A Community Study of Mecklenburg County
COURT DAY
Charlotte's First Court House
In 1767, area residents established Charlotte as the county seat of Mecklenburg. In a ploy to outwit the Rocky River citizens who wanted to house the county seat, Charlotteans secretly built a log courthouse in the square at the intersection of Trade and Tryon streets. The log courthouse had two stories. The first served as trade stalls for farmers, while the second held the meeting room. By the 1820s, however, the citizens removed the wooden building and replaced it with a brick structure, one of only two brick buildings in town.
The new brick courthouse also had two levels, the lower for the courtroom and the upper for a ballroom and later judicial offices. Instruments of justice, including “the whipping post, stocks and [pillories], stood in the middle of the street…in full view of the judge’s bench, where he could see his sentence executed.” Naturally, the courthouse became a site of trials, legislation, and the enforcement of the religiously influenced colonial laws.
In addition to the legal proceedings that occurred indoors, the courthouse itself became a center of society on court day. Historian Rhys Isaac describes the occasion of court day as a time when “the scattered community” of the county “attain[ed] existence.”
This was certainly the case in Mecklenburg County.
Many citizens identified the courthouse and court days as the focal point for sales in newspaper advertisements printed in Charlotte’s Catawba Journal and the Miners and Farmers Journal. For example, a local doctor named D.R. Dunlap advertised a plot of land for purchase throughout the month of July in 1827. He stated that he would openly discuss selling the land “at the Court-House in Charlotte, on the 27th day of August next, being the Monday of our next County Court.”
Citizens consistently bought and sold items, collected debts, and offered credits at the courthouse. Land was the most commonly sold item; however, some individuals advertised other forms of property as well. In one particular instance, the Catawba Journal ran an advertisement in 1827 for two slaves. The announcement proclaimed, “Farmers take Notice! Will be sold, on a credit, at the Court-house in Charlotte, on Friday of the February Court, two negroes…” Although race rarely had a presence in the courtroom, in this case the courthouse served as the site of a racial transaction.
The close proximity of taverns, stores, and the jail provide evidence that a rich culture likely developed in Charlotte on Court Days. The exact location of taverns in Charlotte before the 1820s is unknown, but licensing laws, court records, and town descriptions reveal that taverns did exist. In the 1820s, four known taverns operated in Charlotte, all located on Trade and Tryon streets near the courthouse. One tavern situated on Tryon had a particularly bad reputation. Labeled the demeaning term “grog shop”—meaning a dive or low drinking establishment—this tavern was owned and operated by an old bachelor named John McQuay. Apparently, this “grog shop” was “where nearly all the big fights, (and there [were] many of them,) originated.” In addition to taverns, general stores, tailor shops, tanneries, and hat shops all existed in the general vicinity of the courthouse.
Records reveal other social activities such as militia drills, dances, and church meetings centered around the courthouse. Such use of the structure for court proceedings as well as social and church activities, demonstrates the utility of the building and its prominence in the community.
Court days and the courthouse offered the opportunity for a variety of social gatherings for the Mecklenburg County Community.