affairs. The county was merely a grouping of towns, established primarily for judicial and penal purposes, and had minimal political significance. Connecticut abolished its county governments in 1960; the counties in Connecticut and Rhode Island serve only as administrative subdivisions of those States.
All incorporated places in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island are cities that are independent of any town. All incorporated places (cities and boroughs) in Connecticut are dependent on the town in which they are located. One borough and all but one of the State’s twenty cities are coextensive with a single town, and exercise the governmental powers of both an MCD and an incorporated place in a single elected governmental body. The incorporated places in Vermont are either cities, all of which are independent of MCDs, or villages, all of which are dependent. Unlike Connecticut, none of the dependent villages in Vermont coincide with a town.
In addition to towns in Maine, the plantations are actively functioning governmental units. There also are three Federally recognized American Indian reservations in Maine that are independent of any other MCD and that the Census Bureau treats as the statistical equivalent of MCDs. In addition, there are portions of ten Maine counties in which the Census Bureau has established UTs as the statistical equivalent of MCDs. The gores in Maine and Vermont, grants in New Hampshire and Vermont, and locations, survey townships, and purchases in New Hampshire are all nonfunctioning areal units; these kinds of entities occur in less populous areas.
The primary MCDs in New York are called towns; in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, they are called townships. These MCDs share some of the legal and geographic attributes of the New England towns in that they all are significant, active, functioning governmental units (except for one inactive township in Pennsylvania). However, there are two major differences: (1) counties in the Middle Atlantic States
County Subdivisions8-21
