County Townships

Looking at some California history, I see some counties subdivided into townships, at least as of the 1870s. I don’t know if they all did this.

http://www.solanohistory.net/maps/view/829

What was the value and specific function of townships?

I don’t see current maps utilizing townships so I don’t know if they fell out of favor. If so, why?

Did counties of that era also utilize supervisorial districts?

I’m under the impression that townships are pretty common in the US and my be universal. Legal descriptions have depended on them for a while:

For example, my place is:

All that part of the Northeast Quarter of the Northeast Quarter of Section xx which lies East of the center of the creek known as Bee Creek, all being in Township xx, Range xx.

I’m also aware that Townships have different importance in different states (some have elected officials and facilities for the township, some states barely register that there are townships). Also I note that while the township I mention in the discription above, I’ve also seen them with an actual name instead of a number.

I live in a city of Sigene that also happens to be in the Town of Sigene. THey have separate fire and police departments…it gets to be odd at times, especially when the city becomes larger than the town of the same name.

Townships are merely unincorporated areas in a county. The default ‘township’ for survey purposes was 36 square miles (6x6).

According to Wikipedia only 20-something states have towns as subdivisions of counties although I may be missing some other categorizations. I have not heard of towns or townships in Florida, whereas in New York they are a big enough deal that there are sometimes signs for township lines.

Here in New Jersey we have townships; it never occurred to me that any other state didn’t have them. Most have their own services (police station, sanitation,schools, etc.), although some of the less populated ones share some services with neighboring townships. I do a lot of work with the local historical society and spend a lot of time looking things up on old censuses—having to browse an entire county rather than just a township would take me forever. Not saying that’s an argument in favor of having townships, but it sure does make it easier for me.

Some divisions aren’t technically called townships, but are instead boroughs. I’m not actually sure what, if anything, the functional difference is.

Ohio has Townships. They generally have the same authority as Municipalties, however, they can only pass Resolutions, and with just a few exceptions, NO criminal offense can be enacted from them, just a money fine.

http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/5

Ohio also has 2 Counties that are Executive-Council, as opposed to a 3 Commissioner system.

The most recent being Cuyahoga, they ousted the 3 Commissioner form by ballot due to the Corruption scandal last year.

As you note, townships are a big deal in NY. The signs are widespread and I think most New Yorkers outside of the big cities could tell you which township they live in.

Illinois has townships. Many townships. Illinois also has the most government per capita of any State. They seem to be more about politics and brother-in-law job creation than much of anything else. The counties could certainly take care of unincorporated areas just as well and I don’t understand why any city or town would also what a township messing with certain roads and such.

I had a paragraph on the public lands survey system written before I realized the OP’s meaning of township.

That makes three separate but related meanings for the word.

New York has towns, not townships. :wink:

http://www.dof.ca.gov/research/demographic/reports/census-surveys/totals_1860-1950/

This website calls them “minor civil divisions” and “judicial townships.”

http://www.codepublishing.com/CA/AlpineCounty/html/alpinecounty01/alpinecounty0108.html

This website is the Alpine County, CA code. It also refers to “judicial township” and consolidates two townships into one single county-wide township by amendment in 1909.

Now I need to find out what a “judicial township” is for.

http://www.badgehistory.com/township_badges.html

Each township elected its own constable.

I can’t speak to job creation but the biggest bureaucratic hassle I’ve experienced was vicariously through my mom via living close to the border between two New York State towns. Thankfully our house never caught on fire, but if it did, this was pre-911 so there was a complicated system for calling for help. First we’d have to call the town we lived in to inform them that our house was on fire, then we would have had to call the neighboring town which would actually come.

Yes, what’s confusing is that the word is used in at least four distinct ways in the US—and people often generalize based on what it means in their state. Wikipedia is actually quite succinct and thorough on this subject.

In New England, towns/townships are named subdivisions of counties that exercise some general governmental powers: public safety, maybe road maintenance, maybe schools.

West of the original 13 states, where the rectangular land survey system was used, the primary meaning related to land subdivision. The six-mile intervals north or south from a baseline are referred to as township [number]. But the six-mile by six-mile squares created by township lines and range lines are also called townships, and thus are an important part of land descriptions and titles.

Now the confusing part: as Midwestern states were settled, some of them made the land survey townships into units of local government, with names. This tradition was strong, perhaps ubiquitous, in Michigan. In Illinois, it was a local option. Some townships became full units of government, usually called towns (Cicero, for example); most bear responsibility only for schools, roads, and welfare; and the ones inside Chicago city limits were abolished in the 1920s as anything but designations for which book the records are in.

I have never heard of townships as governments of any sort in California. I’m not sure when they were abolished, if they ever existed. A 1913 reference says “There are no true political townships in California — only judicial districts for the justices and the constables.”

I found a History of Solano County book dated 1877.

It says the judge divides the county into townships each of which elects a Justice of the Peace and a Constable. The JOPs serve as associate justices of the county court.

The Court of Session basically ran the county for 5 years until the Board of Supervisors took effect in 1855.

In 1862, the legislature put before the voters of each county a measure to establish townships and their powers. It said townships should be corporate bodies with the following powers and duties:

  1. To sue and be sued

  2. To.purchase and hold land

  3. To contract and hold personal property

  4. To use corporate property for the public good

  5. Townships would be governed by an elected three-member board of trustees

  6. Collect taxes paid to the county

The act would be binding only in each of those counties adopting the act. Solano County rejected it but no mention of any counties adopting it.

In Indiana where I grew up, the township’s function as enacted was primarily to support the school system and provide welfare to the poor.

In modern use, the townships still exist, and are used as a geographic subdivision of the county. There are some township run schools/systems still existing, primarily around Indianapolis; my son graduated from one.