Site of the First Courthouse

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. The Texas Legislature had already made up its mind: the seat of Navarro County would be called Corsicana. That part was settled.

But deciding a name and actually securing a location, well, those are two very different things. And so the county did what counties sometimes do. It waited.

It made do with whatever structures were handy for county business, moving from one borrowed space to the next. Then 1848 arrived, and three men stepped forward. David R.

Mitchell, James C. Neill, and Thomas Smith donated this very site. With that, the waiting was over.

Now they needed a courthouse. What they got was a log cabin. Fifteen feet by seventeen feet.

You could pace it off in about four good strides each direction. Inside that modest little structure, someone had designated one corner for the judge's stand and another corner for the county clerk's table. That was the courthouse of Navarro County.

Not a grand hall of justice. A log cabin with corners assigned to the work of civilization. Other structures had served briefly before it, sure, but this was the first actual courthouse, erected right here in 1848.

Now, I want you to sit with that image for a moment. A judge in one corner, a clerk in the other, and the whole weight of the county's legal life squeezed into a room smaller than some folks' front porches today. It did its job.

And then, in 1853, a two-story frame courthouse replaced it. Progress had arrived in Navarro County, and it needed more than two corners to do business.

What the marker says

The Texas Legislature specified that the seat of Navarro County should be called Corsicana; but the location was not secured until 1848, when this site was donated by David R. Mitchell, James C. Neill, and Thomas Smith. Other structures served briefly as quarters for county business; but the fist actual courthouse was a log cabin erected here in 1848. The 15' by 17' building had the judge's stand in one corner and county clerk's table in another. A two-story frame courthouse replaced the cabin in 1853. (1976)