Every Texas county seat

A county seat is the town where a county's government is based. In Texas that means the courthouse and the offices that most residents eventually need: the county clerk (property deeds, marriage licenses, birth and death records), the district clerk (civil and criminal court filings), the tax assessor-collector (vehicle registration and property tax collection), the sheriff, and the commissioners court, which is the county's governing body. Elections are also administered from the county seat.

When the legislature created a county, it usually required the seat to be near the geographic center, so that no resident had to travel too far to reach the courthouse. Many seats were laid out as brand-new towns around a central square, which is why so many Texas towns share the same layout: a courthouse surrounded by four streets of shops. Where a county already had an established town, that town usually became the seat.

Choosing a seat could be contentious. Rival towns competed for the prestige and business a courthouse brought, and several counties held repeated elections — or saw courthouse records moved in the night — before a seat was settled. Some seats moved when a railroad bypassed the original town.

Texas has one of the largest collections of historic county courthouses in the country, many built between the 1880s and 1930s in Romanesque Revival, Second Empire, Beaux-Arts and Art Deco styles. The Texas Historical Commission's Texas Historic Courthouse Preservation Program, created in 1999, has helped restore dozens of them. Visiting courthouse squares is a popular road-trip theme, and many seats hold festivals and farmers markets on the square.

43 Texas county seats share their county's name: Andrews, Bandera, Bastrop, Burnet, Childress, Coleman, Comanche, Crane, Dallas, Denton, Dickens, Eastland, El Paso, Galveston, Goliad, Gonzales, Hamilton, Haskell, Jasper, Kaufman, Lampasas, Liberty, Lipscomb, Llano, Lubbock, Mason, Menard, Midland, Montague, Nacogdoches, Newton, Orange, Palo Pinto, Refugio, Rockwall, San Augustine, San Saba, Throckmorton, Uvalde, Victoria, Wharton, Wheeler, Zapata. Elsewhere, a county and its seat often have unrelated names — Harris County's seat is Houston, and Travis County's is Austin, the state capital.

Genealogists and title researchers should remember that records stay with the county that existed at the time. If a county was created from a larger "parent" county, early deeds and court records may still be filed at the parent county's seat. Each county page on this site lists the parent county where known. Many county clerks now offer online record searches, but older documents may still require a visit or a mailed request.

Use this list to find any seat quickly. Each county name links to its full profile, with a map, history, neighbors and downloadable PDF maps.

Most county offices keep standard weekday business hours, and many close for lunch in smaller counties. Before you travel, check the county's website or call the clerk's office. Many records and payments, such as vehicle registration renewals and property tax payments, can now be handled online or by mail.

If you are researching family history, remember that records stay with the county that existed when they were created. A 19th-century deed for land now in a younger county may still be filed at the parent county's seat. Each county profile on this site names the parent county where known.