That’s Faulkner’s rendering of how first the county records, then the county jail, and finally the courthouse itself were created in his mythical Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi in the 19th century. Faulkner knew a lot about those sorts of things. He thought about them, and they worked their way into his fabulous renderings of the brooding cultural heritage of the Old South. He knew that jailhouses were as important as courthouses and sometimes even preceded them in existence.

When was the last time you visited your local jailhouse? Hopefully, it wasn’t a forced or overextended visit. If not, you probably haven’t checked it out lately unless you’re a local journalist or involved with the court system in some manner.

It used to be, however, well over a century ago, that folks paid a lot of attention to jails. They visited them, and communities throughout Western North Carolina took some pride in the uniqueness of their particular facilities. Travelers passing through inspected jails as part of their agenda. Scribbling journalists described them in some detail for readers, mostly Yankees, interested in the quaint devices to be found in the southern mountains, where outlandish things were supposed to occur with regularity. And sometimes they did.

I recently purchased the September 1880 issue of the “Harper’s New Monthly Magazine” (published by Harper & Brothers in New York City) for $4 from an antiquarian bookseller in New Orleans. I ordered that particular issue via the Internet because I knew it contained part III of Rebecca Harding Davis’ “By-Paths in the Mountains.” Like all the travel writers who toured WNC in the latter days of the 18th century, Davis described the scenic wonders (especially the waterfalls and high vistas), thrilling sports (especially trout fishing and bear hunting), the Cherokees (the aborigines of the region), the white settlers (always in their “picturesque” cabins, and the municipal improvements, such as they were. In this latter regard, jails were one of their priorities. If he or she didn’t write a bang-up description of at least one of the local jails, the sponsoring publication’s editor would have to reckoned with upon return home.

After visiting Cherokee, where she found “‘the Nation’ hidden in the thickets among the ravines of the Soco and Ownolufta hills (where they) were said to have ten thousand acres under cultivation,” Miss Davis proceeded to “Webster, and from there to Haywood County. Upon reading this account, the Eastern Band members must have been pleasantly astonished to learn that they owned so much property.

“A day or two later,” she relates in the third person, “when they were snugly ensconced again with Mrs. Bright in their favorite village of Waynesville, the Judge caught sight of a prisoner whom an armed man was escorting into the lonely little jail, which stood in a field overgrown with goldenrod.

“Now the landlord was also, as it happened, the jailer. Hixley waited until evening, when he was going down the street, jingling his bunch of keys, and followed by Sam, the waiter, swinging the prisoner’s supper in a pail.

“‘I would like to look at your jail,’ said the Judge.

“‘Very good, sir. Only one prisoner there now. We’ve had as many as three there for murder at once. Sent from other counties. Our jail’s about the only one that’ll hold in the mountains.’

“He pushed open the door, and led the way up a flight of stairs, and thrust up a huge iron trap-door. ‘I had five men one night sleeping on this at once, and most of the men in the village outside, armed and keeping guard. There was talk of a rescue of those three.’

“‘Did they escape?’

“‘Well, yes, but not that night.’

“The cage, which forms a part of every Carolina jail, was a square room of stout iron bars, built in the centre of a larger one. It was much better ventilated and lighted than an ordinary cell. The prisoner was chained to the floor, not so closely, however, but that he could stand erect.”

One of the illustrations that accompanied the article is reproduced here. It depicts one Polly Leduc, who had traveled by foot over the Balsams from somewhere near Webster, “with her baby on her back, still in its wolf-skin, sucking its thumb,” to visit her incarcerated husband. Mr. Leduc was charged with murder. His defense was a good one: “Some fellows came after my still ... and I hed a right to defend my property. I didn’t mean to kill him, God knows.”

Unbeknownst to the jailer, Mrs. Leduc had brought more with her over mountain than just a baby sucking its thumb.

“But in the morning the cage was empty,” Miss Davis relates, “and they never saw Polly nor the poor little chap in the wolf-skin again. She had brought a spring saw and cold-chisel to her husband, with which he had easily cut the bars.”

“‘Most murderers breaks jail in the mountings,’ said a philosophic cancer doctor who came that way a day or two later. ‘The jails is not strong, and the prejudice of the people agin the moonshiners isn’t strong either. They takes to the mountings, as this young man an’ his wife hes done. They can lay hid thar for years — comfortable.’”

Shades of Eric Rudolph?

Let’s close out our little survey of WNC jailhouses circa the early 1880s with a description provided by Wilbur G. Zeigler and Ben S. Grossscup of the Bryson City facility in The Heart of the Alleghanies or Western North Carolina (1883), one of my favorite books. Bryson City was then known as Charleston, N.C., the name not being changed until 1889 by the General Assembly because much of the village mail was being misdirected to South Carolina. Before making their obligatory visit to Cherokee, Zeigler and Grosscup visited Charleston, “a pleasant little village ... situated by the Tuckasege river at the foot of Rich mountain,” to take a look at the jail. They had no doubt read Miss Davis’ description of the Wayneville facility and wanted to outdo her, if possible. In my unbiased estimation, they did.

“The old, frame court-house has its upper story used as a grand jury room, and its lower floor ... holds the jail. The dark interior of the ‘cage,’ used for petty misdoers, can be seen under the front outside stairs, through a door with barred window. An apartment fitted up for the jailer is on the same floor, and, by a spiked, open slit, about six inches by two feet in dimensions, is connected with the ‘dungeon.’ For its peculiar purposes this dungeon is built on a most approved pattern. It is a log room within a log room, the space between the log walls filled up with rocks. It is wholly inside the frame building. Besides the opening where the jailer may occasionally peek in, is another one, similar to that described, where a few pale rays of daylight or moonlight, as the case may be, can, by struggling, filter through clapboards, two log walls, spikes, and rocks, to the gloomy interior. A pad-locked trapdoor in the floor above is the only entrance. The daily rations for ye solitary culprit, like all blessings, come from above — through the trapdoor. Here, suspected unfortunates of a desperate stripe awaiting trial, and convicted criminals, biding their day of departure for the penitentiary or gallows, are confined in dismal twilight, and in turn are raised by a summons from above, and a ladder cautiously lowered through the opening in the floor.”

Faulkner would have relished that description. And it was no doubt a fortunate circumstance for Mr. Leduc that he wasn’t placed in the Swain County jail rather than the more airy one over in Haywood County. Even “poor Polly” might not have been able to devise an escape in that event.

George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C. 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com