The 19^th century Jackson County Courthouse, located in the then county seat of Webster, is said to have dated from 1855, but old photographs of it show an ornate, towered and bracketed building far more typical of the 1880s and similar to some other western N. C. courthouses of that era such as those in Transylvania and Clay counties; Elliott and Elliott may have rebuilt or extensively reworked the earlier Jackson County Courthouse. In the early 20^th century the county seat was relocated to Sylva, where a new Jackson County Courthouse was built from designs by Richard Sharp Smith of Asheville.