Local History: Little has changed in county government since founding
For the past few months, a group of citizens has been getting ready to study Lackawanna County's form of government and possibly make recommendations on ways to change it.
There's no word on how far back they'll go, but there seems to be little difference between how Lackwanna County's government was first organized and today.
Lackwanna County's 135th birthday is fast approaching. The county is last formed in the state, after a 39-year battle to break away from Luzerne County. In a special election on Aug. 13, 1878, residents voted 7,629 to 1,986 to form a new county and then-Gov. John F. Hartranft issued a proclamation establishing Lackawanna County.
Soon after, Gov. Hartranft appointed a sheriff and a county commissioner, but both were quickly withdrawn because the constitution prohibited legislators from making appointments to offices they helped create.
Instead, Horace F. Barrett, Henry L. Gaige and Dennis Tierney were appointed as county commissioners. The commissioners began meeting in the law offices of the commission's solicitor, E.N. Willard. Fittingly, W.N. Monies served as the county's first treasurer.
An election held in November 1878 to select county commissioners and other county officials was declared illegal, so all county appointees served until Jan. 1, 1880. Since then, three commissioners were elected every three years through the 1920s and beyond. The sheriff, district attorney, treasurer, prothonotary, recorder, coroner, register of wills, auditors, controllers and jury commissioners were also elected on a regular basis starting in 1878.
Elected officials in the newly formed county were absorbed with putting the pieces of Lackawanna County's government in place. They used the second and third floors of what would later be known as the Samter building at Lackawanna and Penn avenues for court proceedings and leasing the upper floors of the Second National Bank building for county offices. A building in the 500 block of Center Street was used as the county's first jail.
Commissioners and other county officials had to be diplomatic when it came time to select a site for a courthouse. At the time, Scranton was a borough along with Hyde Park and Providence, and there was a rivalry as to where the courthouse should be built.
Lackawanna Iron & Coal Co. and trustees of the Susquehanna and Wyoming Valley Coal Co. settled the matter in 1879 by donating a piece of land - described by one historian as the "old lily pond ... filled with slag and ashes from the blast furnaces and the mill" - bound by Washington and Adams avenues and Linden and Spruce streets.
Commissioners advertised for bids for a courthouse to be constructed of native West Mountain stone at a cost not to exceed $100,000. Though contractors at first hesitated to take on the project because the land had once been a swamp, work began on April 23, 1881, and the cornerstone was laid on May 25, 1882. County offices were moved there soon after the courthouse was complete.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
ERIN L. NISSLEY is an assistant metro editor at The Times-Tribune and has lived in the area for more than six years. Contact the writer: email@example.com
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