The Clarendon County Courthouse was originally dedicated Jan. 5, 1910.
Local officials will come together 2 p.m. Tuesday to rededicate the long-standing structure, four months after the building opened back up to the public and nearly three years after it underwent extensive renovations.
“We will have a ceremony and ribbon cutting to celebrate the 106th anniversary of the courthouse’s dedication,” said Clarendon County Archives Director Nancy Cave. “It’s an odd year, but we figured with the courthouse just reopening, it would be a nice way to celebrate it.”
It will be the culmination of several other events that have heralded the building’s reopening in August. In late November, retiring S.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal was the keynote speaker for a ceremony to celebrate the building, in which the state’s highest judicial official worked not long after graduating from law school in the late 1960s.
Clarendon County Council Chairman Dwight Stewart will be the featured speaker at Tuesday’s ceremony, which will be held on the courthouse steps on the Boyce Street side. He will replace Dr. Joseph Taylor Stukes, a retired professor from Francis Marion University, who was expected to speak. No reason was given for the change.
Stukes’ father, Taylor Hudnall Stukes, was an associate justice and chief justice on the South Carolina Supreme Court, elected to the latter position in 1956 after 16 years on the state’s highest bench. His portrait hangs in the third-floor courtroom.
Officials will also re-inter the 2005 Sesquicentennial Time Capsule on Tuesday during the ceremony. Clarendon County Historical Society President Jerry Robertson will present a history of the courthouse as well.
Music will be provided by Brenda Clark, after which the Clarendon County Chamber of Commerce will hold a ribbon cutting.
The courthouse closed to the public in May 2013 after officials discovered the building’s roof needed extensive repairs. Such repairs were to begin later that year, but the building was determined to be no longer safe much earlier than planned.
“We were ready to get back home when we got here in August,” said Clarendon Clerk of Court Beulah Roberts. The courthouse, which once housed many county functions, now serves as home to just the Clerk of Court and the 3rd Circuit Solicitor’s and Public Defender’s offices and 3rd Circuit Jude R. Ferrell Cothran.
Offices that once called the courthouse home – like the Treasurer, the Register of Deeds and the Auditor – will remain at the county’s Administration Building, to which they moved after that building’s completion in 2012.
