County of York

“ We are now leaving Durham for a ride of sixty-seven miles to the city of York, the other fashionable metropolis of England. The passage is through the county of Yorkshire, which, for the combination of good agriculture, population, manufactures, beauty of scenery, and historical renown, is not excelled if equalled by any other county of Great Britain. The people are peculiar, and have a dialect of their own; they are tall in stature, shrewd at bargains, and are tenacious of their own manners and customs. ”

“ In 1652, when Massachusetts extended her jurisdiction over Maine, the city of Gorgeana became the town of York. In 1692 most of the houses were burned by the Indians and the inhabitants killed or taken captive. York was the shire town of Yorkshire from 1716 to 1735, the shire town with Portland (then Falmouth) of the district of Maine from 1735 to 1760, and a county-seat of York county from 1760 to 1832. During the middle of the 18th century York had considerable trade with the West Indies and along the coast, and as late as the middle of the 19th century it had important fishing interests. ”

“ By station I am only a plain, family man in the farming line, but to my misfortune, as turns out, I am locally situated in the county of York, and what’s worse, a great deal too nigh Elland, and where the women got up the spouting meeting again the Poor Laws that made such a noise in the country. ”

“ The Yorks had come to Fentress county from North Carolina and settled on Indian Creek. Uriah York was the son of John York, and they came from Buncombe county in that "Old North State," the county which had a reputation like Nazareth so far as turning out any good thing was concerned, and the path of the cant, derisive phrase, "All bunkum," leads directly back to the affairs of that good old county. ”

“ John, Westmorland, Charlotte, and York, four each; the Counties of King's, Queen's, Sunbury and Northumberland, two each; and two for the City of St. John, making in all twenty-six. This representation, the reader will [25] observe, is very unequal. The County of Saint John, which includes the City, having two more members than the extensive County of York, which includes the Seat of Government; and the County of Sunbury, which is not as large as some parishes in the other counties, has as many members as the County of Northumberland, which comprises over one-third of the Province. ”

“ I am your obt Servant David Gibson
The County of York, smarting under a sense of indignity and partial disfranchisement, rendered itself specially conspicuous in the contest. During the preceding year an Act [188] had been passed extending and readjusting the representation of the County, and dividing it for electoral purposes into four Ridings, designated respectively the First, Second, Third and Fourth. Each of these now returned a Radical Reformer. ”

“ The New York State Branch now has twelve sub-divisions. Since the April number of the Bulletin, four new sub-divisions have been organized, namely: Chautauqua County, Columbia County, Duchess County and New York County. It is probable that organization will be effected soon in Chemung, Oswego and St. Lawrence Counties. Work is now progressing and organization is under consideration in seven other Counties, namely: Broome, Greene, Orange, Nassau, Suffolk, Tompkins and Jefferson. ”

“ In New York many of the interests which a citizen may wish to assert through the legislative process are interests which touch on his relation to the government of his county as well as to that of the State, and consequently these interests are often peculiar to the citizens of one county. ”

“ The county is the basic unit of area for apportionment purposes, except that two sparsely populated counties, Fulton and Hamilton, are treated as one. New York uses citizen population instead of total population, excluding aliens from consideration, for purposes of legislative apportionment. The number of assemblymen is fixed at 150, while the size of the Senate is prescribed as not less than 50 and may vary with each apportionment. [7] All members of both houses of the New York Legislature are elected for two-year terms only, in even-numbered years. ”

“ In each county a district attorney shall be chosen by the electors once in every three or four years as the legislature shall direct. The clerk of each county in the city of New York shall be appointed, and be subject to removal, by the appellate division of the supreme court in the judicial department in which the county is located. ”

“ What the state government actually does when it regulates or supervises is to hold up the county official to standards of performance. This is the proper work of officers or boards in the administrative branch. It relates not to what the county shall do as a matter of broad policy, but how the county shall redeem its obligation in matters of routine, detail and technique. The state agency may have only the power to “visit and inspect,” like the New York State Board of Charities, or it may, like the Comptroller of the same state, actually impose forms of procedure. ”

“ When the people become so thickly settled that the township and county government do not meet their local public wants, the community is incorporated as a village. Villages are often called towns, and incorporated as such, especially in the Southern States; but the word taken in this sense must not be confounded with the same word, denoting a political division of the county in New England, New York, and Wisconsin. ”

“ But neither of these dignitaries has or had any powers of appointment comparable to, let us say, those of the mayor of Cleveland or of New York. In the general run of counties, [Pg 41] the executive is not a single officer but the governing board itself. Where the “town plan” is in vogue, as in certain Illinois counties, and throughout New York State, this body may be very large and unwieldy and is wholly incapable of supervising administrative detail, except through small committees, with the added division of responsibility which that implies. ”

“ This observation is dated 1914, one year after leading farmers and business men of the county, convinced that all was not so well with them as the lifeless census figures would have one believe, made the move to set up and operate for the county a farm bureau. New York is the national hotbed of farm-bureau enthusiasm and propaganda. ”

“ A member of the city commission in Jersey City has recently caused to be passed in the legislature a bill providing for a vote on consolidation of municipalities in Hudson County on a sort of borough plan. In Cincinnati the question of consolidation of the city with Hamilton County was recently opened, apparently for the first time, in newspaper discussions. In the 1916 New York legislature there was under discussion a bill extending control of the board of estimate and apportionment in New York City over the employees of the five counties within the city. ”

