The building was Lawrence County’s third permanent courthouse and would stand at the center of the Public Square for nearly seven decades.

 

The cornerstone for the building, which is preserved today in the modern Lawrence County Courthouse, was laid by some of Lawrence County’s Masons. The Masons have long been present at the ceremonial cornerstone-laying of important public buildings. For example, George Washington–who was a Master Mason–laid the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol building in a similar ceremony in 1793.

 

The Lawrence County Courthouse cornerstone ceremony was accompanied by “songs, prayer, band music, the receiving of deposits, and benediction.” Newspaper accounts tell us that “a number of appropriate deposits were placed in the stone.” One of the objects inside was the scroll in one of the attached photos, which was recovered when the cornerstone was opened upon the courthouse’s destruction in 1974.