Michigan's County Courthouses

Clare County

39 harrIsoN—theearlypartof ClareCounty’shistoryhad one prominent characteristic: lawlessness. From the arson of the county courthouse to the corrupt dealings of county officials, a future observer could not help but wonder how the Wild West got such a foothold in central michigan. along with antrim, emmet, roscommon, and Wexford Counties, Clare is named for a county in Ireland. some attribute the name to large numbers of Irish pioneers, whereas others look to the surveyor henry Nicholson as a native son of that part of the old country. originally the land was called Kaykakee for a chief mentioned in an 1826 treaty. Not much else is known about him other than that his name meant “Pigeon hawk,” which was an appropriate name for the territory given that before lumbering its western townships had large pigeon flocks. the legislature changed the name to Clare in 1843 and attached its territory to saginaw and then Isabella County. Clare had its first board meeting on may 1, 1871, at Farwell, the first county seat, and already trouble seemed to brew. there were allegations that itinerant lumberjacks voted illegally, often in exchange for beer. Farwell was a lumberjack town that drew the ire of farmers and homesteaders who lived elsewhere in the county and viewed the tree-fellers as uninterested in the long-term future of the county. allegations, mainly from the newspaper in the rival town of Clare, accused the “Courthouse ring” of corruption. the county approved $400 for a court, later earmarking an additional $100. In 1877 the court went up in flames, and $2,000 of property was lost, as were some county records. It was widely alleged that disaffected citizens from Clare set the fire because the court represented all that they hated about Farwell as a lumber town. a. N. Gebhart built a temporary facility and received a contract for rent with the provision that he would get the building once the court moved. he did not wait long, for in april 1879 a vote of 439 to 106 removed the seat from Farwell to an undeveloped area near budd lake. the Flint and Pere marquette railroad donated the land, which was in the north of the county where rail lines and lumbering activity were expanding. Construction of a courthouse began on september 20, 1879, and a town sprung up almost overnight. It was called harrison for President William henry harrison. the court cost a total of $2,689.06, which included $99 for stump removal to e. unicume and $2,125 to I. hanna for construction. there was no jail until 1885, which contributed to the portending lawlessness about to descend on Clare County. the county’s strict oversight of transportation costs for moving wrongdoers to holding facilities in neighboring counties meant that the sheriff would personally lose money on such transactions. Juries reportedly were not shy about turning defendants loose. the environment was ripe for James Carr and his ilk. he arrived in 1880, and for the next few years his liquor and lust business ravaged law and order in Clare County. he set up a saloon kitty-corner to the courthouse. outside of the county seat, a hard-drinking town home to numerous houses of ill repute set up shop near the Gladwin County line. For a few years in the 1880s meredith was a booming vice town that operated with relative impunity. Clare County Clare CouNty 40 attheendofDecember1884,themeredithsharpshooter arrived. he proved to be an expert shot as he drank and shot between bystanders’ feet and otherwise “in unpleasant proximity to the victim of his sport.” a policeman tried to arrest him, but the shooter quickly knocked him senseless. another officer arrived and the shooter teased him, making him take a drink and exit at the point of a gun. then the shooter made every able-bodied man within earshot take back whatever he may have thought or said and he quietly left. the next morning the sheriff came from harrison and arrested the shooter without incident, figuring that the shooter acted as he did “in order to get set up for the winter.” a few months earlier the county treasurer had been robbed of about $8,000 while the circus was in town. suspicion immediately turned to one of the transient entertainers , but he was eventually exonerated. the treasurer later confessed to embezzling $1,000, and it was believed that the robbery was an inside job, but the allegedly corrupt county officials were never brought...