 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "County seat" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(August 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Acounty seat is an administrative center,seat of government, or capital city of acounty orcivil parish. The term is in use in five countries:Canada,China,Hungary,Romania, and theUnited States. An equivalent term,shire town, is used in theU.S. state ofVermont and in several other English-speaking jurisdictions.[1]
InCanada, theprovinces ofOntario,Quebec,New Brunswick,Prince Edward Island, andNova 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.[2][3]
County seats in China are the administrative centers of the counties in thePeople's Republic of China.They have existed since theWarring States period and were set up nationwide by theQin dynasty.[4][5] The number of counties inChina proper gradually increased from dynasty to dynasty. AsQin Shi Huang reorganized the counties after his unification, there were about 1,000. Under the EasternHan dynasty, the number of counties increased to above 1,000. About 1400 existed when theSui dynasty abolished thecommandery 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;[6] 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 themagistrate, 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 theQing dynasty. Changes of location and names of counties inChinese history have been a major field of research in Chinese historical geography, especially from the 1960s to the 1980s. There are 1,355 counties inMainland China out of a total of 2,851 county-level divisions.
| This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved.(August 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
InTaiwan, the first counties were first established in 1661 by theKingdom of Tungning. The later rulerQing empire inherited this type of administrative divisions. With the increase ofHan 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 ashien.[7] WhenTaiwan became aJapanese colony in 1895, the hierarchy of divisions also incorporated into theJapanese system in the period when Taiwan was under Japanese rule.
By September 1945, Taiwan was divided into 8prefectures (州 and廳), which remained after theRepublic of China took over.
There are 13 county seats in Taiwan, which function ascounty-administered cities,urban townships, orrural townships.
|
In most of theUnited States, acounty is anadministrative or political subdivision of astate that consists of a geographic area with specificboundaries and usually some level of governmental authority.[8] The city, town, or populated place that houses county government is known as theseat of its county. Generally, the county legislature,county courthouse,sheriff's department headquarters, hall of records,jail andcorrectional 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 an incorporatedmunicipality. The exceptions include the county seats of counties that have no incorporated municipalities within their borders, such asArlington County, Virginia, where the county seat is the entire county.[9]Ellicott City, the county seat ofHoward County, Maryland, is the largest unincorporated county seat in the United States, followed byTowson, the county seat ofBaltimore 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 ofMiddle Township, an incorporated municipality. In some states, often those that were among the originalThirteen Colonies, county seats include or formerly included "Court House" as part of their name, such asSpotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia.
Most counties have only one county seat. However, some counties inAlabama,Arkansas,Georgia,Iowa,Kentucky,Massachusetts,Mississippi,Missouri,New Hampshire,New York, andVermont have two or more county seats, usually located on opposite sides of the county. Examples includeHarrison County, Mississippi, which has bothBiloxi andGulfport as county seats, andHinds County, Mississippi, which has bothRaymond and the state capital ofJackson. 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 ofcivic pride for the towns involved, along with providing employment opportunities.
There are 33 counties with multiple county seats in 11 states:
Alaska is divided intoboroughs 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"). TheUnorganized Borough, Alaska, which covers 49% of the state's area, has no borough government or borough seat. One borough, theLake and Peninsula Borough, has its borough seat located in another borough, namelyKing Salmon inBristol Bay Borough.
InLouisiana, which is divided intoparishes rather than counties, county seats are referred to as "parish seats".
InNew England, counties have served mainly as dividing lines for the states' judicial systems.Rhode Island has no county level of government and thus no county seats, andMassachusetts has dissolved many but not all of its county governments. InVermont,Massachusetts,[11] andMaine[12] county government consists only of aSuperior Court andSheriff (as anofficer of the court), both located in a designated "shire town". Bennington County, Vermont has two shire towns; the court for "North Shire" is in the shire townManchester, and the Sheriff for the county and court for "South Shire" are in the shire town Bennington.[13][14]
In 2024,Connecticut, which had not defined their counties for anything but statistical, historical and weather warning purposes since 1960, along with ending the use of county seats in particular, will fully transition with the permission of theUnited States Census Bureau to a system ofcouncils of government for the purposes of boundary definition and as county equivalents.[15]
Two counties inSouth Dakota,Oglala Lakota andTodd, have their county seat and government services centered in a neighboring county. Their county-level services are provided byFall River County andTripp County, respectively.[16]
InVirginia, a county seat may be anindependent 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 ofFairfax County, Virginia 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 inAlbemarle, or may in beenclaves of the county surrounded by the independent city, such as inFairfax. Others, such asPrince 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:
Bedford was an independent city from 1968 to 2013, while also being the county seat ofBedford County. Bedford reverted to an incorporated town, and remains the county seat, though is now part of the county.
The state with the most counties is Texas, with 254, and the state with the fewest counties is Delaware, with 3.
