SKETCH OF MODERN AGRICULTURE 67 



" They' elected, as it were, certain families to church member- 

 ship," says Weeden, " and upon these fell the responsibilities 

 of citizenship." 



"Che granting of land in considerable tracts to towns, which 

 in turn granted smaller tracts to individual settlers, remained the 

 characteristic form of settlement in New England. It was not 

 always, however, a church enterprise. Sometimes, especially 

 during the latter part of the colonial period, a private individual 

 or private company would undertake the settlement of a town as 

 a business enterprise, expecting to make a profit from the sale 

 of land. But in either case the settlement was made in the com- 

 pact form (compact as compared with the form common in the 

 Virginia and Southern colonies) of the town, and the town be- 

 came, by reason of this method of settlement, the characteristic 

 form of local government in New England. 



Commons. Though the greater part of the land of a New 

 England town was held in severalty by the individual settlers, 

 there were common lands reserved for the pasture and woodland, 

 and there was much communal work done in the way of fencing 

 and ditching. Town herdsmen were sometimes appointed to 

 herd the cattle of the citizens upon the common lands. Rights 

 to pasture cattle upon the commons were usually restricted to 

 the original settlers upon the land. In later years, when new 

 families came to these towns, a distinction grew up between 

 " comm oners " and " noncommoners." This distinction some- 

 times led to difficulties. It was another phase of the world-old 

 problem of the old-timers vs. the newcomers, the old families vs. 

 the new families, the natives who are in possession vs. the im- 

 migrants who demand a share, or, in short, of the established vs. 

 the unestablished. 



Land system of the middle colonies. In the middle colonies 

 there was considerable diversity in the forms of land tenure. 

 Under English domination the land system of New York 



