ld naturally select some convenient
locality, where they might build their houses near together
and all go to the same church. This migration, therefore,
was a movement, not of individuals or of separate families,
but of church congregations, and it continued to be so as
the settlers made their way inland and westward....

"In the second place, the soil of New England was not
favorable to the cultivation of great quantities of staple
articles, such as rice or tobacco, so that there was nothing
to tempt people to undertake extensive plantations. Most of
the people lived on small farms, each family raising but
little more than enough food for its own support; and the
small size of the farms made it possible to have a good many
in a compact neighborhood. It appeared also that towns could
be more easily defended against the Indians than scattered
plantations;...

"Thus the early settlers of New England came to live in
townships. A township would consist of about as many farms
as could be disposed within convenient distance from the
meeting-house, where all the inhabitants, young and old,
gathered every Sunday, coming on horseback or afoot....
Around the meeting-house and common the dwellings gradually
clustered into a village, and after a while the tavern,
store and town-house made their appearance."

When the Mormons settled Utah they established a very similar form of
community government centering around the church. Elsewhere, with rare
exceptions, throughout the North and West the township is the primary
unit of local government, save for school administration, but it is by
no means identical with a community. When the lands west of the
Alleghanies were surveyed for settlement they were laid off in blocks
six miles square, which were known as congressional townships, for
Congress gave each township a square mile of land the proceeds of which
should form a permanent school fund. In discussing the development of
the township in Illinois, Dr. Albert Shaw writes:

"To give effect to this liberal provision, the state enacted
a law making the township a body corporate and politic for
school purposes and authorizing the inhabitants to elect
school officers and maintain free schools. Here, then, was a
rudiment of local government. As New England township lif