Courthouses of Brown County

Brown County, created in 1856 and organized two years later, has had four courthouses. Pioneer settler Welcome William Chandler donated land for the first courthouse, a log cabin. The county moved the building twice, first two miles to the Billy Connell Farm, then to this site after Greenleaf Fisk's donation of land for a new townsite resolved an 1868 dispute. Commissioners also added a second story to the structure. A combination courthouse and jail built in 1876 served only four years before it burned. Waco architectural firm Dodson & Dudley designed a new building in 1884. The current Classical Revival courthouse, built in 1917-18, incorporated interior walls and vaults from the prior structure. (2007)