The Rise of Representation: Electing County Officeholders in Colonial Pennsylvania

Abstract

Tracing the development of the county commission system provides a unique opportunity for examining the nature of participatory government in colonial America. Yet, despite the prominence of the county commission system today, studies of the county commission system and, in fact, all county government have been few (Bromage, 1933: 15-35). Colonial historians have preferred to investigate the New England town and the provincial legislature. Most of these studies (Grant, 1961: 106, 120-127, 150-153; Bushman, 1967: 268-270; Syndor, 1965: 42, 6-73; Gross, 1976: 38-39, 179-181; Pole, 1962: 626-646; Greene, 1959: 485-506; Greene, 1963: 25-47; Cook, 1971:586-608; Zemsky, 1971:28-38; Lockeridge, 1970: 47-49, 119-138, 94; Cook, 1976: 9, 10, 19-22, 80-94, 115-118) have concluded that although the franchise was exercised by most adult male property owners, town councils and colonial legislatures tended to be dominated by a social and economic elite continually returned by the electorate to positions of power. In other words, exercising the vote did not seem to make much practical difference. ‘ An analysis of county officeholding in colonial Pennsylvania, however, challenges the belief in the universality of such voter behavior. For when male adult property owners gained the opportunity to elect county officials who levied, collected, and disbursed the only direct tax in colonial Pennsylvania, they chose people more like themselves than like the appointed officials who previously controlled county government.