00:08 - Today we'll be speaking with Carol Dunn.

00:09 - She is the executive director of the Wayne County Historical Society.

00:13 - Where is the old Stone jail and how old is it?

00:17 - The old Stone jail we're talking about today

00:20 - is located on 10th Street in Honesdale, Pennsylvania.

00:26 - Is the county seat, Wayne County, Pennsylvania.

00:30 - We know that Pennsylvania's sort of a rectangle.

00:33 - And imagine the top right hand corner of Pennsylvania.

00:38 - Wayne County is the extreme northeast county, Pennsylvania.

00:42 - So pretty much smack dab in the middle of Wayne County,

00:46 - Honesdale and on 10th Street is the old Town jail.

00:50 - Well, take us to this jail.

00:52 - What would we see if we went to visit it today?

00:55 - Well, it's in the middle today.

00:59 - The busy parking lot during daytime hours at the county courthouse.

01:05 - As you approach the jail, you

01:06 - may not even notice it because it's crowded by parked cars today.

01:11 - And people going back and forth from area agency

01:15 - dominating the courthouse and back and forth buildings and so forth.

01:20 - But it's most important feature.

01:23 - Yes, it's sitting there quietly.

01:26 - It has a big white cupola about six foot

01:29 - high and the top of it, and stone walls that are about 60ft long

01:35 - and about 40ft wide, the footprint of the building.

01:39 - You can't miss it.

01:40 - And yet life goes on around

01:43 - living and working and walking.

01:46 - And in the middle of it largely stands the old jail.

01:51 - And you said it's made of stone.

01:53 - Obviously, it's called

01:53 - the old Stone jail, where other jails in that area also made of stone.

01:58 - Our research shows that prior jails, prior

02:01 - to the one that we're talking about today, which was started in 1858

02:07 - and completed in 1859, that's before Lincoln became our president.

02:12 - So this is all

02:15 - part of our part of the state.

02:18 - We do know that the prior jails were all made of wood.

02:23 - These will be put up by local wood.

02:25 - Lots of workers here in Wayne County and easily taken down.

02:29 - Wood used for something else.

02:31 - This jail was much more, the dream here was much more secure.

02:37 - A building that people could not escape from as easily.

02:41 - And to make it more robust.

02:43 - And they succeeded.

02:45 - Could you talk about what are those design features

02:48 - that helped prevent escapes?

02:51 - Well, in this building, the old stone jail,

02:54 - when you enter, you go through a large metal door that has a key and it's locked,

03:00 - and then you go into the ante room,

03:03 - more or less through the sheriff's office on the right of a long corridor.

03:07 - And probably the deputy sheriff

03:09 - was some sort of a helpful person on the left hand side.

03:13 - And then another giant door would have been there, made of metal.

03:18 - Now that door and many other pieces of metal

03:22 - were given during the metal drives

03:24 - in World War Two to the metal drive,

03:28 - and they don't all exist anymore.

03:30 - They were taken down.

03:32 - Most of the interior cell doors and so forth were taken away at that time.

03:37 - We do have the big opening metal doors,

03:40 - which would have been there to keep the prisoners inside.

03:44 - And when we continue down this long central hallway on your side,

03:48 - we have cells on both sides now being about eight foot by ten foot.

03:53 - The individual cells have a narrow window

03:57 - about eight inches wide, but about six feet long.

04:01 - We do know that at least one man who was very small know the

04:06 - tape through this narrow window, but it prevented

04:09 - most people with a more robust body size from getting out.

04:13 - So the narrow slits of windows in the individual cells

04:18 - would have been a good way to keep people inside the big, robust door.

04:23 - When you first entered the long corridor with the cells in it.

04:27 - And each one of the cells had a metal door on the cord.

04:31 - That metal door would have been closed when they were served their meals.

04:36 - It was a little sliding space about waist

04:39 - tie through, which had a simple plate where a bowl could.

04:44 - Maybe some injury could have been passed so

04:48 - lots of things to try to keep the miscreants inside.

