Grundy County Courthouse | Trenton, Missouri
In 1841, before Trenton had city streets or a courthouse, two groups of early settlers were fighting over where Grundy County’s government would stand.
James S. Lomax operated one of the county’s first stores and served as postmaster for the settlement then called Bluff Grove. His store received the neighborhood’s mail, hosted public business, and became the first meeting place of the Grundy County Court.
The state’s first commissioners chose a county-seat site near the Bain settlement on the Big Muddy. Lomax offered 80 acres if the seat were moved to the settlement around his store. State law required the support of three-fifths of the county’s taxable inhabitants. Ten petitions gathered 260 signatures from a total of 312, enough to secure the relocation.
George Tetherow led the opposition. He was one of the county’s earliest settlers and had already petitioned for its first road to terminate near the Bain settlement. When the county seat was moved away from that location, he began a legal challenge that eventually reached the Missouri Supreme Court in 1845.
Tetherow could not overturn the decision. Lomax’s 80 acres were divided into blocks and lots, and Trenton began developing around the ground reserved for the courthouse.
Until a courthouse could be built, officials continued meeting in Lomax’s store and then used a log building that served as a school during the week and a church on Sundays. Without a jury room, grand jurors sometimes withdrew into the woods to deliberate. Between 1842 and 1844, the county constructed a two-story brick courthouse measuring approximately 40 by 45 feet. It cost $6,000 and served Grundy County on that block for nearly 60 years. By 1901, voters were ready to replace it. They authorized $60,000 in bonds for a new courthouse and jail.
The responsibility fell to the county court, including Francis Marion Madden, a former farmer and Trenton councilman who had recently become a county judge. Officials considered 30 architectural proposals and visited 15 cities in Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska while searching for a suitable building the county could afford. Several proposals exceeded the budget. George A. Berlinghof, a German-born architect, then working in Nebraska, connected the county with contractor John H. Sparks. Sparks agreed to build the courthouse for $57,000.
The old courthouse was sold in 1902, and its brick was removed for reuse. Crews laid the cornerstone of the Bedford-stone replacement in December 1903. The completed courthouse was dedicated on October 25, 1905.
The block continued to gather the county’s history. Citizens of Trenton and Grundy County erected the granite-and-bronze monument beside the courthouse in memory of local Union soldiers and sailors. Another generation placed a time capsule inside the courthouse cornerstone. County officials opened it on December 19, 2003, then placed a new capsule in the courthouse yard.
Today, the courthouse still houses Grundy County government on the land Lomax deeded in 1841. Beside it stand the Union monument and the newer time capsule. The work of different generations, all left on the same block for the people who came after them.
