The Calaboose, by J. M. Oliver, Jr.

With four saloons open in town and with a band of outlaw Ku Kluks [sic] terrorizing the country, law enforcement was a major problem to the mayor and city council.  A calaboose was finally conceded to be a must, and in June 1881 the contract was let for such a building to be located on the disputed land back of Hecht-Imboden Cotton Gin.  The primitive looking structure was ready to offer hospitality to law breakers by the time 1882 rolled around.  The site was at the Vine street end of the alley between First and Second streets.

The Ku Klxu [sic] felt that this structure dedicated to law and order infringed on their rights and when one of their members got himself penned up within it, a jail break was ordered and there was a hot time in the old town that night.  The town constable swore in a local posse and the security of the calaboose was maintained.  At a subsequent jury trial the prisoner was sentenced to hang and the first legal hanging in the county was staged before a huge audience on April 21, 1882.  Place of execution was in the goose pasture in south Corning and the prisoner, gloriously drunk, rode to the place of execution on his coffin.

A second execution was necessary in 1884 before the Ku Klux realized that law and order had come to stay.  The second hanging, also public, attracted a huge crowd but the bravado was gone and the prisoner requested the good ladies in the crowd to sing, "Oh, Come, Angel Band' before the hangman adjusted the black cap over his head and the noose around his neck.  Both victims were buried along the railroad right of way outside the cemetery gates and since they were deemed unsuitable subjects for resurrection, their positions were reversed, heads to the East, so they wouldn't know when Resurrection morning broke cloudless, bright and fair, as we sang so fervently in Sunday school.

After '84 the calaboose fell into disuses and was finally condemmed [sic] as unfit even for a prisoner.  A new building was planned but finances were a bit straitened [sic] - a cholera epidemic among the hogs had been such a bonanzo [sic] for the town marshal -- official disposer thereof at two bits per head, that the city fathers cancelled the grandiose plans and decided to move and remodel the calaboose they possessed.  The new site was half a block south, just behind the present Courier site.  The Reed home is just to the north.  However, the renovation and new location failed to establish the old prestige of the 80's [sic] and the town finally abandoned the building and house their local offenders in the county jail.

Submitted by Danny Moore