Hundred (country Subdivision) - United States

United States

Counties in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania were divided into hundreds in the seventeenth century, in imitation of the English system. They survive in Delaware (see List of Delaware Counties and Hundreds), and were used as tax reporting and voting districts until the 1960s, but now serve no administrative role, their only official legal use being in real-estate title descriptions.

The hundred was also used as a division of the county in Maryland. Carroll County, Maryland, was composed in 1836 by taking the following hundreds from Baltimore County: North Hundred, Pipe Creek Hundred, Delaware Upper Hundred, Delaware Lower Hundred and from Frederick County: Pipe Creek Hundred, Westminster Hundred, Unity Hundred, Burnt House Hundred, Piney Creek Hundred, and Taneytown Hundred. Maryland's Somerset County, which was established in 1666, was initially divided into six hundreds: Mattapony, Pocomoke, Boquetenorton, Wicomico, and Baltimore Hundreds; later subdivisions of the hundreds added five more: Pitts Creek, Acquango, Queponco, Buckingham, and Worcester Hundreds. Following American independence, the term "hundred" fell out of favor and was replaced by "election district." However, the names of the old hundreds continue to show up in deeds for another fifty years.

Some plantations in early colonial Virginia used the term hundred in their names, such as Martin's Hundred, Flowerdew Hundred, and West and Shirley Hundred. Bermuda Hundred was the first incorporated town in the English colony of Virginia. It was founded by Sir Thomas Dale in 1613, six years after Jamestown.

While debating what became the Land Ordinance of 1785, Thomas Jefferson's committee wanted to divide the public lands in the west into "hundreds of ten geographical miles square, each mile containing 6086 and 4-10ths of a foot". The legislation instead introduced the six-mile square township of the Public Land Survey System.

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