Perry County was formed from part of Cumberland County on March 22, 1820, and Landisburg was chosen as the temporary county seat by an impartial panel of three selected by Governor William Findlay. Reflecting the county’s pioneer beginnings, its first courthouse was a large unfinished log building at the northwest corner of Carlisle and Water streets, with a courtroom filling the first floor and the second floor divided by board partitions into the Commissioners’ Office and Jury Room. Its furnishings were plain, including board benches, a rough raised judges’ bench with a writing shelf, a common pine dinner table for the constables, and ordinary wooden desks for the clerks. Other county offices operated from the officers’ homes, including Sheriff David Stambaugh’s house on the northeast corner of Centre Square, Prothonotary Wm. B. Mitchell’s brick house at Main and Carlisle streets, and Jacob Fritz’s house on Water Street, where the registrar’s office was in the basement. The contest over the permanent county seat became the greatest political battle in county history, and after three separate commissions failed to agree between Landisburg and Barnett (Bloomfield), a four-member commission from outside the county, named in March 1823 by Governor Joseph Heister and approved by the General Assembly, selected Bloomfield in June 1823 on five acres donated by George Barnett. County government moved there in 1827, after which Robert Gibson, Esq. acquired the old courthouse property, used the courtroom as a cabinetmaker’s shop until 1840, and then removed the old building and erected the present brick dwelling house.