HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY                         23

1871, the central re-locationists again organized a canvass of the county
in favor of Ashboro, and presented their petitions at the March term,
represented by R. W. Thompson, the remonstrators being represented by
D.  E. Williamson and others. After several days’ sparring before the
board, the petitioners again withdrew. During the summer following, a
movement was organized in the north part of the county in favor of
Brazil, and petitions were presented at the September term, when, on the
sixth day of the session and ninth day of the month, the prayer of the
petitioners was granted, and an order of the board made for the removal
of the seat of justice to Brazil. The board of commissioners at this time
were George W. Ringo, of the first district, Oliver B. Johnson, of the
second district, and William Rector, of the third district.
    On the 26th of October, 1871, the three commissioners appointed by
the governor, C. A. Allen, of Vigo; Marshall M. Moore, of Putnam, and
James M. Ray, of Marion, met at the court house, Bowling Green, and
appraised the county buildings at $5,300. Exceptions to the ruling of the
board were filed by the remonstrators, an appeal taken to the circuit court,
and afterward to the supreme court, but, uniformly, the action of the
board was sustained by the higher courts. On the 25th day of January,
1877, the new court house at Brazil having been completed, the records
were removed by wagons from the old court house at Bowling Green.
The building of the new court house was first contracted by Noah T.
Keasy, then transferred to John G. Ackelmire and John Andrew and con-
structed at a cost of $13,300. The new jail was built in 1878, by William
Dreusicke, at a cost of $7,900.
    No other question of public policy in its progress and history has
agitated the people of Clay county so protractedly and acrimoniously as
that of the re-location of the county-seat. The contest waged for prac-
tically more than a quarter of a century. Prior to the development in
the material resources of the north end of the county and the corre-
sponding increase in the population, the trend of the re-location sentiment
was to a central point, geographically, within the territory of Sugar Ridge
township. Owing, however, ,to rivalries in this locality, the numerical
strength of the central part of the county could not be unified and con-
centrated upon a common site. Sixty-five per cent of the voting popula-
tion, as then provided by the statute for removal, could not be procured
by any point in the county. But at the legislative session of 1869 the
law was so amended as to require but 55 per cent, the petitioners to stand
for only the appraised value of the old buildings instead of the cost of
new ones. Soon thereafter Brazil inaugurated the movement and canvass
(meanwhile procuring the grounds for the public buildings and raising
the amount of money to cover the appraised value of the old buildings),
which resulted in the order for re-location two years later.
    A petition numerously signed, praying the board of county commis-
sioners to proceed to the construction of a new and up-to-date court
house, filed within the year 1908, was referred by the board to the tax-
payers at the succeeding November election and was overwhelmingly
defeated.