Somerset, OH

Somerset was established in 1807 by settlers from Somerset, Pennsylvania along Zane’s Trace between Lancaster and Zanesville. When Perry County formed in 1817, the village became the county’s first courthouse location, and a purpose-built courthouse rose on the public square in 1819. A county-seat contest with New Lexington lasted through the 1850s; the offices finally moved to New Lexington, leaving the old courthouse to serve as Somerset’s village hall. The former courthouse still carries that earlier civic role into the village’s present layout.

The Somerset Historic District, listed on the National Register in 1975, contains over 100 structures from the early and mid-1800s. The Perry County Historical Museum occupies a restored 1830s brick building there, and the village’s roundabout remains a local oddity with incoming traffic holding the right of way. Saint Joseph Church, Ohio’s oldest Catholic church, stands just outside town on State Route 383. Somerset is a compact Perry County village where courthouse history, historic architecture, and everyday village government meet around the square.