I live in a state where the only local incorporated areas are called “Cities”…
why are some areas in some states called townships etc? Boroughs can be located within townships - do they have separate governments? what about “unincorporated areas?” who governs them?
Or is this question too geeky even for this board?? 
Phouchg
This question isn’t too geeky for this board. However, it’s been asked before.
In general, the answer is that it varies from state to state, depending upon how it wants to set up its municipal governments.
My experience in doing genealogical research indicates that reliance on townships is a historical phenomenon that dates back to a time when the vast majority of the population was born, lived and died on farms, and had very little contact with, or use for, cities or even towns.
Township “government” seems to have been merely a matter of keeping land records and deputizing a landowner or two to serve as sheriff. But there was no town council to pass local ordinances or zoning laws or sales taxes, etc.
This started to change (again, just guessing from vital statistics) around the turn of the century. Some states, like my home state of Washington, joined the Union about this time (1889). My guess is that’s why there’s not a strong township presence here – the switch was on to a more “sophisticated” urban model of government. Older states, like New York, seem more likely to have retained townships.
My grandfather was born somewhere near Grove City, Meeker County, Minnesota, in 1905. Various family records place the birth in Grove City or Litchfield, a nearby town, but his birth certificate reads Danielson Township, where the family farm was located.
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Townships are used in surveying. A range is defined to be: a strip of land between two meridian lines six miles apart, constituting a row of townships. A township is then a fixed area of land, in the shape of a square containing 23,040 acres. A township is further subdivided into a 6 x 6 grid of sections. Each township contains 640 acres. For the record, an acre is 43,560 sq. ft. Often, the legal description for a parcel of property will be located with three numbers, thusly 7 19 14. This would be range 7, section 19, township 14.
The remainder of your terms are political entities rather than physical land masses, although a township can be a political entity. Usually when there are no incorporated cities with in that township. In Ohio, a village is defined to be a population with less than 5000 permanent residents; population centers of greater than 5000 residents become cities and must be incorporated as such. Other states may have other legal descriptions. According to my dictionary, in order of increasing population, hamlet, village, town, and city are names for political entities.
**Boroughs are also political entities and can be defined several ways. Again, according to my dictionary:
Does that cover it?
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Let me correct a couple of mistakes in my previous post.
(Each township contains 640 acres.) That should say, “Each section contains 640 acres.”
(thusly 7 19 14. This would be range 7, section 19, township 14.) This should read, “range 7, township 19 and section 14.”
Sorry for any confusion and I’m not going to fix the bolding in the last paragraph.
Another political aspect to townships is the 1787 Northwest Ordinance. As part of the administration of that charter, the (current) states Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and eastern Minnesota were all surveyed using the township lines described by Uncle Beer. Those Townships could then be organized into political units with limited self-government. In addition, one section (usually section 16) was set aside to be sold separately from any other land distribution and the proceeds were to be used to begin funding for local schools.
The original townships (from the Pennsylvania line to the northbound section of the Cuyahoga river) were platted at 5 miles square. After that, they were platted at 6 miles square. (I’ve never heard the reason given for the change.)
The word township is used in several Eastern states, but I am not familiar with what it means, there.
Tom~
My impression (being from the East Coast, myself) is that township, town, village, hamlet, etc. are used in the same way a few states are designated “Commonwealths” (cf. some other thread I’m not going to look up): it’s a nice name that the people who lived there at the time wanted to use.
I do believe that “City” has specific legal connotations, even here in the ol’ country. (In NJ, designation as a city requires a list of attributes, but the municipality is free to pursue or not designation as a city if it wishes, as I understand it.)
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If I’ve gotten it correct, most states make divisions between the larger incorporated municipalities and the smaller ones, and either now do or at one time did give the larger ones more legal powers. The big ones are cities; in some states the littler ones are villages, in others boroughs, and in still others towns.
In New York and New England, town is a legal entity with limited self-government corresponding to what is called township in the rest of the country, i.e., a space-filling division of that part of the state that is not inside a city.
