Enough of Thorough: Watertown as a Case Study of Early Massachusetts Town Government

Abstract

T HE toil of new plantation, contemporary New Englanders lame ted, was akin to Labors of Hercules. In addition to each family's considerable personal exertions in clearing land, raising dwellings, and planting crops, community infrastructure had to be developed so that land could be allocated, public buildings constructed, education delivered, and general welfare maintained. Among first six Massachusetts towns to be founded, Watertown, like its fellows, relied on its particular English precedents as it formed its governing organization. By 1630, English parishes had been expanding their range of duties over course of two generations, but different parishes had developed different administrative models. The founders of Watertown, then, who had formerly resided in East Anglia, discovered that they had more than one precedent from which to choose. For major issues, some eastern county parishes held to principle of consulting all householders to assess the mind of town. Such desire for broad-based oversight was also evident in 16o6, when Ashdon, in northwest Essex, began keeping parish accounts because a great suspicion was grown among some parishioners of honest and just business of such officers as were chosen. Other parishes, however, had developed oligarchic leaderships-self-perpetuating, non-accountable closed vestries intent on imposing culture of discipline on inferior and meaner sort of parishioners'-and it is this approach that historians have tended to