Of statues and statutes: The Morgantown Courthouse (and its most famous resident) both have an interesting history

Give me freedom.

And while you're at it, give me a place to hang out for 173 years.

And that's exactly what Patrick Henry did all this time in Morgantown.

Or rather, that's what the 9-foot-tall wooden statue depicting him has been doing all this time in Morgantown.

We will come back to this.

Henry is, of course, known for the quote “Give me liberty or give me death,” with which he concluded an inflammatory speech he gave to the Virginia legislature in 1775.

Or rather, the young legislature of the state of Virginia, which was only one year away from official statehood.

He was the first governor of the colony and his job was to inspire the new Americans to support the revolution, which, as history shows, he succeeded in doing.

In the northwestern regions of the Commonwealth colony, in what is now West Virginia, Morgantown and Mon (as they were called) were already settled due to the lively river trade that developed on the Monongahela River.

Every democracy and every place of commerce needs a courthouse. So one was built in 1784, a new and improved one in 1802, and another in 1848 – and that's where the governor comes in.

Well, actually he was sitting there.

The Reverend Ebenezer Mathers, a local minister who knew both the Word of God and the carving knife, set about carving Henry's image from a single block of wood.

On August 20, 1851, the statue was inaugurated and placed at the very top of the building.

While the statue and the fortifications that held it in place easily maintained its status, the same could not be said for the courthouse.

By the early 1870s, the building's structure was deemed too unsafe for meetings or other purposes.

Nevertheless, almost two decades later, the building was in an architectural limbo.

The reason for this is that local residents did not want to agree to a bond that would be needed to finance a new building – for a reason that could be read in any headline in today's Dominion Post.

We will come back to that later.

So what should Monongalia County do?

At midnight on September 13, 1890, county officials, assisted by local prosecutors and county court officials, ordered the demolition of the building, taking care to first remove all relevant documents and the statue of Patrick Henry.

The new courthouse, which is also the current Mon Courthouse, a marvel of Victorian Romanesque architecture, was inaugurated a year later.

The statue of Governor Henry was placed for a time in the Morgantown Public Library and Morgantown High School before returning to the courthouse in October 1976, just in time for Mon's bicentennial.

According to most historians, it is the oldest statue of a female dignitary in the state.

In case you're wondering, Mon's courthouse cost more than $43,000 in 1891—equivalent to nearly $1.5 million in today's currency.

The residents did not want to pay the price at that time.

And as I said, they had a motivation that everyone^st Century, the residents of Morgantown and Mon take a break.

They wanted to use the money instead to improve roads.

Give me the freedom – but how about you do something about these potholes, okay?

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