Michigan's County Courthouses

Shiawassee County

167 CoRUNNA—shiawassee County, or at least the architect of its courthouse, has a penchant for Corinthian columns, the most ornate of the ones then available. Apart from the four massive pillars dominating the front entrance, there are smaller counterparts in the tower, on the doors themselves, in plasterwork, and in the design of the interior of the courtroom. shiawassee’s name refers to sparkling water or to a river, either one that is straight ahead or one that twists about, depending on what sources one consults. it originally contained parts of neighboring counties, and its seat on paper was Byron, though no courts were ever built there. When shiawassee’s present borders were set, Byron, which was once in the center, was now in the southeastern corner of the territory. An act of the Legislature on February , , removed the seat from Byron, and by July  what would become Corunna was the seat. An early settler reportedly named the town for Corunna, spain, from which he returned with sheep that he took all the way to Cincinnati. After the county was organized on March ,,court did not meet for several months until December  at the office of the county clerk in the schoolhouse in shiawassee exchange. in october , court moved to the house of Lucius W. Beach at shiawasseetown, then in November to owosso in rooms above the store of gould, Fish and Company. the following year the county contracted with stephen Hawkins to build a county office building for $.. the wooden building measured twenty by thirty-six feet and proved too small for both offices and the court. Later that year shiawassee rented for $ a year another structure in Corunna for court. Around this time Alexander McArthur, an agent for Corunna, wrote to the county commissioners that in Corunna his house would serve as a tavern with ample accommodations and supplies while court was in session and that stables “accommodating upward of fifty horses will be prepared, and an abundance of provender is already provided.” in  a committee formed to explore building a two-story brick courthouse measuring forty by sixty feet and costing about $,. the contract went to george o. Bachman, who completed the structure along with a small tower. Historical accounts state that the sheriff took over the building on January , , but it was probably in public use for at least two years before then. the old court was moved off the public square. the owners sold it to a Baptist community that made it a church. south of the new courthouse the county in the mid-s erected a fireproof county office building. Before the courthouse met the wrecking ball in April , it met the perhaps more destructive instrument of negative national attention from the press. Corunna is the setting of Michigan’s last public lynching. William sullivan was accused of killing a farmer in Durand on New year’s Day , with an axe and raping and shooting his wife, who survived and reportedly identified sullivan as the assailant. He was found drunk in Detroit on May  and spirited away to Durand and then Corunna in avoidance of some angry mobs. over two thousand people surrounded the jail, with a masked group of twenty confronting the sheriff, dragging sullivan out, and stringing him up a few feet east of the jail. At least one account asserts that sullivan slit his own throat when he heard the mob howling for his neck. He Shiawassee County sHiAWAssee CoUNty 168 reportedly broke a whiskey bottle from newspaper reporters interviewing him and intent on loosening his tongue. others maintained that the sheriff was derelict for giving the mob only token resistance before they murdered sullivan, who awaited justice in a court of law. the state undertook an investigation, but no one was ever charged, and voters later returned the sheriff to office by a vote of two to one. one estimate contends that over twenty-two thousand people came to glimpse the casket of the man who sparked such blood lust. An enterprising hardware salesman cut up a long piece of rope and sold the pieces as souvenirs. the tree on which sullivan was hung later died after people stripped it of its bark for mementos. the manner in which justice under law gave way to lawlessness in  stands in stark opposition to the center of justice shiawassee erected beginning with the laying of its courthouse cornerstone on May , . Judge Hugh McCurdy spoke at the event, hoping that the courthouse...