A county seat is an
administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or
civil parish. The term is used in Canada, China, Romania, Hungary and the United States.
County towns have a similar function in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, as well as historically in Jamaica.
Function

In most of the United States,
counties are the
political subdivisions of a state. The city, town, or populated place that houses county government is known as the seat of its respective county. Generally, the county legislature, county courthouse, sheriff's department headquarters, hall of records, jail and correctional facility are located in the county seat, though some functions (such as highway maintenance, which usually requires a large garage for vehicles, along with asphalt and salt storage facilities) may also be located or conducted in other parts of the county, especially if it is geographically large.
A county seat is usually, but not always, an incorporated municipality. The exceptions include the county seats of counties that have no incorporated municipalities within their borders, such as
Arlington County, Virginia (where the county seat is the entire county).
Ellicott City, the county seat of
Howard County, is the largest unincorporated county seat in the United States, followed by
Towson, the county seat of
Baltimore County, Maryland. Likewise, some county seats may not be incorporated in their own right, but are located within incorporated municipalities. For example,
Cape May Court House, New Jersey, though unincorporated, is a section of
Middle Township, an incorporated municipality. In some of the colonial states, county seats include or formerly included "Court House" as part of their name, (e.g.
Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia).
Canada
The Canadian
provinces of
Alberta,
Ontario,
Quebec,
New Brunswick,
Prince Edward Island, and
Nova Scotia have counties as an administrative division of government below the provincial level, and thus county seats.
In the provinces of Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia the term "shire town" is used in place of county seat.
China
County seats in China are the administrative centers of the counties in the
People's Republic of China or the
Republic of China.
''Xian'' have existed since the
Warring States period and were set up nationwide by the
Qin Dynasty. The number of counties in
China proper gradually increased from dynasty to dynasty. As
Qin Shi Huang reorganized the counties after his unification, there were about 1,000. Under the Eastern
Han Dynasty, the number of counties increased to above 1,000. About 1400 existed when the
Sui dynasty abolished the
commandery level (郡 jùn), which was the level just above counties, and demoted some commanderies to counties.
In Imperial China, the county was a significant administrative unit because it marked the lowest level of the imperial bureaucratic structure; in other words, it was the lowest level that the government reached. Government below the county level was often undertaken through informal non-bureaucratic means, varying between dynasties. The head of a county was the
magistrate, who oversaw both the day-to-day operations of the county as well as civil and criminal cases.
The current number of
counties mostly resembled that of the later years of
Qing Dynasty. Changes of location and names of counties in
Chinese history have been a major field of research in Chinese historical geography, especially from the 1960s to the 1980s. There are 1,355 counties in
Mainland China out of a total of 2,851 county-level divisions.
In Taiwan, the first counties were first established in 1661 by the
Kingdom of Tungning. The later ruler
Qing empire inherited this type of administrative divisions. With the increase of
Han Chinese population in Taiwan, the number of counties also grew by time. By the end of Qing era, there were 11 counties in Taiwan.
Protestant missionaries in China first romanized the term as hien. When
Taiwan became a
Japanese colony in 1895, the hierarchy of divisions also incorporated into the
Japanese system in the period when
Taiwan under Japanese rule. By September 1945, Taiwan was divided into 8
prefectures ( and ), which remained after the Republic of China took over Taiwan.
Currently there are 13 county seats in Taiwan, which are in the forms of
county-administered city,
urban township or
rural township.
Lists of ROC county seats by county
United States
U.S. counties with more than one county seat
Most counties have only one county seat. However, some counties in
Alabama,
Arkansas,
Georgia,
Iowa,
Kentucky,
Massachusetts,
Mississippi,
Missouri,
New Hampshire, New York, and
Vermont have two or more county seats, usually located on opposite sides of the county. An example is
Harrison County, Mississippi, which lists both
Biloxi and
Gulfport as county seats, and
Hinds County, Mississippi, which lists both
Raymond and the state capital of
Jackson. The practice of multiple county seat towns dates from the days when travel was difficult. There have been few efforts to eliminate the two-seat arrangement, since a county seat is a source of pride (and jobs) for the towns involved.
