I served my time Saturday as a volunteer at the local Jail House Museum.

I have noticed that a number of small towns have preserved their old jails as museums. Probably because it was one of the better-built of the old buildings and is publicly owned. The one we have locally is probably typical. It’s a two-story building made of stone. The sheriff and his family lived downstairs and the prisoners were kept upstairs, brought in through a separate entrance.

We had a half-dozen groups come by to look at the artifacts in the museum and a couple of reconstructed log cabins on the grounds next to it. One customer wanted to know if anybody famous had ever been in the jail. That was a question that should have been anticipated and wasn’t. One of the other volunteers vowed to search the old records for an early-day Paris or Scooter. Records do show that Oliver Loving, one of the models for the Lonesome Dove characters, was once arrested by the sheriff for selling whiskey. But the record doesn’t indicate if it was a jailing offense or if he got away with just a fine.

The actual cell pictured above is not the one that was actually used here but it has a long history. It was built for the jail in a neighboring county and then later used at the county farm in the 1930’s.