First County Courthouse Opened in 1866
Albert Lea Tribune
Sunday, July 18, 1976
Submitted by Michael Nelson

In the earliest days of the county, most of the county business was transacted near the corner of Clark Street and Broadway A venue. Though the first meeting of the county's board of commissioners was held in the home of George Ruble, 522 Bridge Ave. sub­sequent meetings were thereaf­ter conducted in an office near the Clark-Broadway corner. The office space used by the com­missioners was owned and oc­cupied by Dr. A. C. Wedge and William Morin. The latter was the first register of deeds for the county.

Other officers in the early days looked after county affairs in their own their residences.

The commissioners of 1858, being a large group, met in the upper floor of a residential home. Court was also held there, and the attic of the large house at times was used as a jail, historians report.

In 1856, when the village of Albert Lea was platted, the present courthouse square was set-aside for county purposes.

The battle for county seat bet­ween the various villages of the new county played a part in the consideration for the con­struction of a courthouse. Various offers of bond money were made by the towns to be put into such a construction if it were built on their individual sites.

Notably, Itasca and 'St. Nicholas offered park square sites and bonds of $6,000 and $10,000 respectively for con­struction of the courthouse in their locations.

Not to be outdone, the people of Albert Lea made an offer agreeing to furnish-free of charge-offices for the several county officials, a courtroom, a meeting place for the county board, and a jail, until better could be provided.

The Albert Lea offer was accepted. It was not until 1866, six 'ears after the village's initial offer, that the first Freeborn County Courthouse was comp­leted.

Estimates in 1964, for the construction of a fireproof brick building included brick at $1,320, a fireproof roof for $300, 8,000 feet of lumber for $160, and carpenter work for $300.

After many delays, the building was completed in the fall of 1866, valued at $3,300.

The first pioneer courthouse was located on the corner of roadway Avenue and College Street, the entrance-facing roadway Avenue.

The upper story was used as a courtroom while the main floor contained the county offices and the jail.

In 1875, a jail was erected on the corner of College Street and Newton Avenue. A sheriff’s residence was later added. That building remains standing on its original site today.

The 1837 courthouse was originally built with a tall stately clock tower on its southwest corner, conical turrets on the four corners, and a octa­gonal cupola on the roofs center point.

Time resulted in deterioration the decorative architecture, however, and thus necessitated the removal of the structures.

The clock tower was first lowered by the removal of a section of its height. In 1952, however, two-inch cracks were prevalent in the tall tower's brick walls and, in 1953; the tower, turrets, and cupola were removed. A new roof was then put on the entire building.

Shortly after the completion of e work on the old courthouse, construction began on the 1954 addition built just north of the 70-year old structure.

No further construction had taken place on the courthouse square until this year's com­pletion of the red brick law en­forcement annex.

An interesting sidelight ac­companies the history of the courthouse clock tower.

On July 5, 1938, a custodian of the courthouse, Bill Groteke, climbed to the top of the tower to reset the clock. He pushed open the small trap door to the clock area and found himself looking into the dead eyes of a mid­dle aged man as he hung, swaying slowly from the clock.

Groteke reportedly "half fell, half climbed down the ladder", according to the Tribune's ac­count of the incident, and ran to tell Sheriff Helmer Myre of his discovery.

After Myre cut the man down from the tower, the coroner of that time, D. S. Brantham estimated that the man had been hanging from his roost for about three weeks. His body was black and decomposed.

The sheriff said that the man had apparently tied his body to the topmost rafter, stood on the small railing inside the tower, and jumped into space.

For years following the incident the county sheriff's of­fice worked to determine the identity of the suicide victim. The man had taken great care to keep his identity secret, having cut all the labels and laundry marks from his clothes before killing himself. Even the name of the company that manufac­tured his glasses was cut from his glasses case in his coat pocket.

Two identities were tagged to the mystery dead man by the sheriff's office. Shortly after each identification was made, however, the actual person of each identity was discovered alive elsewhere.

To this day, the identity of the Freeborn County Courthouse "hangman" remains a mystery.

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