04:52 - The old stone jail.

04:54 - Why was Wayne County chosen as the location for the jail?

04:58 - Well, Wayne County needed a new jail.

05:01 - And so it was a county decision.

05:03 - It wasn't a decision on a higher level.

05:05 - This has nothing to do with the need for it and use it.

05:09 - The local people decided that they needed a better jail

05:12 - because the county seat had been moved around a little bit.

05:15 - This was the frontier.

05:18 - Wayne County was created in 1798,

05:22 - and at that time it was much larger than it is today.

05:25 - Fortune tellers were lopped off great parts of Monroe, Pike County.

05:31 - So we have the frontier here.

05:33 - The first jail in Bethany, which was made of wood.

05:39 - That jail, not strong enough.

05:41 - It didn't last, was not going to work.

05:44 - Then they moved the county seat to Honesdale in 1841.

05:48 - So the reason that the jail was built in 1841,

05:51 - there was a wooden jail in Honesdale.

05:54 - And it was just a joke.

05:55 - People were escaping from it all the time and leaving,

05:59 - oh, at that point made plans to build a more robust jail,

06:04 - which starts in 1858, and its construction.

06:08 - A local decision, and it was a controversial decision

06:12 - because the cost at that time was the contract was split

06:17 - and the jail was actually built

06:20 - with $16,000 in 1858, which,

06:25 - according to my research on the internet, would be

06:28 - equivalent to $600,000 today.

06:33 - And the

06:33 - people in the community in the county

06:36 - were very upset at something so big

06:40 - and so strong was being built.

06:44 - Lots of extra things that really didn't need.

06:48 - How big was the jail?

06:49 - I know you mentioned there's four cells.

06:51 - How how large is this?

06:53 - Well, it's about 60ft long and about 40ft wide.

06:57 - So that the portion of it where the the actual inmates were

07:01 - is about 80% of that space.

07:04 - And there's four cells on the right hand side of the corridor in port.

07:08 - Those on the left feeds into the corridor.

07:11 - Oh, it's not a big presence in the parking lot today.

07:15 - And as I said, you can drive around it.

07:17 - Not even notice that it's there.

07:19 - All you're wanting to do is get out to the courthouse there.

07:21 - But it's there and it's not going anywhere.

07:24 - There have been floods in Honesdale.

07:27 - We have two flood control projects since the mid 1950s.

07:31 - So we have not had the serious kinds of calls that used to happen.

07:35 - But when the flooding did occur, the most recent one

07:39 - that destroyed property and drowned people was in 1942.

07:44 - The old stone jail stood.

07:46 - All their buildings are being swept away by the vast

07:50 - flood waters from the nearby river, which is only about 50ft

07:53 - from the jail when the river water throws.

07:57 - Well, their buildings are being swept away.

07:59 - Changed Honesdale in that area forever.

08:02 - Not the old stone jail. It's.

08:03 - It got wet inside, but it's okay.

08:08 - Can you tell us how many people were in each cell?

08:10 - And were there only men, or were there only women

08:15 - in each cell?

08:15 - There were two beds space for two people, so it's pretty cramped, eight feet wide,

08:21 - ten feet long, with two people at it there.

08:24 - There were men and women, but we have to say that most of the time

08:29 - from our research, there's exclusively men and is very unusual for a woman.

08:35 - Become one of the inmates.

08:37 - What women did, they were in the same jail.

08:40 - If they were arrested during the time that this jail stood and was used.

08:45 - 1859 to 1936, women would have been put in jail.

08:50 - There was no differentiation.

08:53 - What did a typical day inside of this jail look like for an inmate?

08:57 - Well, we know that they were served

09:00 - three meals and that the sheriff's wife

09:03 - had that responsibility and she was paid three times that.

09:08 - We have we learned most of our information about the old man jail

09:12 - by reading real to real microfilm

09:15 - from the Wayne County early newspaper.

09:18 - We know that the sheriff's wife was paid $0.50

09:21 - per prisoner per day to provide three meals.

