Early Sudbury Town Meetings

An exploration of the earliest town meeting in Sudbury, from Sudbury Town Records, Volume One (1639–1695) — Transcriptions. Compiled from TS_TR_1639transcribed/transcribed.html (Powell's typescript transcription). The meetings from 1639 to March 1666/7 are considered, until they are clearly labelled "Meeting of the Inhabitants". See Also: Sudbury Town Records

1. Which was the earliest town meeting?

The answer depends on what counts.

• The commissioners, 1639. The earliest sessions in the volume are meetings of the seven commissioners named in the town's charter of 4 September 1639. Their business was dividing the land, so they are identified here as proprietors' meetings. One could say that the commissioners represented the town, and that when they met it was a town meeting.
• The town acting in its own name, 3 April 1640 (pp. 8–9). The first entry "ordered by the towne" has 17 signers, far more than the commissioners. It is not called a meeting (Note 4).
• Town meetings are mentioned in 1642. On 24 February 1642, that is 1642/3 (p. 28), Hugh Griffyn "is apoynted to attend the towne meetinges to write towne orders". So meetings under that name were being held by then, though no entry is yet headed as one (Note 9).
• The first clearly marked town meeting was 30 November 1646 (pp. 71–72): "It is ordered by the ioynt consent in a generall towne meeting…". Every earlier entry is headed by the body that acted or by nothing at all.
• Later firsts. The first town meeting described as warned is 27 October 1651 (p. 102). The first headed "meeting of the Inhabitants of the Town" is 20 February 1666/7 (pp. 177–178).

2. The charter and the commissioners

From the Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, 4 September 1639 (spelling as printed; letters in square brackets are restored where the copy supplied was damaged, the names from the town record):

"The order of the Court, vpon the petition of the inhabitants of Sudberry, is, that Peter Noyes, Bryan Pendleton, J[ohn] Parm[enter], Edmond B[rowne], Walter Hayne, George Moning, & Edmond Rise have comision to lay out lands to the [pre]sent inhabitants, according to their estates & persons, & that Capt Jeanison, M[r] Mayhewe, M[r] Flint, Mr Samuel Sheopard, & John Bridge, or any 3 of them, shall, in convenient time, repaire to the said towne, & set out such land & accomodations, both for houselots & otherwise, both for M[r] Pelham & Mr Walgrave, as they shall thinke sutable to their estates, to bee reserved for them if they shall come to inhabite there in convenient time, as the Court shall think [fit]."

The commission is a power to lay out land, which is the business of proprietors. The first rows of the table are these men at work: they set the rule for dividing the meadows, and they levy a rate "to pay for the purchasing oure plantation". All seven sign at least once in 1639. In these years the proprietors and the inhabitants were nearly the same people, and the Sudbury proprietors kept no separate books until 1706.

3. The first session labelled a town meeting: 30 November 1646

The first entry in the volume that calls itself a town meeting is dated "the last day of November 1646" (pp. 71–72):

"It is ordered by the ioynt consent in a generall towne meeting that all the lande formerly given out upon the pine playne which lyes within the houselotts of the towne that they shall gett them layd out and butted and bounded between this and the next towne meetinge."

Note: the first recorded choice of the town's governing board

First recorded choice of the town's governing board: 25 Jun 1644 (pp. 49–50). The town grants seven men power "to dispose of the towne affayres for one yeare": Mr. Noyes, Walter Hayme, Edmond Rice, Brian Pendleton, William Ward, John Goodnow and Edmond Goodnow. The entry says power was "granted", not that they were chosen. The first entry that says a board "are chosen" is 21 Aug 1645 (p. 62): Capt. Pellam, Mr. Noyes, Walter Hayme, Edmond Goodnow, William Ward, John Ruddocke and Hugh Griffyn, "from this day forward for one yeare".

4. The table

The table has 137 rows: every dated session in pages 1–180, whether or not the record calls it a meeting. 50 rows are headed as town meetings and 6 as selectmen's meetings; the other 81 are not called a meeting in the record. Private deeds, land exchanges and survey layouts are left out. Where one row gives several dates, the entries share a body and signers.

