets interesting, as jail stories tend to do. 1897 rolls around, and somebody got out who wasn't supposed to. A jailbreak.
The details of how, the marker doesn't linger on — but it happened. And yet that building is still standing, still in use, interior modifications made over the years to keep up with state jail standards, but the limestone walls Kergie Dildine put up? Still there.
Turns out a damp basement was the beginning of something that outlasted just about everyone who complained about it.
What the marker says
Noting the unhealthy dampness of the basement where prisoners were first kept after the Blanco County seat was moved to Johnson City, the commissioners court ordered the construction of this jail facility in 1893. Completed the following year, the jailhouse was built of limestone by J. E. L. (Kergie) Dildine (1853-1925), a rock mason who came to Blanco County from Kansas in the 1880s. Despite an 1897 jailbreak, the facility has continued in use, with interior modifications to meet state jail standards. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986