09:24 - So that would have been the focus of the year to ensure

09:28 - they would have gotten a breakfast, a lunch and a supper.

09:32 - They would have been allowed to leave the jail cells

09:35 - at some point on a day when the weather was busy.

09:40 - Go outside into what I would call a yard,

09:43 - and there was a fence around the outside of the jail.

09:47 - It was a back door at the end of the long corridor from which the prisoners left,

09:52 - going out into the yard with steps and had some fresh air.

09:57 - Now, exactly what they did when they were out there

10:01 - with them.

10:02 - That was a routine thing, but they probably just chatted

10:06 - and as the time away.

10:08 - So there was no look like we might find in today's prisons.

10:12 - There was no instructional time.

10:14 - There was no class time. There's no library.

10:17 - Things that we might consider would make the person educate them or whatever.

10:22 - None of those things worked out well.

10:23 - Maybe they had their own reading material.

10:26 - You don't know much about these kids.

10:29 - We've never seen a sketch, except for the fact that they were given

10:32 - three meals a day and there was a yard that they could get to from the jail.

10:38 - Are there any records or accounts that exist

10:40 - of actual stories of inmates that were there?

10:44 - Yes, we do know the names of quite a few of the inmates,

10:47 - and we have stories once again, from the newspapers.

10:51 - We go into our reel to reel microphones and find things all

10:58 - these active

11:00 - men, 59 and so forth, and we know that there were

11:04 - these, you know, the names of some people who were there.

11:08 - We do have some very specific people who were outstanding in the stories

11:13 - that were in the papers because of the crimes that they committed

11:17 - and the long trial.

11:20 - I'm just going to mention one person here

11:23 - whose name was James McKee.

11:26 - Had my paper.

11:27 - Yeah, he's probably the most celebrated

11:31 - person that was in the jail at any time.

11:33 - And he was put into the jail in 1887

11:38 - because he was accused of having.

11:43 - Committed murder on a

11:45 - a road in Wayne County about 30

11:48 - miles north Wayne counties along Schenectady,

11:52 - about 30 miles north of Honesdale, which is where I'm sitting right now.

11:56 - He once he was sentenced to be hanged,

12:00 - found guilty by a court and so forth, and convicted.

12:05 - He escaped on May 26th, 1887.

12:10 - It was at large in the county for about four months,

12:14 - with a $500 reward on his head.

12:18 - He was then found in the hay, now

12:21 - a barn, in the townships in the northern part of the county.

12:27 - And the sheriff, by the way, was really taken

12:32 - to task over all this because he and his

12:35 - deputies had allowed him to escape.

12:37 - Really?

12:38 - He had taken the keys from the sleeping deputy in order

12:41 - to get out of this secure jail.

12:44 - They also think that perhaps there was some inside and thievery going on.

12:50 - In other words, maybe someone leaving the keys.

12:53 - They were really sleeping, you know, that kind of thing?

12:56 - We're not sure, but, he was captured again,

13:01 - and he was hanged.

13:03 - It was one of five jimmied hangings.

13:08 - Not everybody believes in

13:11 - the county's having this ability.

13:13 - And that ability was taken away from counties and from sheriffs

13:17 - in a county at some point shortly after McCabe was hanged.

13:23 - But we have stories like that that we can read about in the paper,

13:27 - because we know that a large crowd gathered outside of the jail

13:31 - on the day that he was hanged, and 70 invitations had been sent,

13:37 - the high ranking county officials on a small,

13:41 - almost like a credit card invitation to black board of around the outside.

13:46 - We have a few of these that have been donated to the museum's archives,

13:51 - so we know that there was any place you could see from

13:54 - rooftops, local hillsides,

13:57 - programed to watch this.

14:00 - This is the kind of thing that

14:03 - mark that

14:04 - hanging and the last hanging in county.

14:07 - But I want to emphasize that these were not illegal bands of people who captured

14:12 - someone they didn't like and decided that he would hang that person.

