The “common” building was used for religious and other meetings until the meeting-house with its platform on top for cannon, on Burial Hill, was built in 1622.  “Boston seems to have had no special building for public worship until, during the year 1632, was erected the small thatched-roof, one-story building which stood on State Street, where Brazer’s building now stands."[A] This was in the second year, the settlement having been made in the autumn of 1630.  In Charlestown, “The Great House,” the first building erected that could be called a house, was first used as the official residence of the governor, and the sessions of the Court of Assistants appear to have been held in it until the removal to Boston, but when the church was formed, in 1632, it was used for a meeting-house.

[Footnote A:  Memorial History of Boston, vol. i, p. 119.]

Dorchester had the first meeting-house in the Bay, built in 1631, the next year after settlement, and by the famous order passed “mooneday eighth of October, 1633,” it appears that it was the regular meeting-place of the inhabitants of the plantation for general purposes.  The Lynn church was formed in 1632, and the meeting-house appears to have been built soon after, and was used for town meetings till 1806.  It was the same in towns of later settlement.  In Brunswick, Maine, which became a township in 1717, the first public building was the meeting-house, and this also was the town-house for almost one hundred years.  Belfast, Maine, incorporated in 1773, held its first two town meetings in a private house, afterwards, for eighteen years, “at the Common on the South end of No. 26” (house lot),[A] whether under cover or in open air is not known, after that, in the meeting-house generally, till the town hall was built.  In Harpswell, Maine, the old meeting-house, like that described, when abandoned as a house of worship, was sold to the town for one hundred dollars and is still in use as a town-house.

[Footnote A:  Williamson’s History of Belfast.]

The town-house, therefore, though it cannot strictly be said to have been coeval with the town, was essentially so, the meeting-house being generally the first public building, and used equally for town meetings and public worship.

How early, then, was the town?  When the settlement at Plymouth took place, in one sense a town existed at once.  It was a collection of families living in neighborhood and united by the bonds of mutual obligation common in similar English communities.  But it was a town as yet only in that sense.  In fact, it was a state.  The words of the compact signed on board the Mayflower were, in part:  “We, whose names are underwritten ... do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation, ... and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.”