Types of towns

The towns in the valley that are suitable for statistical study do not represent a cross section of all towns in the valley. Two of the nine are major marketing and manufacturing towns, and the remainder are fully developed agricultural towns on good or fair land located near the Connecticut River (Map I). That makes it necessary to examine the valley more broadly, to determine whether the towns studied intensively were representative of towns with similar settlement patterns and social structures and to learn how they differed in their behavior from dissimilar towns, especially those less developed and farther from the navigable parts of the Connecticut River.

For the purpose of such comparisons, the valley's towns were classified into four groups, two of which are composed of several subgroups. Towns were classified primarily according to the date of their settlement, the density of their population in 1830 and 1840, the quality of their farmland, and the level of their mercantile, manufacturing, and professional activity in 1830 and 1840. However, towns that had banks, regular newspapers, or county seats were often raised to the status of secondary marketing, manufacturing, and professional centers, despite poor land, remote location, and limited nonagricultural economic activity (Map 2).

This system of classification was modeled after the systems used by Edward Cook in his study of political leadership in eighteenth-century New England, and by William Gilmore in his study of literacy and reading habits in the upper Connecticut River Valley from 1760 to 1830.