Perry County
Bloomfield, Perry County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Formed March 22, 1820 from Cumberland County. Named for Oliver Hazard Perry, War of 1812 hero. Birthplace of two governors of Pennsylvania, one of California, and one of Minnesota. The county seat, Bloomfield (P.O., New Bloomfield) was incorporated 1831.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Perry County was set off from Cumberland County in 1820 and named in honor of Oliver Hazard Perry, the naval hero whose victory on Lake Erie became one of the proudest moments of the War of 1812. This rural county along the Juniata proved a fertile ground for public men, sending sons on to serve as governors of Pennsylvania and of three other states. Its seat, Bloomfield, was incorporated in 1831.
Why it matters
Its very name enshrines the naval triumph that helped secure the young republic in the War of 1812, while its record of governors shows how frontier counties seeded national leadership.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
This county was set off from Cumberland County in 1820, in the era of the Early Republic, when the United States was still young and steadily organizing its countryside into new counties as population spread. The land along the Juniata region of Pennsylvania was rural and agricultural, a place of farms, small towns, and the public-minded families who would run its affairs.
The timing of its founding is written into its name. Just a few years earlier, the nation had come through the War of 1812, a second contest with Britain that tested whether the young republic could defend itself. Naming a brand-new county for a hero of that war was a way of binding local identity to national pride.
The county seat, Bloomfield — known for postal purposes as New Bloomfield — was incorporated in 1831, giving the rural county its courthouse town and civic center a decade after the county itself was born.
People & events
The name honors Oliver Hazard Perry, the naval commander whose victory on Lake Erie became one of the proudest moments of the War of 1812. His triumph helped secure the Great Lakes frontier, and his report of the battle — announcing that the enemy was theirs — became one of the most quoted lines in American naval history. To name a county for him in 1820 was to keep that recent victory close.
But the county's own contribution to public life is just as striking as its namesake. For a rural county, it proved remarkably good at producing leaders: the marker records that it was the birthplace of two governors of Pennsylvania, along with a governor of California and a governor of Minnesota.
That is a notable record for a quiet farming county — four future state governors, carried from these hills to statehouses across a growing nation. It speaks to an age when Americans were on the move, and talent born in one small place could rise to lead distant states.
Its place in the American story
The county's very name plants a piece of national history in local soil. Through it, a naval victory on a Great Lake — a turning point that steadied the young republic — is remembered far inland, in the everyday name of a Pennsylvania county.
Its record of governors tells a second national story: that of the frontier and rural counties as seedbeds of leadership. In a mobile, expanding country, people born in modest places did not necessarily stay there. Some went west and south, rising to govern states that had barely existed when they were born.
Taken together, the name and the native sons make this county a small lesson in how the nation cohered — how a shared pride in a wartime hero and a steady export of capable people helped knit a sprawling republic together.
If you visit
This is country to take slowly. The Juniata region is one of ridges, valleys, and farmland, and the pleasure of a visit is as much in the drive and the landscape as in any single monument. Let the rural character set the pace.
Bloomfield, the county seat, is the place to feel the county's civic heart — a small courthouse town of the sort that has anchored American rural life for two centuries. Look for the courthouse square and the older buildings that cluster around it, the kind of setting where local history is still close to the surface.
As a road-trip stop it pairs naturally with the broader sweep of central Pennsylvania's river-and-ridge country. Come knowing that the quiet name on the county line carries the echo of a famous naval battle, and that these unassuming hills sent sons to govern states on both coasts.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Oliver Hazard Perry
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Civil War Monument
Bloomfield, PA
In the decades after the Civil War, communities across the North raised monuments to their fallen, and rural county seats like Bloomfield gathered their grief and pride into stone in the courthouse-town square. This monument honors the men of Perry County who marched off to save the Union and did not return. Its closing words—that they gave their lives "that the nation might live"—deliberately echo Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, binding a small Pennsylvania county to the war's larger meaning.
Carson Long Military Institute
Bloomfield, PA · est. 1987
This institution began in 1837 as Bloomfield Academy, its first building, "The Maples," completed in 1840. In 1914 Theodore K. Long acquired the school and, after his son William Carson Long died, renamed it in his memory. It has operated as a military school since 1919—the oldest such school in Pennsylvania.
Newport Fugitive Slave Rescue
Newport, PA · est. 2015
In July 1841, three enslaved men from Maryland—Alick, Tom, and Ben—fled north and were tracked to Newport by bounty hunters. Ben drowned trying to cross the Juniata River, and the other two were seized, but several Newport residents helped them get away. Six of those citizens were convicted in federal court in 1842 for aiding the escape.
John Bannister Gibson - PLAQUE
Spring Township, PA · est. 1929
John Bannister Gibson was born on this Perry County ground in November 1780, the son of Col. George Gibson and Anna West Gibson. He rose to become Chief Justice of Pennsylvania from 1827 to 1851, one of the most influential American jurists of his generation, whose opinions shaped the young state's law. The marker honors a legal mind the inscription calls unequaled in its fame.