The Kind column uses these labels:

• Proprietors (commissioners): the commissioners of 1639, or men later "putt in commission", laying out land.
• Town order: an act in the name of "the towne" or "the inhabitants", not headed as a meeting.
• Freemen: an act in the name of the freemen of the town.
• Board of seven and Selectmen: orders by the chosen men, not headed as a meeting.
• Town meeting and Selectmen's meeting: the record's own heading says so.
• Note ##: the kind of meeting is in doubt; the note is explained in section 5. A label followed by a note is my best reading.

5. Notes

• Note 1. Commission not cited. These two 1639 entries name no body. The fence order is signed by four of the commissioners and the meadow order has no signers. They are placed with the commissioners because they sit beside the entry made "by Commission" and deal with the same division of land and fields.
• Note 2. Commissioners doing town business. "The last month" is February in Old Style reckoning, so these are February 1639/40. The body is the commissioners, but the first order (highway work by every inhabitant) is ordinary town government, not land. The second is a levy to pay for the purchase of the plantation, rated by meadow, which is proprietors' business. These two entries are the best evidence that the commissioners acted as the town.
• Note 3. 1 April 1640. The hog order names no body and is signed by four commissioners. It could be the commissioners acting as the town or an early act of the town itself.
• Note 4. 3 April 1640. The first entry "ordered by the towne", with 17 signers, two by mark. In substance this may be the earliest general meeting of the town, but it is not called a meeting. The date "April the 3rd 1640" stands at the foot of p. 8 between the hog order and this entry, so it may belong to either.
• Note 5. No body named. These entries are orders or grants with signers but no statement of who acted. The signers are usually four to nine of the leading men, who may be acting as a board or signing for a wider meeting. The record does not say.
• Note 6. Freemen. From 1640 to 1643 several orders are made "by the freemen of the towne", once "in the behalfe of the towne". The freemen were a narrower body than the inhabitants. The record does not show whether these were separate meetings of the freemen or general meetings described by those entitled to vote.
• Note 7. Later commissions for land. On 18 November 1640 men "chosen by the towne… and putt in commission" assign the third addition of upland. On 13 April 1643 five of the seven commissioners of 1639 sign the third addition "according to rule concluded". Both are land divisions done by commission and are identified here as proprietors' business, though the 1640 men were chosen by the town and not by the Court.
• Note 8. "Townsmen". The word can mean the men of the town in general or the chosen men who managed its affairs. A "generall consent of the townesmen" (26 Dec 1642) suggests the first; three signers suggests the second.
• Note 9. First mention of town meetings. The entry is dated 24 February 1642, which is 1642/3. It does not record a town meeting; it appoints a man to attend them. The same duty is repeated on 1 March 1643/4 (p. 47) and 4 March 1646 (p. 67), where Griffyn as marshal is also "to warne towne meetings".
• Note 10. Dating. The entry is written "March the 25th, 1642" but sits on p. 29 between February 1642/3 and April 1643, so it is placed in 1643. The 25th of March was the first day of the Old Style year.
• Note 11. Calling the town. On 26 September 1643 the marshal is given "power to call the towne in the middle of March". This points to a regular general meeting each March, three years before any is recorded under that name.
• Note 12. Choice of the board. The town grants power to seven men on 25 June 1644, and from 21 August 1645 the entries say the men "are chosen". A choice by the town implies a general meeting, but none of these entries is headed as one. From 19 September 1647 the choice is recorded at a "generall towne meetinge".
• Note 13. Oath of fidelity. Nineteen men took the oath on 9 July 1645. It was an assembly of some kind, but nothing was decided and it is not a meeting of the town.
• Note 14. 9 March 1646. "Consent of the towne" with 15 signers. Like 3 April 1640, this looks like a general meeting in substance. By its position it is March 1645/6.
• Note 15. December 1652. The heading reads "publicke towne (Meeting) warned for that purpose"; the word "Meeting" is Powell's reconstruction.
• Note 16. Dating. The entry is headed "March 28, 1654-55" but sits on p. 117 among spring 1654 entries, so it is placed at 28 March 1654.

