Source: Atlas Obscura
Perry County’s original courthouse stands across the town square from the statue of Union Army cavalry hero General Philip Sheridan. With its distinctive steeple and Federal-style architecture—stately, simple, and red-bricked—the courthouse has seen a lot of history since it was finished in 1829.
But to this day, the building has been most noted, studied, celebrated, and derided for the inscription over its doorway: “Let Justice be done. If the Heavens should fall.”
For almost 200 years this clunky, nonsensical phrase has adorned a court of law and (anecdotally) provided local English teachers with an accessible example of what not to do when constructing a sentence. The most glaring problem with the inscription is that it shouldn’t be two sentences; the period after “done” should clearly be a comma.
Clement Luther Martzolff explains it well in the History of Perry County, Ohio. “It is a case wherein considerable reading between the lines can be indulged,” he writes. “If the period after the word ‘done’ be changed to a comma, as was evidently the intention, we are left in a considerable quandary as to the time when justice will prevail. If the period be allowed…
The post Old Perry County Courthouse appeared first on FeedBox.