14:17 - These were people who did have full access to the jury system,

14:23 - were convicted, and the judge decreed because of their crime,

14:27 - their life would end in hanging.

14:30 - Five total.

14:31 - He was the last one, but it was an easy because of him

14:36 - having escaped several times before he was actually hanged.

14:41 - Do we know who was the first prisoner of the old Stone jail?

14:45 - We don't know the name of the first prisoner.

14:48 - I would imagine what we know this.

14:51 - That when the wooden jail, the first jail.

14:55 - Honesdale was named the county seat in 1841,

14:59 - the wooden jail was taken down prior to old Stone

15:04 - jail being built in this in footprint on the ground.

15:08 - And for a little while then those prisoners had to be

15:11 - the sheriff's house, which still stands, and it's right

15:15 - next door to the jail in the court complex.

15:19 - So. And the second floor of the sheriff's house

15:23 - would have been to this

15:24 - time that they were building the jail for a year or so,

15:27 - and I'm sure they just sort of walked them over one day and said, okay,

15:31 - this is your new place, that you can be locked up.

15:34 - So we don't know their names.

15:36 - There's a lot of information you don't have

15:39 - from the local newspapers, and there's no records that we can access.

15:44 - And the group house lists all the different prisoners and so forth.

15:48 - Those things were either destroyed in one of the many floods,

15:51 - with the river being so close to the courthouse, to the jail.

15:55 - Our best source of information is those real to real microfilms

16:00 - of Wayne County newspapers, 150 some musical.

16:05 - Who was in charge of the jail?

16:08 - The county

16:09 - sheriff who would be an elected official

16:12 - would have been elected by the citizens who were registered to vote.

16:16 - There's no men or no women or voting at that time.

16:20 - Only men have the right to vote at this particular time.

16:23 - But, the county sheriff would have been in charge of the jail.

16:27 - And as I said, his wife would have been in charge of the unit.

16:30 - He would have had deputies

16:32 - for a long portion of the time that this jail was standing.

16:36 - It would have done their duty on horseback

16:39 - with a horse pulling a card,

16:42 - or literally getting on a horse with this cattle going to

16:46 - the different parts of the county where there was disturbance or complaint.

16:50 - Can't even imagine what it was like to go 30 miles

16:53 - to try to catch someone in a barn loft in 1887.

16:59 - No phones.

16:59 - You know, all the things that we consider that we would need today

17:02 - in order to know where an escaped prisoner might be.

17:06 - I don't know how they even got that gun, but the sheriff was in charge

17:10 - of all those kinds of things.

17:12 - Do we know of another escape?

17:14 - I know you mentioned one earlier.

17:15 - Are there other ways that prisoners would escape?

17:18 - Yes. Before they built

17:20 - the old stone jail or even while it was standing?

17:23 - Quite often they would go over the fence in the yard

17:28 - where they would be allowed to go out and get some fresh air.

17:31 - I'm not quite sure

17:33 - how they would distract the guard.

17:35 - Maybe the guard was not paying too much attention or a little break.

17:39 - Maybe help one another stand on one another's shoulders

17:42 - and escape over the fence.

17:45 - And we also know that in the old

17:47 - oh, remember, it has the white cupola on the roof.

17:52 - We know that at one point

17:54 - you get out of the locked area prisoners

17:57 - several people were sort of acrobatic in nature.

18:01 - You stack up the furniture from the cells

18:04 - in an area right by the sheriff's office.

18:07 - So that means they're out into the foyer area or the entrance to the jail,

18:12 - stack up furniture, and at any rate, climb up, going to

18:18 - was barred in the ceiling.

18:20 - You didn't get into the attic, didn't really use it as an attic.

18:25 - From there, they can get into the cupola right through the cupola

18:29 - and come down the 20ft to the ground.

18:32 - And in one spot on the jail, there's even what looks like

18:34 - giant steps is part of the architectural design.

18:38 - So they only had to drop like six feet and they'd walk a little, drop

18:43 - another six feet, and it got down to the ground, a 20ft drop

18:47 - without breaking any like

18:50 - little.

