They were appointed by the governor,
but it was customary for them to nominate candidates for the governor
to appoint, so that practically the court filled its own vacancies and
was a close corporation, like the parish vestry. Such an arrangement
tended to keep the general supervision and control of things in the
hands of a few families.
This county court usually met as often as once a month in some
convenient spot answering to the shire town of England or New England.
More often than not the place originally consisted of the court-house
and very little else, and was named accordingly from the name of the
county, as Hanover Court House or Fairfax Court House; and the small
shire towns that have grown up in such spots often retain these names
to the present day. Such names occur commonly in Virginia, West
Virginia, and South Carolina, very rarely in Kentucky, North Carolina,
Alabama, Ohio, and nowhere else in the United States.[9] Their number
has diminished from the tendency to omit the phrase "Court House,"
leaving the name of the county for that of the shire town, as for
example in Culpeper, Va. In New England the process of naming has been
just the reverse; as in Hartford County, Conn.
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