The Old Perry County Courthouse is a historic government building in the village of Somerset, Ohio, United States. Built in the 1820s as a courthouse, it is one of Ohio's oldest existing buildings constructed for that purpose, and it has seen the controversy of a county seat war. For much of its history, it has served as Somerset's village hall, and it is located within a federally designated historic district.Historic contextThe village of Somerset was established in 1810 by settlers from Somerset, Pennsylvania at the spot on Zane's Trace located midway between Lancaster and Zanesville. Seven years later, parts of Fairfield, Muskingum, and Washington counties were merged to create Perry County, and the house of a Somerset resident was named the first temporary courthouse. In 1819, the county government arranged for the erection of a building in Somerset; while most of the building was used for a jail, it also included a courtroom and space for some county offices. Ten years later, the present building was constructed on the village's public square; officials quickly found it to be insufficiently large for their needs, so until a new jail was built adjacent to the courthouse in 1848, some offices remained in the jail.
