ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a overview of the status of town/township government and a consideration of its historical significance for community governance. Towns and townships are a form of local government that operates in twenty states, essentially confined to the northeastern quadrant of the nation. Towns and townships are classified by the census of governments as general purpose local governments, along with municipalities and counties, as contrasted to the more functionally specific school and special district governmerits. The relationship is more mixed in the mid-Atlantic and midwestern town/township states, where county governments are far more active than in New England but less so than in some other states. The development of township government in the midwestern states in the early nineteenth century was certainly facilitated by migration from the New England and mid-Atlantic regions, but it also received a big boost from the Ordinance of 1787 enacted by the Confederation Congress for the initial governance of the Northwest Territory.
