Dark Places: the Old Gratiot County Jail (1877-1939)

Look closely, and you’ll see shadowy figures in the windows of the old Gratiot County Jail.

The imposing structure of brick, stone, and iron rose from the ground in 1877 in Ithaca, Michigan, at the cost of about $5,700. The casual passer-by could easily mistake the edifice for a mansion rather than a county jail, until he noticed the iron bars behind the second story window glass. The Gratiot County Jail began its existence during the gaslight era and continued to house malefactors through the Roaring Twenties.

Gratiot County, Michigan, sits in the middle of Michigan’s mitten and contains a collection of small communities carved out of the corn fields and deciduous forests. As the tide of crime began to rise with the spread of population across rural Michigan during the second half of the nineteenth century, grand residence-type jails began to occupy a prominent spot in county seats. The typical two-story structure consisted of a sheriff’s residence in the front and a one or two-story cell block in the rear. Often, the sheriff’s wife had the dubious chore of cooking meals for the inmates, although in larger county jails, deputies handled this part of the daily grind.

Detroit ironwork manufacturer E.T. Barnum (not to be confused with the great showman P.T. Barnum) provided cells and cellblocks for many county jails throughout the United States. Unfortunately, the soft iron was not an impediment to steel wire, which was often smuggled into the jail by inmates’ visitors, often right under the noses of naïve sheriff deputies. At night, while the deputies snoozed, the inmate would saw through the lattice-style bars and shimmy out of a window.

The Gratiot County Jail experienced several high-profile jail breaks during its history. In 1885, four inmates dug through the masonry while the sheriff was attending a horse race in nearby St. Louis. In 1903, a trio of felons, including a forger and two rapists, busted out of the facility. Twenty years later, four prohibition violators sawed their way to freedom. The highest profile break, and the most embarrassing one for county officials, occurred in 1927 when three inmates strong-armed the sheriff and fled. William Stillman, a desperado known as “Two Gun,” and two companions were caught breaking into an area warehouse. When Sheriff A.J. Smith made his rounds, Still threatened to shoot the sheriff with a revolver he had smuggled into the prison. The frightened lawman opened Stillman’s cell door, and one of Stillman’s associates leveled him with a blackjack. Stillman evaded a statewide manhunt but was later caught in Texas for armed robbery. In 1933, he attempted to escape a Texas prison using a gun smuggled into the prison (the third time he managed to acquire a handgun while behind bars, and the guards shot him.

The most infamous inmate to spend time in the old Gratiot County Jail was Elmer Quimby, an Ithaca man sentenced to life for murdering his two children (his wife Sarah Quimby also received a life sentence for the crime). Quimby spent much of 1901 in the jail, where he possibly contracted typhoid fever. He died of the disease on February 14, 1902, in the State Prison at Jackson.

The prettiest inmate to occupy a cell in the old jail was Ada Reist, who spent 48 hours in the county lock-up when she refused to testify about her relationship with Maple Rapids farmer George Blank. The lovers exchanged letters, one of which supposedly wound up in the hands of Blank’s wife, who subsequently died when the stove blew up, destroying the farmhouse, Mrs. Blank, and her unborn child.

The county built a new jail in 1939 (at a cost of $40,000), as a building attached to the sheriff’s office, and the grand old lady crumbled under the wrecking ball. The storied old Gratiot County Jail exists nowhere today except on postcards from the ‘Golden Age of Postcards.” If it still stood today, its ghosts would include draft dodgers, bootleggers, rapists, “Two Gun,” and one very pretty young woman named Ada.