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Chapter 15: Seals for the Courts of Butler County |
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For many hundreds of years governments have used some type of seal to validate or prove that orders and pronouncements of the government were authentic and would be enforced by the power and authority of the government issuing them. The new County of Butler needed and had to have seals for its courts.
Today most of us accept the seal of the County Court or the Circuit Court on a document as a matter of course and do not give any thought to the design in the seal of either of our courts. There is an interesting bit of local history in the selection of the designs for our court seals and in their procurement.
According to the records of the County the Circuit Court was first to initiate action to have a seal made. On the morning of September 14, 1850, the Circuit Court was in the second day of its first session in the new Town of Poplar Bluff. On that morning Judge Harrison Hough ordered that "The following devise be procured to be used as the seal of the Circuit Court of Butler County, to wit: a device which will make a circular impression one inch and half in diameter with the words Seal of the Circuit Court of Butler County, Mo. on its face with the sign of a virgin holding balances at equipoise in the center thereof."
On November 13, 1850, the County Court made an order which Mr. R.S. Douglas, in his History of Southeast Missouri, terms "One of the most remarkable records ever entered by a court." Here is the order in full, "Ordered that the sheriff borrow from any individuals who will lend the same twenty dollars bearing ten per cent interest from the date until paid for the purpose of purchasing two seals one for the County Court and the other for the Circuit Court of said County." The design of the Court seal was then directed as follows, "Ordered that the County Seal of Butler County Court be one inch and a half in diameter in a circular form bearing the likeness of Wm. O. Butler in the middle and also his name at the bottom of said likeness an the words Seal of County Court of County, Mo." As has been noted above the design for the Seal of the Circuit Court was selected by the Circuit Judge.
The court records make no further mention of the purchase of the seals but on May 16, 1851, the Court allowed William B. Griffith two dollars, "for making a press of the County Seal." From this order we assume the Sheriff was successful in borrowing the money and the seals were purchased. We assume also that the original seal for the County Court did not have a lever attachment whereby the impression of the seal could be pressed into the official documents of the Court. Hence Mr. Griffith was employed to make a press, probably of wood, with a handle so that leverage could be applied to make an impression of the seal on a document. After years of usage a seal becomes so worn that it doesn't make a clear impression, and it must be replaced by a new seal. New seals have been purchased in Butler County as needed, but an examination of the seals currently in use by the Circuit Court and the County Court of Butler County shows the same designs as selected one hundred fifteen years ago in an almost wilderness frontier county. The central design of the Circuit Court seal is a virgin bearing balances at equipoise and the central design of the County Court Seal is a likeness of Wm. O. Butler with his name inscribed below the likeness. In the old Butler home in Carrollton, Kentucky, we have seen a small portrait of General William O. Butler, in whose honor our County was named. The portrait of General Butler shows him to have a rather round face, as appears on the Seal of Butler County Court.
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