Weiss presents county with rare photo of Old Jail Building

For many years local Holmes County resident and longtime banker, historian and Holmes County Lions Club member David Weiss has been one of Holmes County’s most industrious collectors of area antiquities.

However, Weiss’ white whale has been an old photo of the Holmes County Jail, which was built in 1879. The photo shows three men standing in front of what is now the front entrance to the nearly completed jail building.

Because the jail now serves as the Holmes County commissioners’ meeting facility, Weiss felt it would be neat to retrieve the small postcard photo and have Tope Printing make a larger one and present it to the commissioners.

The only problem was he was having trouble tracking the original down.

Weiss said he had been trying to retrieve the old postcard photo from his friends, Mike and Miriam Dewitt, who owned a store in Millersburg and Miriam worked in the auditor’s office.

“I’ve been trying to get this for 20-some years,” Weiss said. “I saw it, and they never said no but they never said yes when it came to giving it to me. I said, ‘Miriam, is there any way I can get that image?’ She agreed it should be preserved.”

After she passed away last year, the Dewitt family invited Weiss to come out to the homestead and search through the garage for the image. A lengthy and fruitless search took place, and after scouring every inch of the garage, they were ready to cease the search.

One of the Dewitt clan decided to take one final look and found the image tucked away in the bottom of a box.

“I have probably the largest collection of memorabilia in the county, but this was the one I wanted the most because I felt it should find a home here in the Old Jail,” Weiss said. “I haven’t seen it anywhere else.”

He had Tope Printing do some work in enlarging the image, and on Monday, July 31, he brought it into the Holmes County commissioners’ meeting and presented the framed photo to the commissioners to place in the Old Jail building.

Weiss did so in honor of Harry R. Weiss and Darryl D. Weiss, both of whom served as Holmes County sheriffs and had offices and residences in the building. Darryl Weiss was actually the last sheriff to reside in the building in 1976 before the existing jail was built near Holmesville.

In presenting the photo to the commissioners, Weiss said he was honored to be able to offer such a unique find.

“I thought it should be placed in this building forever, so I am donating this to the commissioners on behalf of my uncles,” Weiss said to the commissioners. “I’ve been wanting to do this for 20 years.”

“That’s very kind of you,” commissioner Joe Miller said. “You finally got it.”

In order to verify the age of the photograph, Weiss did plenty of research and was able to nail down a time line, thanks in large part to the variety of construction material located around the jail building at the time.

Weiss said the contract for the erection of the jail building was handed out in 1876. It took more than two years to build it, and that was why Weiss said the image was 144 years old. Also in the rare photo was a corner of the former courthouse building that stood where the current statue is in the courtyard.

“It’s just a really neat piece of history that has always captured my attention, and I’ve been after it for so many years now it seemed like I wasn’t ever going to locate it, even though I knew the Dewitts had it somewhere in their possession,” Weiss said. “It was just a matter of getting around to locating it. It feels gratifying to finally be able to present it to the county to serve as a historical memory of the first days of the Holmes County Jail.”