Ann Arbor Observed: Selections from Then and Now

The 1838 Jail

Public Buildings and Institutions The 1838 Jail Jailbreaks were a constant danger. Even in the good old days there were criminals. Ann Arbor was smaller and more neighborly in the nineteenth century, but there were still very serious crimes, including robbery and murder. Thus, there was a need for jails. For half the century, from 1838 to 1887, local wrongdoers were imprisoned in a Greek Revival building on North Main, where the Ann Arbor Community Center now stands. When John Allen and Elisha Rumsey founded Ann Arbor in 1824, Rumsey gave the land bounded by Fourth and Fifth Avenues and Liberty and William Streets (now containing the downtown post office, the Blake Transit Center, and the former YMCA) to the community as a site for a jail. Allen contributed the block at Main and Huron still used for the county courthouse. The county’s first jail was built on Rumsey’s square in 1829. The project was organized in a socialist fashion. “The citizens of Ann Arbor and vicinity contributed, each according to his ability, some timber, lumber, work or other materials necessary for the construction of a building that would answer for a county prison,” wrote a local historian in the Charles C. Chapman 1881 History of Washtenaw County, Michigan . The wooden building included quarters for the jailer’s family as well as one room for prisoners. The first jail was notoriously insecure. According to O. W. Stevenson ’s Ann Arbor: The First Hundred Years, “No one could be sure that a prisoner who had been placed within its confines on any particular night would be found there the next morning.” Less than seven years after it was built, a grand jury concluded that a new jail was needed. The county bought the land on North Main, four blocks from the courthouse, and the next year the Davison brothers began construction of a two-and-ahalf -story red brick building. The work evidently took several years to finish; local newspapers published numerous letters asking why it wasn’t done yet and explanations 4 for the slowness of getting the necessary funds. Meanwhile, large numbers of prisoners continued to escape from the old jail—five when the door was opened for delivery of some dishes and seven others who managed to cut a hole through the floor. “When erected [the Main Street jail] was considered a handsome building, in which the citizens felt a just pride,” Chapman’s historian wrote. William Spaulding, son of sheriff Ephraim Spaulding (who served from 1847 to 1852), had a less cheerful description in his memoirs , written in the 1920s. Spaulding remembered how “the family lived in a wing of the big gloomy jail, with its barred windows, in the lower part of town. ‘When we lived in the jail’ was a very common reference in our family, and there was no stigma attached.” Spaulding’s entire family was involved in keeping the jail. “My brother James was old enough to act as ‘turnkey,’ which involved locking and unlocking cells at stated times,” Spaulding recalled. “Imagine a boy serving in such capacity in one of our modern prisons.” The sheriff’s wife, Jane McCormick Spaulding, cooked for the prisoners in her own kitchen. “Father and mother made due allowance for the fact that the jail was a place of enforced restraint. But, when these Public Buildings & Institutions 5 After the jail moved to downtown Ann Arbor, the old jail building on North Main was converted first to a private home and then to a gas station. (Courtesy of Bentley Historical Library.) stern requirements were satisfied, every effort was made to treat the prisoners with consideration and kindness. . . . This policy not only contributed to the discipline and good order of the institution, but it actually gained the confidence and good will of many of the prisoners,” Spaulding wrote. He went on to say that his parents often helped the families of prisoners and that after they were released, they often came by to “give good account of themselves and testify their appreciation. In testimony of this Mother treasured various keep-sakes of hand-craft which had been presented to her on such occasions.” Ann Arbor’s citizens had reason to worry about their safety even after the new jail opened. Criminals held there included horse thieves and bank robbers. Murderers were sent to the state penitentiary (as they still are...