Town Meeting Day in Coram, by Howard S. Conklin (1863–1925)
To Use This Document
With Your Students
Date
April 1880
Description
Image of a people gathering outside. Town meetings were a common form of local government in New England from the colonial era to the late 19th century. Voters would meet regularly to elect town officials, vote on budget matters, and make decisions for their town on everything from school issues to cutting grass in communal areas. In this direct democracy, the citizenry were deeply engaged in and committed to their local politics. Aside from the agenda of the day, town meetings also served as a major social event in which people from across a large, rural town, such as Brookhaven, all congregated to catch up on business, family matters, and local gossip. This photograph shows voters of the Town of Brookhaven at one of the last of the annual town meetings, and the ballot box here is of the type that would have been used at these meetings. In 1884, a proposition was adopted to instead vote in election districts, like we still do today. As historian Thomas R. Bayles lamented in a 1945 issue of the Long Island Forum, “The old voters were broken-hearted. No more annual handshakes, nor meeting of old friends.”
Type
Photograph
Region
Long Island
Repository
Identifier
2020.000.0325
Source
Long Island Museum, Stony Brook, NY
Rights
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