Some people are memorialized at the Ellis County Historic Courthouse by monuments, while others instead chose to commemorate themselves with a more unorthodox approach. Facing the Southwest Entrance of the courthouse and viewing the inward-facing side of the left column, at the top you’ll see the carved face of a man with a distinctive handlebar mustache. This face is believed to be a self-portrait, but there are two possibilities as to whom it might be. The first possibility is that the face depicts Theodore Beilharz, owner of the Dallas stone yard that famously hired Germans and other European immigrants to recreate the masonry of Renaissance-era cathedrals in Texas as a part of the Romanesque Revival architectural style. The other possibility is that the face depicts Harry Herley, an English artist working with Beilharz, whose alleged romance with a Waxahachie belle became a local folk legend that will be covered shortly.