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The courthouse was formally accepted by the board September 20,	1911.	John	Henry	was employed to move the
safe and furniture from the old building into the new,
Jett Brothers was paid $50 for placing a marble corner-
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rooms" for $28.
Napoleon Caron bought the old courthouse at auction for $150, and the pickets and posts from the fence around the courthouse grounds were sold to J.E. Saucier for $5.
To complete the transition, the following were purchased for court and jury rooms: Three dozen chairs, four dozen cuspidors, two dozen sheets, and a dozen each of single beds, mattresses, pillows and blankets. (Compiled by Jim Pfeiffer) VF
Circuit Court, April Term, 1861, The State of Mississippi. At a regular term of the Circuit Court begun and held in and for the County of Hancock in the State of Mississippi on the first Monday after the fourth Monday in April A. D.	1861, at the Court house of said county in the
town of Gainesville."
The records then show that no meeting was held for four years. On May 1st., (Monday) 1865, an attempt was made to hold court in Buck Branch, a place away up in the present territory of Pearl River County, but the Judge, John Hancock, failed to appear. Court was dismissed until the next day, when, the judge still being absent, it was finally adjourned by the sheriff. No other session was held until December 4th., 1865, when court was able to return to Gainesville in peace, and a considerable amount of business was transacted.
About this time the question as to the transfer of the county seat was evidently being warmly agitated. One of the first indications is in the minutes of the Board of Police for Jan. 6th.,	1867.
It is ordered by the Board that a special meeting of the Board be held at the Court house of said county on Monday, the 14th., day of Jan. 1867, to receive proposals for the building of a jail for this county."
The minutes for the 14th show that:
"The contract for the building of a jail for this county was put up at the lowest (?) bidder and struck off to W. J. Poitevent at the sum of Twenty one hundred dollars ($2100.00) he being the lowest and best bidder."
This is the first record of a county jail. Although there is an authorization during the war for the sheriff to sell the jail irons at auction. The reason for the sale is not given. If a jail were actually built in Gainesville it would, of course, be an argument against removing the county seat.
In 1867 an act of the state legislature authorized an election to determine the future county seat. Again we lack any account except the dry fact in official records, but we can imagine a very intense rivalry.


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