Prisoners have left their marks on the courthouse bell tower

When John Swehla of Ossian was a jail inmate, he wanted people to know he was serving

The clock on the Winneshiek County Courthouse used to be wound by hand--a process that took almost half an hour.

So county officials used to turn to a ready source of labor--prisoners in the county jail.  They were taken up to the courthouse tower and told to wind the clock.

The prisoners got bored.  So they started a custom of writing their names on the woodwork that surrounds the clock works.

The inscriptions date as far back as 1907 (Construction of the courthouse was begun in 1903 and the building was occupied in the fall of 1905).  Some of the inscriptions are straightforward, some are humorous and some are sad.  Taken as a whole, they represent a history of more than 100 years of people climbing the stairwell at the courthouse in order to take care of the clock.

Names cover a door near the clock

Names have also been written on the bricks and on the steel girders