Section 3: General Government

Limited Government Services

In the late 19th century, county courts met once each month. The fixed schedule gave petitioners time to get to court during a period in which roads were poor and travel was time consuming. Court day brought all manner of activity to the immediate vicinity around the courthouse. It was a time of meeting, drinking, gambling, buying, selling, trading, fist fighting, political speeches, horse racing, and listening to attorneys argue cases. Court day offered an exciting respite from mundane agricultural and domestic chores and people flocked to their local courthouses to take it all in. For the rest of the month, the clerk of court was usually available to answer questions and complete routine legal paperwork and consultation could usually be had with a magistrate who lived not too far from the courthouse.

Stafford County’s courthouse, built in 1783, and its contents were severely damaged during the Civil War. Following the war, Stafford had scant resources to improve the courthouse. During the 1895 Aquia Creek Train Robbery trial, Stafford Courthouse was described as follows,

Stafford Court House is more like a place where a train might be successfully held up than where the perpetrators of one of the most daring train robberies on record are to be tried.  The court house, the jail, the clerk’s house, two stores, and one other house constitute the village.  It is four miles from the railroad, in the most thinly settled part of the county, and has a lonely, dreary aspect.”   

Evening Star, February 20, 1895

With a total population of approximately 8,000 residents, and without a unified education system, road maintenance mandate, or public utility infrastructure, County government was small.  In 1899, County residents elected 4 district supervisors, 4 “Overseers of the Poor,” 4 “Constables,” and 12 “Justices of the Peace” to serve the entire county.  Gustavus Brown Wallace was elected Commonwealth Attorney while still a law student at the University of Virginia despite never having “practiced except to defend students in Charlottesville occasionally.”