A section of land.
1819. In the level towns, most of the winter rye had been harvested and housed…. The crops of hay in the lower towns were in all parts heavy.—Boston Centinel, July 31.
1820. The timber of these towns is, beech, chesnut and sugar-maple in great abundance; oak and sicamore in sufficient abundance, some wild-cherry and black walnut and cucumber tree.—Zerah Hawley, ‘Tour’ [of Ohio, &c.], p. 33 (New Haven, 1822).
1883. The word town in New England does not, as with us, mean a collection of houses, perhaps forming a political community, perhaps not. It means a certain space on the earth’s surface, which may or may not contain a town in our [the English] sense, but whose inhabitants form a political community in either case.—E. A. Freeman, ‘Impressions of the U.S.,’ p. 132. (Italics in the original.)
