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Lancaster's tenure as state capital concludes

When
1812
Where
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, whose tenure as state capital ended in 1812
Part of
Pennsylvania's capital moves to Harrisburg

Lancaster lost the state capital role it had held since 1799, when government sat at its 1784 Court House.

From 1799 to 1812 Lancaster was the capital of Pennsylvania, with the state capital located at the Court House built in 1784. The 1812 move to Harrisburg ended this thirteen-year tenure, though Lancaster remained the county seat of Lancaster County. The Court House was demolished in 1852 and its site is now marked by the Soldiers & Sailors Monument at Penn Square — later changes to the site, not features of the capital period.

Sources

  1. Lancaster, Pennsylvania Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-25

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.