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CENTRE — Everybody relax. There's no need to wake Tiny. It wasn't that kind of a hanging.

Members of the Cherokee County Bar Association gathered in the kitschy, second-floor courtroom of the Cherokee County Courthouse earlier this month to add some much-needed décor and, in the process, pay homage to 11 judges who have served the county since it was established nearly two centuries ago.

Bar Association President Wes Mobley said the process of gathering information about the judges was well over a year in the making.

“The idea really started after we had a photograph taken of all the members of the Cherokee County Bar Association, back in 2008,” explained Mobley in the courtroom before the ceremony. “All the lawyers, judges and prosecutors were available and we had a group photo made.”

Mobley said at a Bar meeting soon afterwards, someone presented the idea of recognizing the history of judgeships in Cherokee County.

“That was about a year-and-a-half ago,” Mobley said. “It's taken that long.”

Mobley was quick to point out that a lot of the research had already been completed.

“Judge David Rains had begun digging up the history some time ago,” Mobley said. “We relied on a lot of the information he had already compiled.”

Mobley said the next task was finding photos or other likenesses of the judges – a task complicated by the lack of adequate record keeping in the county dating back to its inception in 1836.

“The earliest photo we found was Judge Thomas A. Walker, who served from 1847 to 1856,” Mobley said. “Actually, Judge Rains acquired an old sketch of him from the state of Alabama archives building in Montgomery. Judge Rains also gave us a similar copy of a sketch of another judge.”

Mobley added: “The images were in pretty poor shape, as you can imagine.”

Mobley said many of the pictures that finally made their way onto the bare courtroom walls on Dec. 10 were donated by family members, other members of the Bar Association, or “anyone we could get a photo from”.

But he said everyone in the group agreed that the “photocopy of a photocopy” condition of the sketches from the state archives rendered them insufficient for public display.

“The sketches of judges Walker and Haralson were the two oldest we were able to locate, so we really wanted to include them,” Mobley said. “We knew that local artist Cloud Farrow did pencil sketches so we asked him if he would be interested in redrawing those for us. Mr. Farrow did the work at a reduced rate and he did a fantastic job.”

Mobley said that, so far, the Bar Association has not been able to compile a complete chronology. The list of judges now hanging in the courtroom does not account for an 11-year period from 1836-47, a seven-year gap from 1856-63, nine years from 1875-84, and a generation-sized span from 1894-1928. There's also a dearth of information from 1941-49.

“There are some we were not able to acquire, but we've got them all, circuit and district, from 1949 on,” Mobley said. “We plan to have another ceremony in the spring to add the current judges' portraits to the wall.”

A few minutes after the interview ended, Mobley's voice was reverberating off the paneled walls of the courtroom as he presided over the ceremony. Longtime Centre city attorney Al Shumaker was among the first to be asked to come forward and set a judge to swinging. Little did he know it was a setup.

“Say a few words, Al,” shouted someone from the group of lawyers gathered in the room. “You used to work with him!”

Shumaker took the ribbing in stride. He smiled and nodded, then made his way through the laughter to attach Judge Walker's framed image to the wall.

Farrow had the honor of going second before a string of attorneys and judges took turns hanging everyone else: William J. Haralson (1863-75); James Aiken (1884-85); John B. Tally II (1886-94); Alpha B. Hawkins (1928-41); John M. Snodgrass (1949-63); Jack Livingston (1963-66); John F. Proctor (1966-68); John B. Tally IV (1968-74); John D. Coggin (1982-97); and John C. Kelsey (1997-2003).