6. Inhabitants, Freemen and Proprietors

The meeting headings name three bodies. They overlapped heavily, but the record does not treat them as the same thing.

Definitions

• Inhabitants: the people settled in the town and belonging to it. The record uses the word in two ways. Sometimes it means residents one by one: land is divided "to the inhabitants accordinge to their severall estates and familyes" (p. 114) and a rate is made "on the Inhabitants" (p. 468). Sometimes it means all of them together as the town itself; see the next note.
• Freemen: men admitted to the freedom of the colony, who voted in colony matters. In the early 1640s several town orders are made "by the freemen of this towne" (pp. 9–34; the last is 7 Jun 1643), and once the freemen confirm a grant "in the behalfe of the towne" (p. 13). From 1679 to 1692 the volume has 17 sessions headed "Meeting of the Freemen", which choose deputies and jurors and cast votes for governor, magistrates and treasurer. The last is 30 May 1692. In 1693 the headings speak instead of "freeholders" (2 Mar and 8 May) and of "the free holders and other inhabitants qualified" (20 Sep 1693, p. 434).
• Proprietors: the holders of a town right, meaning a share in the town's undivided common land and meadow. The record gives the definition itself in January 1686-87: "every proprietor of this Town (to wit) of every one that hath a Town right" (p. 374). A town right could be sold: in the early 1640s John Moore bought "all towne right and privi(leges)" belonging to a house and its lands (p. 25). The word is also used more loosely for the owner of a particular piece of land, as in "the proprietors of the great medow shall fence the heads" (26 Feb 1671, p. 207). Not every inhabitant was a proprietor, and not every proprietor lived in the town: one order complains of "Inhabitants & proprietors in & about & belonging to This Town" (p. 325).

"The Inhabitants" means the town

In this volume "the Inhabitants of the Town" is the name of the town acting as a body. The inhabitants as a collection were the legal town, and the two terms are used interchangeably:

• 1642 (p. 22): "It is agreed between the inhabitants of the town of Sudbury and Ambrose Leech: That the towne will give unto the said Ambrose six acres".
• p. 18: "The inhabitants of Sudbury granted…", the inhabitants as grantor of land.
• p. 214: "the Inhabitants of the Towne of Sudbury doth hereby on theire part Remitt the Some of five shillings", with a singular verb in a formal instrument.
• 20 May 1678 (p. 243): "It was agreed between the Inhabitants of this Town & Peter King".
• p. 278: a committee is to state accounts "betweene Mr. Edm. Brown, late paster hereof, & the Inhabitants of This Towne".

So a "Meeting of the Inhabitants of this Town", the usual heading from 1666/7 to 1687, is a meeting of the town. That is why those 95 sessions are counted here as town meetings under a different heading.

Incorporation

The town was not technically a corporation until 1785, when a Massachusetts statute declared the inhabitants of every town a body politic and corporate. By convention the date of the town's charter, 4 September 1639, is used as its date of incorporation, and this document follows that convention. The charter is the General Court's order of commission quoted at the start of section 2, from the Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England.

7. About the record

• Source: this is Powell's 1965 typescript, not the manuscript; gaps marked "…" are his.
• Coverage: pages 1–180 were read in full. The later pages of the volume are covered in the companion document, The First Town Meeting in Sudbury Town Records, Volume One.
• Gap: nothing is recorded between 14 Jan 1655-56 and 4 Jan 1657-58.
• After 1656: every dated session found in these pages is headed as a meeting.
• Dating: the March 1660-61 header says the 9th but the text says the 19th; the 23 Nov 1664 meeting is entered after the December 1664 ones; "March 12, 1666" is spring 1666 by its position.
• From outside the volume: the charter text and its date, and the 1706 date for the proprietors' books, were supplied by JCH. The restored letters in the charter have not been compared with the printed text.