Living in the Lafayette County Jail with her children and the inmates was part of Minnie Talbott’s life, from 1917 to 1920, first as the sheriff’s wife, then as the first elected female sheriff in the nation.

Minnie’s diligence prevented an escape when her husband was sheriff. She heard a suspicious noise, which turned out to be an inmate sawing his way through the bars.

Minnie’s child, Dorothy, invited a friend over for dinner when they lived in the sheriff’s quarters. The evening’s chores included feeding inmates. When the mother of Dorothy’s friend discovered that her daughter had helped serve prisoners, she forbid her daughter to visit Dorothy again!

Some of the older Lexington residents, such as Don Coen, recall walking along the sidewalk on 11th Street and being asked for cigarettes or other items by the inmates calling from the jail windows.

Before being torn down in 1938, the Lafayette County Jail was located east of the court house, along 11th Street on the other side of the county offices (now empty lawn). The 1918 Sanborn Insurance Map (above) shows that the jail was divided between the sheriff’s quarters and the jail, with the jail on the side along 11th Street.

The entrance used was the same for the sheriff’s family, visitors and prisoners. Locked jail cells were the only barrier between the inmates and the sheriff’s family. Jail breaks were common over the history of the jail. In 1905, for example, a prisoner by the name of Otto Banerla literally “went out with the trash,” hiding under the trash in a large barrel. He was apprehended, reincarcerated and “adorned with ball and chain.”