MOUNT VERNON — On the lowest floor of the Knox County Service Center, which grew over a century’s worth of time, rests several relics from the county’s past.
One is the cornerstone of the old Knox County Jail, back in a time when the jail had been housed between the Knox County Service Center and the county Courthouse. The long, sandstone slab with the Roman numerals MCMXIII, or in Arabic numerals, 1913, the old’s jail’s date of opening, along with the old jail’s keystone, will be donated to the Knox County Historical Society within the next month or so.
“The county commissioners, and me too, believe these are important enough pieces of the county’s past to make them worth preserving and donating to our county museum,” county Administrator Jason Booth said this week.
Mercy Hospital, according to historicknoxohio.org, opened some time after 1918 and became a continuously expanding full-service hospital for decades. In 1978 the hospital merged with Martin Memorial Hospital to form Knox Community Hospital. It then served for five years as Knox Community Hospital-East until the present Knox Community Hospital complex was completed on Coshocton Avenue. The former hospital then housed the county Health Department, county Human Services and other entities, both private and public, before its acquisition by Knox County commissioners in 1996. It now houses numerous county programs and offices including the auditor, treasurer, commissioners and county administration, and 911 dispatching.
