Grayson County TXGenWeb

Grayson County Jail
1857 - 1936

A jail was built in 1846 on the corner of Travis and Jones streets. It was constructed of logs and had no doors or windows. Instead prisoners were let down through a trap door in the roof. (Graham Landrum. Illustrated History of Grayson County, Texas. c1960. pg. 20)
In 1857 the court house square was surrounded by a row of saplings.
A jail was built in Sherman prior to 1887. It was located on the northeast corner of the South Travis and Jones Street intersection, but by the late 1800s, the existing jail, which stood in a small fenced lot, was inadequate to serve the county. In 1886 the Commissioners' Court declared the building of a new jail a "public necessity." A lot in the 400 block between West Houston and West Lamar streets was purchased. The County Judge in 1887 was E.P. Gregg and the Commissioners were W.A. Wells, W.A. Tibbs, and W.W. Crane.

The large Gothic structure was built in 1887 at a cost of $100,000. The jail was designed to hold 100 prisoners. There was a 'dungeon' cell in the cellar designed to contain a difficult prisoners or terribly dangerous one. The cells in this jail were in the multisided sections, all the cells were arranged in a circle, there was a rotating cage in the middle with one door. Officers had to rotate the door to the cell if they wanted to let a prisoner out or in. Then rotate it again to let themselves out of the cell block. It was escape proof. But prisoners learned to block the cell from turning.

After having too much trouble with the turning cell system the cells were torn out in 1912 and stationary cells with key openings put in. Part of the rail of one of the turntable cell doors is now the arch over the gate at Loy Lake Park in Denison, the home of Frontier Village. The mortar was very poor in quality and by the 1930's prisoners were escaping by removing bricks. On May 23, 1930, two prisoners made a hole in one of the weakened walls by simply using a pair of scissors and a piece of metal from a plumbing fixture to gouge mortar from between bricks.

z
1914
West Houston Street

In 1931 the kitchen, located in the basement, was reported in the newspaper as unsanitary, stating that coal dust and trash blew through the windows behind the stove. Also the "dungeon" which had only one steel door and no windows, opened into storage rooms near the kitchen.

There was a room in the center of the upper corridor under the Gothic tower was used for executions by hanging. The room was in one of tower tops and had a trap door built in. The first jailer in this building was M.O. Callahan, assisted by Jim McKinney and A.L. Dennis; and the first Sheriff to conduct an execution in the jail was Lee McAfee. Eight men were executed in the jail, with the first being on July 8, 1892 and the last on April 11, 1915. This massive stone tower structure caused the masonry beneath it to crack because of its weight.

In 1928 the Grand Jury recommended to the 15th District Court the necessity of building a new jail facility due to the cracking masonry, unsanitary conditions, and lack of facilities for the insane. Members of the Grand Jury were: W.K. Taylor, foreman; T.E. Willett, J.A. Hardaway, J.S. Eubank, D.R. Vaughan, H.E. Boher, W.C. Shearer, W.J. Hogan, R.L. Radford, W.J. Rich and J.D. Holley.

In 1934 the jail was declared by architect John Tulloch and former city engineer A.A. McMillan as "rapidly approaching the danger point". Two days after this report was issued, the Commissioners' Court ordered the entrance to the jail to be fenced off to prevent the possibility of visitors being injured.

The 1887 jail was razed in January 1937.

Source: "County Jails Date to 1887". Sherman Democrat, July 4, 1976. Section B, pg. 6

1936