There are 36 counties with multiple county seats (no more than two each) in 11 states:
*
Coffee County, Alabama
*
St. Clair County, Alabama
*
Arkansas County, Arkansas
*
Carroll County, Arkansas
*
Clay County, Arkansas
*
Craighead County, Arkansas
*
Franklin County, Arkansas
*
Logan County, Arkansas
*
Mississippi County, Arkansas
*
Prairie County, Arkansas
*
Sebastian County, Arkansas
*
Yell County, Arkansas
*
Columbia County, Georgia
*
Lee County, Iowa
*
Campbell County, Kentucky
*
Kenton County, Kentucky
*
Essex County, Massachusetts
*
Middlesex County, Massachusetts
*
Plymouth County, Massachusetts
*
Bolivar County, Mississippi
*
Carroll County, Mississippi
*
Chickasaw County, Mississippi
*
Harrison County, Mississippi
*
Hinds County, Mississippi
*
Jasper County, Mississippi
*
Jones County, Mississippi
*
Panola County, Mississippi
*
Tallahatchie County, Mississippi
*
Yalobusha County, Mississippi
*
Jackson County, Missouri
*
Hillsborough County, New Hampshire
*
Seneca County, New York
*
Bennington County, Vermont
Other variations
New England
In
New England, the town, not the county, is the primary division of local government. Historically, counties in this region have served mainly as dividing lines for the states' judicial systems.
Connecticut (since 1960) and
Rhode Island have no county level of government and thus no county seats, and
Massachusetts has dissolved many but not all of its county governments. In
Vermont,
Massachusetts, and
Maine the county seats are legally designated ''shire towns''. County government consists only of a
Superior Court and
Sheriff (as an
officer of the court), both located in the respective shire town. Bennington County, Vermont has two shire towns (
Manchester for the ''North Shire'', Bennington, for the ''South Shire''), but the Sheriff is located in Bennington.
Virginia
In
Virginia, a county seat may be an
independent city surrounded by, but not part of, the county of which it is the administrative center; for example,
Fairfax City is both the county seat of
Fairfax County and completely surrounded by Fairfax County, but the city is politically independent of the county. When the county seat is in the independent city, government offices such as the courthouse may be in the independent city under an agreement, such as in
Albemarle, or may in be
enclaves of the county surrounded by the independent city, such as in
Fairfax. Others, such as
Prince William, have the courthouse in an enclave surrounded by the independent city and have the county government, the Board of Supervisors, in a different part of the county, far from the county seat. The following counties have their county seat in an independent city:
*
Albemarle County (
Charlottesville)
*
Alleghany County (
Covington)
*
Augusta County (
Staunton)
*
Fairfax County (
Fairfax)
*
Frederick County (
Winchester)
*
Greensville County (
Emporia)
*
Henry County (
Martinsville)
*
James City County (
Williamsburg)
*
Prince William County (
Manassas)
*
Roanoke County (
Salem)
*
Rockbridge County (
Lexington)
*
Rockingham County (
Harrisonburg)
As well,
Bedford was an independent city from 1968 to 2013, while also being the county seat of
Bedford County. Bedford reverted to an incorporated town, and remains the county seat, though is now part of the county.
South Dakota
Two counties in
South Dakota (
Oglala Lakota and
Todd) have their county seat and government services centered in a neighboring county. Their county-level services are provided by
Fall River County and
Tripp County, respectively.
Louisiana
In
Louisiana, which is divided into
parishes rather than counties, county seats are referred to as ''parish seats''.
Alaska
Alaska is divided into boroughs rather than counties; the county seat in these case is referred to as the "borough seat"; this includes six consolidated city-borough governments (one of which is styled as a "municipality"). The
Unorganized Borough, which covers 49% of Alaska's area, has no borough government or borough seat.
Lists of U.S. county seats by state
The state with the most counties is Texas, with 254, and the state with the fewest counties is Delaware, with 3.
See also
*
County seat war
*
Administrative center
*
County town, administrative centres in Ireland and the UK
*
Chef-lieu, administrative centres in Algeria, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, and Tunisia
* Municipality, equivalent to ''county'' in many countries
References
{{reflist
External links
National Association of Counties
Seat