New England Town - Historical Development

Historical Development

Towns date back to the time of the earliest European colonial settlement of New England, and pre-date the development of counties in the region. Throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, as areas were settled, they would be organized into towns. Town boundaries were not usually laid out on any kind of regular grid, but were drawn up to reflect local settlement and transportation patterns or natural features. In early colonial times, recognition of towns was very informal, sometimes connected to local church divisions. By 1700, colonial governments had become more involved in the official establishment of new towns. Towns were typically governed by a town meeting form of government, as many still are today. Towns originally were the only form of incorporated municipality in New England. The city form of government was not introduced until much later. Boston, for instance, widely regarded as the unofficial capital of New England, was a town for the first two centuries of its existence.

The entire land areas of Connecticut and Rhode Island had been divided into towns by the late 18th century, and Massachusetts was almost completely covered early in the 19th century. By 1850, the only New England state that still had large unincorporated areas left was Maine, and by the end of the 19th century most areas in Maine that could realistically be settled had been organized into towns.

Early town organization in Vermont and much of New Hampshire proceeded in a somewhat different manner from that of the other New England states. In these areas, towns were often “chartered” long before any settlers moved into a particular area. This was very common in the mid to late 18th century (towns in southeastern New Hampshire such as Exeter whose existence predates that period were not part of this process, however). Once there were enough residents in a town to formally organize a town government, no further action was necessary to incorporate. This practice can lead to inconsistencies in the dates of incorporation for towns in this region. Dates given in reference sources sometime reflect the date the town was chartered – which may have been long before it was even settled – not the date its town government actually became active. In other parts of New England, it was not unheard of for “future towns” to be laid out along these lines, but such areas would not be formally incorporated as towns until they were sufficiently settled to organize a town government.

A typical town in the northern three states was laid out in a 6 by 6 miles (9.7 by 9.7 km) square. Each contained 36 sections, 1 mile (1.6 km) squares or 640 acres (260 ha). One section was reserved for the support of public schools. This was copied when the Continental Congress laid out Ohio in 1785-87.

Many early towns covered very large amounts of land, and once areas had become settled, new towns were sometimes formed by breaking areas away from the original existing towns. This was an especially common practice during the 18th century and early 19th century. More heavily populated areas were often subdivided on multiple occasions. As a result, towns and cities in such areas are often smaller in terms of land area than an average town in a rural area. Formation of new towns in this manner slowed in the later part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century, however, and is very rarely seen today; in fact, boundary changes of any type are fairly rare.