Prince Edward County Courthouse

Prince Edward County Courthouse

The courthouse you see here today was built in 1939 as part of the Roosevelt Administration’s PWA. Prior to that, a small brick courthouse and clerk’s office built in 1872 stood on this property. The original county seat of Prince Edward was in the town of Worsham. As the county was founded in 1754, a courthouse and clerk’s office were built in that town. The clerk’s office at Worsham still stands there today in commemoration.

The county seat of Prince Edward was moved to this site in 1872 after a small courthouse and clerk's office were built here at that time. Initially, the county seat had been in the town of Worsham. At that site once sat the original courthouse of Prince Edward, which was founded in 1754, as well as a clerk’s office which has been preserved to this day to mark the location. The site at Worsham was visited by the familiar patriots of Patrick Henry, and George Washington, who lodged with the local Venable family on June 7, 1791. While he was staying in Worsham, Miss Martha Venable apparently penned in her diary that George Washington “danced very badly.” During the later days of the Civil War, Union General Wiliam Tecumseh Sherman camped at Worsham courthouse with his men sometime in the spring of 1865.

As the development of Farmville continued, the county seat was moved here in 1872 for both economic and practical reasons. The original Farmville courthouse sufficed for the relatively low population of the county until 1939. At that time, the courthouse that you see here today was built under the authority of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration’s Public Works Administration (PWA), due to the need to stimulate the local economy, and provide a more significant structure for the area’s growing population. In 1961, in the midst of the national civil rights movement, and as part of an objection to Prince Edward County’s “massive resistance” to public school integration, a peaceful NAACP protest, attracting about 1,000 people, was held on the front lawn of the courthouse. The Prince Edward County school board opted to withhold funding for all public schooling in resistance to the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education and open the all-White Prince Edward Academy. This left the children of the African-American and poor White community without access to education from 1954 to 1964, when Prince Edward was directly order by the Supreme Court to resume public education. In 1998, an addition was built on to the back of the courthouse to accommodate a greater amount of office space. The entrance in the rear, added during the addition, currently serves as the main entrance to the courthouse.

Sources:

“A Historical Look at out Nation's County Courthouses through Postcards.” courthousehistory.com, n.d. http://courthousehistory.com/gallery/states/virginia/counties/prince-edward.

Coleman, Arica L. “Brown v Board of Ed Anniversary: Protecting a Court Decision.” Time. Time, February 27, 2019. https://time.com/5277732/brown-board-education-prince-edward-county/.

Dupuy, Richard Watkins. "Old Prince Edward Courthouse: A Muster Ground." In The Official Program of the Prince Edward County Bicentennial Celebration: 1754-1954, 1954. 21-23. (Held by Greenwood Library of Longwood University)

“Still Working For America.” Living New Deal. https://livingnewdeal.org/.

Yoder, Elen. “Prince Edward County Courthouse - Courthouse - Photo.” Eldon Yoder, May 24, 2014. https://www.eldonyoder.com/2013/03/prince-edward-county-courthouse-courthouse-photo/.