In New York, you might live in the Village of North Syracuse, in the Town of Cicero, in the County of Onondaga, all of which have local governments and collect taxes. In North Carolina, you might live in the Town of Zebulon, in Little River Township, in Wake County. Zebulon and Wake County are local governments, Little River a convenience to the records-keepers.
Pennsylvania appears to have Cities, Boroughs, and Towns as three distinct categories of municipality, though I won’t swear to this.
New Jersey has cities, boroughs and townships. A borough in New Jersey is not part of a township (although it may be physically within one, as most boroughs are villages [a term with no legal meaning in New Jersey] that were promoted to municipal status).
The “range, section, township” system (and, by the way, 640 acres is a square mile, and an acre is one chain by one furlong) is one meaning of the word, but not the only one, even within a given state. Northern Maine has some (mostly uninhabited) townships of this sort (but 64 and 15360 acres, not 66), and some of no particular design.
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Thanks for all your replies to my not-so-geeky question
I guess what brought this on was my curiosity - I am originally from Massachusetts, where every square inch of land is part of a town or city (usually defined by government type as opposed to population). I moved to California, where every incorporated Minor Civil Division is a City. There are major settlements within each county that are not within corporate limits of a city - these are regarded as “unincorporated” and depend on county government for services (I live in such an area now - even though it is hardly a rural environment). I was trying to explain the concept of “unincorporated” to family back east, but the concept was totally foreign (since in massachusetts and connecticut, counties are pretty much lines on a map with no significant government services).
I may be moving to the Philadelphia area in the near future, and first noticed the whole “Minor Civil Division” issue, when I visited a friend who lives in Horsham Township, Montgomery County. Fully contained within Horsham Twp but a separate government is the Borough of Hatboro. Also are several duplications (e.g. Newtown Borough and Newtown Township) with separate governemnts.
yes people, i’m bored.
Phouchg
I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts. To me “town” implied a type of government.
We were small enough to conduct the business of the town via town meetings, with a moderator and a couple of elected at large selectmen to carry on with the business of the town between town meetings.
Framingham MA was town but grew very large and eventually had to change to city government, no more town meetings - they had to elect a city council.
The county business I’ve seen in California and Virginia seems very indirect and unresponsive but I guess some might be horrified watching a town meeting in action.
Does this sound familiar? I think we did not have a regular court of our own and that kind of business went to the County - Middlesex, I think.
Oh, I’m gonna keep using these #%@&* codes 'til I get 'em right.
And if you think all that is confusing, try going to Louisiana. I call them counties, but there, they are parishes… sheesh.
I’ve noticed that if some small place is in the USA it’s called a town, if it’s in another country it’s called a village.
That’s CNN for you.
Unihabited townships?! Wow, what a useful municipality! Can I set up a village at the bottom of the nearby lake? Just kidding I’m sure there’s some good reason for these townships. Are they owned by logging companies, by any chance?
As was mentioned above, the former Ohio Territory states (OH, IN, IL, MI, WI, and eastern MN) were all carved up into 6-mile squares. Even today, eveything that is not an incorporated city is run by a township. This sometimes creates interesting situations. Michigan’s capital, Lansing, has mostly swallowed up Lansing Twp and also a little of the neighboring one. However, there are three disconnected pieces of Lansing Twp left unincorporated. They like it that way, and one of these pieces is currently fighting the county to avoid being tacked onto the city. At least in Michigan, plenty of townships have been “promoted” to cities whole, with the result that many of Detroit’s suburbs are nice, square cities that make getting around southeast Mich pretty easy and intuitive. There doesn’t seem to be any requirement that townships become cities after a certain population level is reached. I say this because Canton Twp, a municipality on the western edge of the suburbs, is easily populous enough to be a city, but its residents voted to not incorporate Canton. The state and county didn’t say anything, so I guess that this it OK.
As for village and town, the former is rarely used around here, and the latter refers to the population center(s) in an otherwise rural township or county.
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