“ His place has been preëmpted by the hanger-on and the wire-puller to whom charity means the dispensing of favors to “deserving” workers of all political faiths. In this sense the county is a very humane institution, and a very open-handed one. It serves well such local officials as the overseer of the poor in an up-state New York county who presented this remarkable annual report to his superior ”

“ The justices of the peace, for services in courts of sessions, shall be paid a per diem allowance out of the county treasury. In counties having a population exceeding forty thousand, the legislature may provide for the election of a separate officer to perform the duties of the office of surrogate. The legislature may confer equity jurisdiction in special cases upon the county judge. Inferior local courts of civil and criminal jurisdiction may be established by the legislature in cities ”

“ In addition to ensuring minimum representation to each county, the New York apportionment formula, by allocating somewhat greater representation to the smaller counties while placing limitations on the representation of the largest counties, is clearly designed o protect against overcentralization of power. To understand fully the practical importance of this consideration in New York, one must look to its unique characteristics. New York is one of the few States in which the central cities can elect a majority of representatives to the legislature. ”

“ The superior powers of the state commission over the localities in these respects are emphatically not a destructive check upon the county’s officers. They do not detract from local responsibility. They simply enable [Pg 127] them to apply to their work the most effective means available.
In New York the state civil service commission regulates the service in eighteen counties. In New Jersey the adoption of the civil service law involving state control rests with the people of each county. ”

“ A new county was erected there, and a log court house [22] and jail was built in the wilderness, eight miles distant from any settlement. The Governor, by this stratagem, partially brought the eastern counties to coincide with New York, thus placing the western district in the interior of the government. He hoped in that way to compel their submission; forgetting that men, who had braved every danger and hardship attending the settlement of a wild country, would not tamely submit to be dispossessed. The contest now grew warm and serious. ”

“ A policy guaranteeing minimum representation to each county is certainly rational, particularly in a State like New York. It prevents less densely populated counties from being merged into multi-county districts where they would receive no effective representation at all. ”

“ The gentry assembled at York, to agree upon the choice of representatives for the county, have prepared an Address to assure his Majesty they are ready to sacrifice their lives and fortunes for him upon this, and all other occasions, but at the same time they humbly beseech him to give them such magistrates as may be agreeable to the laws of the land, for at present there is no authority to which they can legally submit. ”

“ The confederation party had been so badly beaten in York at the general election that no doubt was felt by the government that any candidate they might select would be chosen by a very large majority. The candidate selected by the government to contest York was Mr. John Pickard, a highly respectable gentleman, who was engaged in lumbering, and who was extremely popular in that county, in consequence of his friendly relations with all classes of the community and the amiability of his disposition. ”

“ In county and town governments alone in New York State, leaving out incorporated cities and villages altogether, there are about fifteen thousand officials, most of whom are elective and have constitutional status. These include in the counties chiefly county judges, sheriffs, surrogates, county clerks, registrars, district attorneys, coroners, county attorneys, and commissioners of welfare ”

“ Thus the New York Times, when the New York Constitutional Convention was in session in 1915, delivered not a few strokes for a proposition to abolish existing boundaries of the sixty-one counties and substitute therefor eight administrative districts. Cleveland, Ohio, reformers would like to have that city divorce itself from the rural part of Cuyahoga County. In Rochester, a recent survey has suggested a similar course with reference to Monroe County. Studies have also been made recently (1916) by the City Club of Milwaukee. ”

“ Supervisors were created as elective officers in New York in 1691, but they were executive and representative officers from the very start. And the same may be said of the town assessors in New Jersey (1693) and the county assessors in Pennsylvania. But the real precedent for “electing everybody” was set in Pennsylvania in 1703 when the sheriffs were first chosen by the people—a step which was followed in 1726 by the establishment of elective county commissioners. ”

“ Originally, it was denominated the "Genesee County" but now wears the distinctive appellation of "Western New-York," and embraces, if I am correctly informed, that portion of the State lying west of a line running north and south through Seneca Lake. Its settlement may probably be said to have commenced about the year 1787. ”

“ Thoresby corrects in this place the learned editor of the laws of Edward the Confessor for supposing Ewer-wick-shire to be Warwickshire, when speaking on the subject of wapentakes. It is remarkable that Sir Henry Savile, himself a Yorkshireman, in his edition of Hoveden, and in the section De Wapentagio, f. 346. b. has printed Warewichsire where it is plain that Yorkshire was the county intended.↑ Harl. MS. 6281 is a copy of this Nomina Villarum↑ Preserved in a volume of Topographical Collections made by a topographer of whom little is known, named Jakes. ”

“ In the latter class of cases it sometimes happens that the inhabitants of the borough or village are members of the township for certain purposes, though not for others; at other times the township and the borough, or incorporated village, become as distinct as if they were two townships or two boroughs. The number of incorporated cities in the United States is 969, of incorporated towns and villages 4,613, of boroughs 582. In two cases, New York and Philadelphia, a city makes up an entire county. In two cases, St Louis and Baltimore, a large city forms no part of a county. ”