West end of the Square near Second Street:

~The Courthouse. Until an actual courthouse was built in 1775, Fort Augusta served as the city’s courthouse. The first court of Northumberland County was a private sessions of the peace, which was held on April 9, 1772. At this time there were twelve justices of the court: William Plunkett, Turbutt Francis, Samuel Hunter, James Potter, William Maclay, Caleb Graydon, John Lowdon, Ellis Hughes and Benjamin Weiser and five attorneys, two of whom were James Wilson, who later became a signer of the Declaration of independence and a Justice of the Supreme Court and Christian Hucks, a future Tory who was killed in a South Carolina battle in 1780. William Maclay was appointed as Prothonotary, or chief clerk and Colonel William Plunkett, a former commandant of Fort Augusta in 1760 and medical doctor served as judge.
Finally in 1774 the colonial legislature granted 800 pounds to the County of Northumberland to build a courthouse and a prison. The building began in 1775 and was finished a year later. Stone and brick were used for construction and one side was made into a jail, while the other served as a courthouse. This lasted for twenty years until 1797 when a two story brick building was constructed in the west end of the square near Second Street. The first story was used for offices and on the second story was a court room, which for a long time was the only meeting room the town had. Thus it housed many Sunday school and religious services for denominations that did not have churches, was the meeting place for the Masonic Lodge 22, who met there from 1809 to 1866, and also staged a variety of traveling shows. Eventually in 1865 the present courthouse was built. It was remodeled in 1910 and has undergone exterior maintenance and painting since then.