18:51 - There was a way to get out.

18:54 - Just for how are these guards?

18:58 - Are keepers trained and paid?

19:01 - We don't think that there was any formal training we never see in our research.

19:05 - Once again, we have to go back to the old newspapers.

19:07 - We never see any notice that the sheriff's deputies

19:11 - were going to be having an in-service or any sort of training.

19:15 - We don't believe that there was any required

19:18 - training before a person would be hired to be a sheriff's deputy,

19:22 - so probably was someone who was willing to take the job.

19:26 - They might have advertised it in the local paper.

19:29 - The deputies would not have been elected, Sheriff would have been elected.

19:33 - But we don't see much formal training.

19:35 - I'm sure that there was on the site

19:38 - advice like, you know, when you go out in the yard,

19:42 - the prisoners can escape over the wall and make sure

19:45 - you keep your keys in your pocket because they'll take them.

19:48 - I'm sure there was man to man at parties, but

19:51 - there is no real record of that in the old.

19:56 - Well, when does the old stone jail close?

20:01 - In 1935, 1936.

20:05 - That building area there, they,

20:09 - closed the old stone jail

20:11 - right next to it once again in that bustling parking lot.

20:15 - Old. The next gym.

20:18 - And that jail is in effect until now.

20:21 - Was standing there until 2008,

20:26 - when Wayne County gets its modern, present day jail.

20:30 - You have jail facilities today that are certainly up to par

20:35 - and exactly what you would expect in the county.

20:38 - So the next year, which was built in 1936, it opened in 1936.

20:45 - That's when the old stone was closed.

20:48 - That taken down, probably because it's

20:50 - so incredibly robust in its structure and its architecture will probably

20:56 - just say, like, I'm going to take that on somebody you don't know how to take.

21:00 - If it had been made of wood, it would have probably been dismantled in 1936.

21:06 - Then the other ironic thing is that the jail built in 1936,

21:10 - which closed in 2008, not jails gone.

21:15 - So it's there in jail is still there.

21:19 - But the 1936. No it's not.

21:22 - That's where the parking lot. It's.

21:25 - How has the old stone jail been preserved?

21:28 - Well, that's interesting because it's just sat there

21:32 - and been flooded into and would say sort of ignored.

21:37 - There was a group of Boy Scouts and their Boy Scout leader,

21:41 - whose name was Dick straightener, a well known personality and Holy Spirit

21:47 - about 2001, 2000, two,

21:50 - the Boy Scouts with their leader Dick, right, Brightener decide

21:54 - that they are going to get permission from the county commissioners.

21:58 - Go into the old stone jail, start to clean it out,

22:03 - and then with additional help in the years

22:05 - 20032004, along in their

22:08 - from the county prison release workers,

22:13 - they're allowed to go out with a guard watching them and work during the day.

22:19 - Those workers continue

22:21 - to take things out because the old Stone jail next to the 1960s,

22:26 - you know, had become just sort of a a catch all storage space.

22:31 - If there was a carpentry project, they put the extra wood in the jail,

22:35 - some road signs that you need in the winter

22:38 - when wet or ice forms here is documented.

22:42 - The old jail, flashing lights and things like that.

22:46 - They were put in.

22:47 - So it become pretty much a repository for things that were needed.

22:51 - Occasionally the things that were left over from a project in the county complex.

22:56 - So starting about, 2003, 2004, with the help of

23:01 - from many different parts of the project, the old stone jail was cleaned out.

23:06 - And that's the thing that allowed the beginning of the process.

23:11 - Since then,

23:13 - the Wayne County Historical.

23:15 - Society and other groups in the community, with the permission of the commissioners

23:20 - who were so good in scheduling it to allow us to teach people history.

23:25 - There.

23:26 - Since then, we've had routine

23:29 - openings, open houses,

23:32 - all sorts of programs going on at the old jail.

23:35 - It is a community site.

23:38 - It's, strangely enough, people love to go to and walk through and just give.

