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Judge to Sheriff: 'Put His Head Under the Fence'

Cobb's first courthouse was a log cabin; its first jail was a rail fence.

In 1834, George Baber had all of the qualifications for a frontier sheriff. At 34 years of age, he was experienced (he had been sheriff of Greene County, Ind. in 1826), he had a sense of justice and responsibility and he looked like he could lick any man in the county.

This last bit was essential; Cobb County was brand new, having been created from Cherokee land just two years earlier, and some of Cobb’s residents, like those of most frontier counties, were illiterate and belligerent roughnecks.

 The town of Marietta, platted to be beautifully laid out with a courthouse and a grassy square, was still being hacked and hewn from the wilderness. Although funds were being raised for a courthouse, a log cabin off the planned square had to do for the time being, and many legal cases were held until a circuit judge could arrive from another district.

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It was here that Coweta Circuit Judge Hiram Warner presided in 1834.

In court that morning was one of the aforementioned roughnecks. Drunk, or at least pretending to be so, he grew loud and disruptive. Warner ordered that he be removed from the building, and Baber as sheriff complied. Hauling the man out of the cabin, he told the man’s friends to take him home and keep him there until he sobered up.

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But a short time later the man returned, cursing the court and daring Warner to throw him in jail.

But there was no jail. The closest thing they had was a horse pen, about 12 rails high, which stood in back of the cabin. So Warner ordered that the man be taken out back, and that his head be stuck between the fence rails.

Baber complied. According to the account in Historical Collections of Georgia, compiled by the Rev. George White in 1854, Baber placed the man’s neck “between the heavy rails of the fence, about two feet from the ground, his body on one side, and his head in the other.” The sheriff then perched himself on the topmost fence rail in order to keep his prisoner in place, conversing casually with passersby and administering a thump of his boot when necessary.

The prisoner soon declared that he was sober. Baber freed his head from the fence rail and sent him home. The following day, the man returned to court, humble and contrite, and thanked Warren for making “a sober man of him during his life.”

This sort of scene would remain Marietta’s version of a “drunk tank” for years to come. Other improvisations were made for more serious detainees. Cobb County did not build a proper jail until 1846. This “dungeon jail,” located one block west of the railroad and just south of Whitlock Avenue, was a two story, square building with the cell on the bottom floor and the sheriff’s office on the top. The stairs to the main entrance went to the second floor. The first floor cell was accessed by a trap door and a ladder.

Baber was Cobb County’s second sheriff, and the first one to serve a full two-year term. The first had been Tandy Martin, an Irishman who had been chosen in Cobb County’s first elections, held in March of 1863. After George Baber’s term, the position became hotly contested-often switching hands from one man to another and back again.

When the dungeon jail was burned by Union soldiers in 1864, Cobb County again did without one until 1870. Since that time, Cobb County has had several jails. The current on County Services Parkway was has been in operation since 1989, with the most recent expansion completed in 1996.

Neil Warren, the current , is the 42nd to hold the office.

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