(A) County history.
(1) Meeting at Corydon on September 7, 1814, the Indiana Territorial Legislature passed acts forming three new counties: #11, Switzerland County, effective on October 1, # 12 and #13, Perry and Posey Counties, effective on November 1. This effective date for Perry County was two years and six weeks before Indiana was admitted into the Union on December 11, 1816 as the nineteenth state. Perry County was formed from part of Madison Township of Gibson County and from Tobin Township and part of Ohio Township of Warrick County.
(2) Perry County is one of the earliest counties to be named after Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. At the time, he was America’s newest genuine hero. The act forming Perry County, Indiana, was passed three days before the first anniversary of Perry’s decisive defeat of the British on Lake Erie on September 10, 1813.
(3) This first form of the county was nearly twice the size of that of the present. The formations of Spencer, Dubois and Crawford Counties in 1818 and the transfer of 24 square miles to Crawford by a law of January 23, 1827 established the present boundaries.
(B) County flag.
(1) The design of the county flag incorporates the founding year and the present boundaries. The three most striking natural features of the county are also represented. The blue and white waves denote the internal streams and lakes as well as the waters of the Ohio River which forms more than half of the boundary on the south and southeast sides. The green hills and the green woodlands are depicted immediately above the blue of the water.
(2) On November 1, 1989 the county will have been in Indiana for 175 years.
(3) To commemorate this milestone, the County Chamber of Commerce formed a committee to design a county flag. Members of this committee were J.B. Land, Chamber President, Dr. Joseph LeClere, Danny Coffey, Bert Fenn, Michael Rutherford, Mr. and Mrs. Roy York and Sharmon Jarboe. Actual construction of the flag based on the committee’s design was done by Carrot Top Industries, Hillsborough, North Carolina.
(Flag adopted 8-5-1989)