23:43 - We're trying to preserve it.

23:46 - Were there any restorations that were done to the jail?

23:49 - Just the cleaning out, mostly.

23:51 - I've had a couple of groups in the summer of medical students

23:56 - who were being paid through a grant, and we've gone in with the brooms

24:01 - and shop vacs, inspected, cobwebs down, taken away.

24:07 - What is the cement coat that's on the stones on the inside?

24:11 - They can weigh piles of just,

24:14 - enough bits falling off the walls and made it look nice and clean

24:18 - so that when people come in, it's like cleaning your own house.

24:22 - We've cleaned it a bit.

24:24 - I know that the commissioners

24:26 - are very concerned about what gets poured in it now,

24:30 - and who's using it and making sure that it's locked

24:33 - appropriately and,

24:36 - you know, everyone's working together.

24:39 - It's not going to fall apart.

24:40 - It was built so soundly with 2.5ft

24:44 - thick walls of stone.

24:47 - So nothing special is being done to preserve it.

24:51 - But everybody pitches in all the different groups that use it.

24:54 - Greater Honesdale Partnership does this time of year.

24:58 - They kind of details and you pay a little bit of money.

25:02 - It's a fundraiser for the nonprofit.

25:05 - Then you go in and in front of each one of the cell walls,

25:08 - still doors, you can stop and someone will be recreating a person.

25:13 - Mask is there to scare you a little bit and, you know, say some spooky things.

25:19 - And they also have,

25:22 - a QR code

25:24 - that you can do in downtown Honesdale.

25:26 - If you sell a guide, you phone your phone,

25:29 - guiding you from one place to the next.

25:33 - All those groups that are using the jail,

25:36 - you have community events, fundraisers, us included, art, historical society.

25:42 - We all pitch in to keep it clean.

25:44 - What would you say the condition is like

25:46 - in today compared to in its original state?

25:50 - I think it's probably pretty much the same,

25:52 - except that these big metal doors are no longer hanging.

25:57 - But as far as the interior structure,

26:00 - there is places where this part of rotary

26:05 - mortar has fallen off.

26:08 - And we do know that there were

26:12 - plumbing here.

26:14 - Not too many people want to know about the plumbing inside a jail cell,

26:18 - but in the corner of each cell, there's a hole about four feet wide in the floor.

26:23 - And there probably was a little wooden seat on there

26:27 - that that was there towards inside the cell.

26:30 - Well, the little toilets aren't there any more.

26:33 - They're still new.

26:35 - And we do know that in the far back.

26:37 - Right.

26:37 - The last cell on the right hand side in the home for you probably was the shower.

26:43 - We have read that the prisoners were allowed to bathe or have a shower.

26:47 - Wants to be,

26:49 - and the actual shower itself is not there.

26:52 - We see a drain in the floor, just in that one cell

26:55 - where it looks like, yes, there must have been a tub or shower here.

26:59 - So those kinds of added features are no longer there.

27:03 - The furniture that we have in there now,

27:06 - including two small cuts in most of the cells

27:09 - and some homemade mattresses with snuff tea and some old ticking soap work

27:15 - that you and others made on her sewing machines.

27:19 - Those things are recreate.

27:22 - Well, we do

27:23 - believe they were very similar to what would have been

27:27 - for anybody watching that would like to come visit the old Stone jail.

27:30 - How would they do that?

27:32 - The Wayne County Historical Society

27:34 - in Honesdale as our main museum.

27:37 - We have a website, Wayne History PA com.

27:42 - You can go there and see when the schedule, the open house bar

27:46 - and contact us by phone.

27:49 - All that information is on our website.

27:52 - We're very glad to open the jail for groups,

27:56 - small or large group, boy Scout groups,

27:58 - groups of fourth grade groups, whoever by special appointment.

28:03 - So the jail is available for people and they just contact us.

28:07 - We've been speaking with Carol Dunn, the executive director of the Wayne County.

28:10 - Historical Society. Thank you.

28:13 - Thank you very much.