Joan Best is getting there in her description, but the only real thing one
can really say about these multifarious terms is that they are state
dependent, and other jurisdiction names are possible. It should be clear
from the analysis below that there is no simple way to either define the
terms "city," "town," "village," and "township." The idea that there are
exactly 3 (or 4) levels that are interesting, as our elders and betters in
the genealogical community seem to have decided, is a snare and a delusion.
Most of this discussion focuses on Massachusetts. I am much less familiar
with other states, but I can make a few remarks about New Jersey, New York
City, Texas, Michigan and Ohio of a few years ago.
In Massachusetts, the entire state is divided into counties. There are 14
such entities today, but the number and shape of these bodies has changed
over the years. Counties are usually contigous areas, although even today
part of Norfolk County (not to be confused with the Norfolk County of the
colonial period, which was in an entirely different part of the state) is
completely surrounded by Suffolk County. Massachusetts is abolishing
counties as governmental units, but they remain as administrative units of
the state (Middlesex County, wherein one finds my home city Cambridge, was
the first such entity to make the transition about a decade ago). The state
is also divided into 351 jurisdictions called "cities" and "towns." There
is no "unorganized" territory in Massachusetts, everything is in some city
or town, and every city or town is in a county. It was not always thus,
however.
The term "city" has a clear, political science definition, and is not simply
a matter of the size of a community. It has a charter, as a city, from the
state, saying that it is a city. There are 37 cities by this definition in
Massachusetts. A city has (I believe) a mayor (chief executive officer) and
a city council (legislature). But the mayor may be elected by the city
council and may really only be the chairman of that body, while executive
powers are vested in a city manager. Cambridge in has this "weak mayor"
structure.
Some cities, like Newton, have subdivisions that are called villages, but I
do not believe that they have any political role. On the other hand, they
are very interesting sociologically, and should be included, when known, in
the definition of the location for genealogical description. Waban (part of
Newton) is very different from the adjacent village, Auburndale. Cities are
also divided into Wards, which may have political meaning (where the city
council is elected by district, in which case the officer may be called an
"alderman" rather than "councillor"), or they may just be a fiction for
setting up polling places. Wards are interesting genealogically because the
enumeration districts in the censuses of 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930 usually
do not cross ward boundaries.
Boston was constructed over a period of time through annexation of other
independent units. These are often referred to as "neighborhoods," but that
term is also used for Beacon Hill and Back Bay, which have been part of
Boston since colonial times. Much of this annexation took place in the
1890s, and some of the formerly independent units have familiar names to
people who do colonial New England genealogy: Dorchester and Roxbury are
probably the most familiar in this regard. In other parts of the country,
annexation of unorganized territory and of some organized districts is still
possible today.
A town is also chartered by the state. It has a legislative body called
"town meeting." The town meeting can be a traditional body, in which any
voter may appear, speak and vote, or it may be a "representative town
meeting" in which only people elected by district have voice and vote in the
meeting. The town meeting choses a board of directors, called "selectmen."
Again, a large town may be called a "township" and have commerically and
sociologically interesting subdivisions (like "Barnstable Township on Cape
Cod, which contains villages like Barnstable, Hyannis, Hyannisport, and
Osterville), but I believe there is one town meeting at the level of
Barnstable Township. In the colonial and early Federal periods, all the
jurisdictions at this level (one down from the county, two from the state)
were towns with the traditional structure
In Massachusetts there are a few very large towns with representative town
meetings, Brookline I believe exceeds the population of about half the
cities in the Commonwealth (yeah, we don't call it a "state," just to
further confuse matters).
In New Jersey, the state is divided into counties. I believe everything
contained in a county. There independent units called cities, boroughs, and
villages, which are distinguished by the form of government. I don't
actually know what the differences are, I lived as a child in a borough
which had a mayor and council structure like a Massachusetts city. There
are also townships. Again, when I was a child, the political division
across the street was a township, and I think it was effectively an
unorganized part of our county, but I am not sure. It is now, I believe a
borough. When they retired, my parents lived in Toms River, which was part
of Dover Township. I never actually figured out what functions were
assigned to TR, nor did I learn what it was called.
New York City is (I believe) the only city that contains counties, rather
than being contained by them. Before about 1890, New York City consisted of
Manhattan Island, and was coterminous with New York County. Over about a
decade the modern city was assembled. It consists of 5 "boroughs" that have
boundaries coterminous with 5 counties. Unfortuanately they don't have the
same names. The boroughs are called called (according to Ancestry's Red
Book, and my own recollection): Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, Staten
Island. The corresponding county names are New York, Kings, Queens, Bronx,
and Richmond.
As recently as 1970 (and perhaps still today), Texas had unorganized areas
that could be unilaterally annexed to cities like Houston. In addition to
the usual divisions, there was an overlaid structure of school districts,
which took on the character of real places, even if they were otherwise
unorganized (part of the county) or embedded even in a city. The 1970 map
of Harris County, of which Houston is a part, resembled the Holy Roman
Empire in Germany circa 1800, but in 3 dimensions rather than just 2.
As recently as 1950, there were unorganized parts of the state of Michigan
and Ohio. Everything, of course, was in a township in the sense of the land
divisions imposed by the Northwest Territory Ordinance, which we know from
land records. Over time, these were reshaped.
In Massachusetts, the sequences of order are:
State, county, city, (village or neighborhood), (ward) or
State, county, town/township, (village)
In New Jersey, the structure approximates:
State, county, city or
State, county, borough or
State, county, village, or
State, county, township, (subunit, name not know by me)
And in New York, there are at least
State, county, sub-unit or
State, New York City, county
Good luck,
Ben
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