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Massachusetts State...
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Massachusetts Counties
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Massachusetts Counties
Massachusetts consists of the 14 counties. Massachusetts has abolished seven of its
fourteen county governments, leaving five counties with county-level local government (Barnstable, Bristol,
Dukes, Norfolk, Plymouth) and two, Nantucket County and Suffolk County, with combined county/city government. |
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Massachusetts Counties
This is a list of Massachusetts counties, consisting of the 14 Massachusetts counties. Massachusetts has abolished
seven of its fourteen county governments, leaving five counties with county-level local government (Barnstable, Bristol,
Dukes, Norfolk, Plymouth) and two, Nantucket County and Suffolk County, with combined county/city government. Vestigial
judicial and law enforcement districts still follow the old county boundaries in the counties where county-level
government has been disestablished, and the counties are still generally recognized as geographic entities if not
political ones.
Eleven other historical counties have existed in Massachusetts, most becoming defunct when their lands were absorbed
into the colony of New Hampshire or the state of Maine, both of which were created out of territory originally claimed
by Massachusetts colonists. The oldest counties still in Massachusetts are Essex County, Middlesex County, and Suffolk
County, created in 1643 with the original Norfolk County which was absorbed by New Hampshire and bears no relation to
the modern Norfolk County. When these counties were created, they were a part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which
would remain separate from the Plymouth Colony and that colony's counties until 1691. Hampden County, created in 1812,
is the most recently created county still in Massachusetts, although Penobscot County, Maine bore that distinction until
Maine broke off from Massachusetts in 1820. The majority of Massachusetts counties are named in honor of English place
names, reflecting Massachusetts' colonial heritage
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Online High Schools
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County Resource Guide
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The history of our nation can be seen as a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names we've given our counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic
features of our country!"
But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.
Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally,
act locally." |
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