Michigan's County Courthouses

Allegan County

7 alleGaN—henry rowe schoolcraft, michigan’s expert on Native americans, gave allegan its name. some claim it is a compound of parts of different indigenous words, but it has no real meaning of its own. another interpretation is that it denotes the name of a tribe in the allegheny mountains. It was meant for a northern county, but the territorial legislature assigned it to the land between Grand rapids and Kalamazoo when it defined the boundaries in 1831. at first, the townships making up the eastern third of the county were attached to st. Joseph and then Kalamazoo County for civil purposes. the other two-thirds fell under the jurisdiction of Cass County. they were united in 1835, and circuit court was first held in November 1836 in whatever structures had large rooms. the itinerant court convened in such varied places as a schoolhouse,amethodistchapel,abasement,andthejailer’s building. the court and county offices endured a scattered arrangement until 1889. the building that first welcomed the court now houses an attorney’s office and was moved to stand across the street from the current courthouse. the first jail was built in 1840 for $1,567.98. For $528.50 the county in 1847 completed a twenty-by-forty-foot brick structure with a tin roof to house records and some county offices. the clerk was directed to fix up the room in the jailhouse for court. It served until the spring of 1854, at which time the county purchased a two-story baptist church and refinished the upper room for a courtroom. It was architecturally eclectic—a Greek temple with a bell tower atop an english basement. In 1853 the first county fair was held in the basement. the small frame building had Allegan County alleGaN CouNty an attached jail made of lean-to logs. the jail was described as damp and unhealthy. Prisoners reportedly claimed that they did not dare turn over in bed for fear of rolling out of the jail. after the Civil War there was a push for new courthouse , but voters rejected the bond proposal. the issue was revisited in 1869 when the court was in danger of caving in. Voters approved $6,000, which paid for a two-story brick building with a stone foundation measuring about forty by fifty feet. It was designed in the Italianate style and was first occupied in 1872. there was still no special space for court, however, and the earlier building continued to serve until it was condemned in 1887. Court moved about town again.In the meanwhile,voters approved a compromise measure allowing the county to spread a $45,000 bond over three tax rolls beginning in 1889. the cornerstone was laid on august 29, 1889, and the large romanesque stone court on a hill was completed in June 1890 at a cost of $43,854.88. the city and county in 1903 split the $1,200 cost of installing a clock in the tower. town boys vied for the honor of winding the clock, whose four faces were notoriously difficult to synchronize. residents joked that sometimes the clock was right only twice a day. In 1933 the court presided over perhaps its most sensational misdemeanor trial. Fred l. ring was tried for indecent exposure in the wake of the labor Day raid of his nudist colony with twenty or thirty followers in the allegan woods. he theorized that exposure to air and sunlight was healthy and that the practice was moral because children who grow up with nudists lose their sexual curiosity. the 8 skeptical sheriff was not persuaded. he considered nudists sexualists and had ring prosecuted. local officials wanted to root out the nudist foothold in their midst. they even offered to drop the charges if ring admitted violating the law and promised to never again practice nudism in allegan. he refused to sign the agreement. the jury convicted ring, and he was ordered to pay $356 in fines and costs and to spend sixty days in the county jail. at sentencing, Judge Fred t. miles castigated ring for playing up his crime “in the public press and on the degenerate stage.” miles chastised ring for deceiving himself into believing that he was “a martyr to pure air and sunshine.” the same judge is remembered for chiding a stentorian attorney to lower his voice. the attorney’s voice is said to have rattled the basement all the way from the courtroom on the second...