| Summary: | The legal and cultural tension between cities, towns and state government, characterized as the question of home rule, has existed since the creation of the Republic. The founding of the New World required the creation of new settlements and these settlements serve as an example of settler’s interest in home rule. This thesis examines the founding of nine communities in British North America: Dedham and Sudbury, Massachusetts; Exeter, New Hampshire; New Haven, Connecticut; Albany, New York; Germantown and Carlisle, Pennsylvania; Savannah and Ebenezer, Georgia. Evidence from charter documents, colonial legislation, writings, town plans and secondary resources, such as the published history of towns, is used to explain how the “words, bricks and deeds” of settlers give evidence of their home rule. It provides background on other settlements, including Spanish, French, indigenous and maroon communities. The interdisciplinary analysis is given in contrast to the analysis of the legal doctrine commonly known as “Dillon’s Rule.” It closes by examining the larger issue of the changing nature of municipal, as opposed to private, corporations. The thesis looks at the settlement of the Northwest Territories, or present-day Ohio to describe how the federal and state government replaced the colonial authorities and exerted control of municipal corporations bringing us to our current state of tension.
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