On a September day in 1799, Frederick Stearns was found guilty of perjury. As punishment, his ears were nailed to a pillory in Jonesborough, cut off, and left there until sunset.
âThey didnât take crime lightly,â said Donna Cox Briggs, archive assistant at the Washington County Department of Records Management and Archives.
The record of Stearnsâ sentence is housed at the department in Jonesborough.
The department stores various historic records from Washington County, such as marriage records, wills and probate records and court records. The archives have documents from as early as 1771, before the establishment of Washington County, to as recently as the 1960s.