Indiana County Courthouse Histories

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Newton County
Named for: Sergeant John Newton - Revolutionary War compatriot of Sergeant William Jasper (see below)
Organized: 1859
County Seat: Kent (Kentland)
Number of Courthouses: 3

Number	Years	Type	Detail
1	1861-1906	Frame	2-story, $1000.
2	1906-Present	Castle	Arch: Joseph T. Hutton - Completed August 1906. $34,855. Builder: Eric Lund - 4/3/1905, Bid $26,195, Paid $30,525

Additional Courthouse: A third Courthouse was built in Beaver City in an effort to gain the County seat. It was copied after the 1861 Kentland Courthouse. Beaver City, Brook, Morocco are all more centrally located than Kentland and each tried on more than one occasion to gain the county seat but all were unsuccessful. A ninth and final effort to move the County seat, this time to Goodland in 1903 via a law of 1899 was approved by the voters but the Indiana Supreme Court declared the 1899 law unconstitutional.

The town of Brook acknowledges a courthouse near that town, but they refer to Spitler's cabin, which was used as a courthouse in the beginning of Jasper County before Newton gained autonomy and before Brook was founded. It was located on a farm south of Brook.

Newton was the last Indiana County organized. It had been authorized for many years, but could not reach sufficient population to attain County rights because it was mostly a swamp and uninhabitable. It was drained with the help of a federal land grant for that purpose in 1850.

Most Indiana Wooden Courthouses were only temporary, but this 1860 courthouse lasted 45 years.

The existence of Sergeant William Jasper has been confirmed with official Revolutionary War enlistment and war accounting documents, but no such reference to Sergeant John Newton exists. Newton was probably a fictional character introduced in an early 1800's novel about the exploits of the two.

The courthouse lawn contains a Civil War Memorial and a War Memorial Pocket Park.