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First Tazewell County Courthouse.
Drawn by William H. Bates, Pekin, Illinois, from the original specifications on record at the County Clerk’s office.
According to Charles C. Chapman’s 1879 History of Tazewell County:
The site selected was lot 1 of block 11 in Mackinaw, the first county seat, in 1827.
On Tuesday, June 26, 1827, the County Commissioners Court of Tazewell County let a contract for the building of a courthouse, listing the following specifications:
“The body of the house to be of hewn logs 24 feet long and 18 feet wide; the logs to face at least one foot; one story and a half high, nine feet to the story. The roof to be of joint shingles well nailed on; two batten doors of black walnut plank, one inch thick, to be hung with three-inch butts. The doors to be well cased with good timber. Two twelve-light windows in the first story, and one four-light window in the end of the house in the second story. The window lights to be 8 by 10 inches; the windows to be well cased, glass put in and put in the house, A lower floor of puncheons well hewed and jointed. A floor overhead of sawed plank one inch and one-quarter thick. Ten joists to be put in the house, 5 by 7 inches, to be sawed or hewed. The house to be well chinked and daubed, and the corners sawed down. The gable ends to be weather-boarded with shaved boards. Each window to have a shutter made of one-inch plank, and the same to be hung with two and one-half inch butts. A chimney place to be sawed out at one end of the house, say the four lower logs seven feet wide. The whole to be completed in a workmanlike manner on or before the first day of October next.”
Contract was awarded to lowest bidder Amasa Stought who agreed to build it for $125.
For the time, this building was quite an imposing structure. It was about the first building in the county to have glass windows.
Served until 1831 when the county seat was moved to Tremont.
