Mickey Starling
reporter3@greenepublishing.com
Sometime in the early 1900s, Madison County was declared a "dry" county, meaning the sale of liquor was prohibited. By the evening of Nov. 25, 1912, the fair citizens of the county held a large gathering at the courthouse to protest the fact that local authorities were "looking the other way" while the transport and sale of liquor seemed unusually common for a "dry" county.
The hope of the crowd was that the meeting would put sufficient pressure on the authorities to do away with the "blind tigers," which was the name given to places that illegally sold whiskey. It was also hoped that the county would then become truly alcohol free.
The night was quite eventful for reasons other than illegal alcohol sales. By the end of the meeting, someone had either dropped a lit cigar in the courthouse or they committed arson and set the place ablaze. With the swift actions of the volunteer fire department and the townspeople, all of the important records were safely transported to fireproof storage vaults.
The community rapidly set about construction for Madison County's fourth courthouse, which was completed in 1913 and cost $56,485. A few notable events surrounded the new construction. For Judge Enoch Vann, this was the third cornerstone-laying ceremony for the Madison County Courthouse that he had attended. He watched his father help lay the cornerstone on the first courthouse at this location. Vann was working as a young lawyer when the second courthouse went up in flames and he was present as an elder statesman for the 1913 construction.
One of the happiest moments during the 1913 construction came as a result of an accident. While the large sandstone blocks were being hoisted to the top of the building, a rope rubbed a worker who was near the top of the structure, knocking him from his perch. He fell forty feet, bouncing off of scaffolding all the way to the floor of the building. Certain that he was dead, fellow workers gathered sorrowfully around him when they saw his eyelids begin to flutter. As he regained consciousness, he was swiftly taken to a doctor for evaluation. He came away from the fall with no broken bones and only plenty of bruising from the numerous encounters with the scaffolding on the way down. He recalled nothing of the fall except waking up and wondering why everyone was crowded around him with such sad expressions.
Information for much of this article was taken from Elizabeth Sim's book, "The History of Madison County, Florida."