Talk:Norfolk County, Massachusetts

Map errors

The map is incorrect, in that the towns of Brookline and Cohasset, which are part of Norfolk County, aren't marked in red. In fact, Cohasset's not on the map at all - it looks like it's fallen into the ocean. Can anything be done? AJD 07:44, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Wow, it's taken a long time, but ... I've updated the map. Brookline was easy enough, as its borders were indicated on the map, though it wasn't colored in; Cohasset didn't seem to be indicated, so I just did my best based on other maps. Improvements are welcome. --Jfruh 18:27, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! But: That's not actually Brookline. This is the fault of the lines on the map, not your fault, of course, but that little zone that you colored in actually contains both Brookline (part of Norfolk County) and Allston/Brighton (part of Suffolk County). The Suffolk County map doesn't get this right either. And as for Cohasset, well—what you've colored in is part of Hingham. Cohasset is Not On the Map. Fallen into the ocean. The boundaries of Plymouth County (containing Hingham) are right, but Cohasset is missing. AJD 18:41, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, well, can you point me to a high-res better map? --Jfruh 19:46, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

You mean like these? The link is to the official town and county maps put out by the Mass. state gov't. AJD 19:53, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, that'll do. I'll try to redo the maps in the next few days. --Jfruh 20:23, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

FTR, we now have a 2006 map from Commons user David Benbennick, which seems to be correct. -- Beland (talk) 02:58, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Per capita income

This page reports a per capita income of 32k+ while the value in the link is 53k+. I am assuming the 32k value is simply out of date? In any case one should be corrected/updated if the correct value can be found. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.33.111.74 (talk) 14:48, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

@69.33.111.74: [1] says $32,484 for 1999, from the 2000 census, which is exactly what the article is reporting. I'm not sure what source you were looking at. [2] actually says $48,286 for 2000, though I'm not sure if that's been adjusted for inflation. -- Beland (talk) 03:17, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Towns over time

Expansion question

How did Cohasset become separated from the rest of the county? -- Beland 03:04, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

This is now explained in the article. -- Beland (talk) 03:05, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

History

I hope somebody can enter from where Norfolk county came. Sources say formed in 1793. Was it cut out of Suffolk County? 76.102.31.185 (talk) 03:00, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Norfolk County

Other Wiki sources state that it was originally incorporated in 1643, to cover all communities in the Massachusetts Bay Colony located north of suffolk county. 76.218.100.214 (talk) 21:56, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Why original Norfolk County not recognized?

I have ancestors with vitals pointing there, so why is the history section not corrected with the information in the above section "Norfolk County"? 76.218.100.214 (talk) 21:56, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Boundary history details

http://historical-county.newberry.org/website/Massachusetts/viewer.htm
http://historical-county.newberry.org/website/Massachusetts/documents/MA_Individual_County_Chronologies.htm#NORFOLK

• NORFOLK (original, extinct)

10 May 1643 NORFOLK (original, extinct) created as one of four original counties in Massachusetts; NORFOLK included territory in Massachusetts and the New Hampshire settlements. (Mass. Recs., 2:38)

18 Sep 1679 NORFOLK (original, extinct) was eliminated when King Charles II made New Hampshire a royal colony separate from Massachusetts. (Swindler, 6:322; Van Zandt, 61)

• NORFOLK (selected -- see source for complete)

20 Jun 1793 NORFOLK created from SUFFOLK. (Mass. Acts 1793, ch. 43, sec. 1/p. 272 and ch. 9, sec. 1/p. 314)

22 Jun 1797 NORFOLK exchanged with MIDDLESEX when town of Natick exchanged with town of Needham. (Mass. Acts 1797, ch. 22, sec. 1/p. 142)

08 Feb 1798 NORFOLK lost small strip to PLYMOUTH when town of Bridgewater gained from town of Stoughton [not mapped]. (Mass. Acts 1798, ch. 10, sec. 1/p. 164)

06 Mar 1804 NORFOLK lost to SUFFOLK when Boston gained South Boston from Dorchester. (Mass. Acts 1804, ch. 45, sec. 1/p. 412)

03 Mar 1829 NORFOLK exchanged with MIDDLESEX when town of Holliston gained from town of Medway. (Mass. Acts 1829, ch. 125/p. 200 and ch. 133/p. 209)

25 Mar 1834 NORFOLK lost to SUFFOLK when Boston gained Thompson Island from Dorchester. (Mass. Acts 1834, ch. 102/p. 129)

23 Apr 1838 NORFOLK gained from MIDDLESEX when town of Roxbury gained from town of Newton. (Mass. Acts 1838, ch. 167, sec. 1/p. 481)

06 Jan 1868 NORFOLK lost to SUFFOLK when Boston gained all of Roxbury. (Mass. Acts 1867, ch. 359, sec. 1/p. 754)

03 Jan 1870 NORFOLK lost to SUFFOLK when Boston gained all of Dorchester. (Mass. Acts 1869, ch. 349, sec. 1/p. 646)

07 Mar 1872 NORFOLK exchanged small areas with WORCESTER when town of Bellingham exchanged with town of Mendon. (Mass. Acts 1872, ch. 69, sec. 1/p. 57)

12 Apr 1872 NORFOLK lost small area to SUFFOLK when Boston gained Mt. Hope Cemetery from town of West Roxbury [change too small to display on interactive map; shapefile users see small_changes 1872_pt. for location]. (Mass. Acts 1872, ch. 197, sec. 1/p. 143)

05 Jan 1874 NORFOLK lost to SUFFOLK when Boston gained West Roxbury. (Mass. Acts 1873, ch. 286, sec. 1/p. 716, ch. 303, sec. 1/p. 747, and ch. 314, sec. 1/p. 810)

01 Jan 1912 NORFOLK lost to SUFFOLK when Boston gained all of Hyde Park. (Mass. Acts 1911, ch. 469, sec. 1/p. 450 and ch. 583, sec. 1/p. 600)

23 Mar 1928 Boundary between NORFOLK and PLYMOUTH was adjusted when line between towns of Hingham and Cohasset was adjusted [no discernible change]. (Mass. Acts 1928, ch. 160, sec. 1/p. 184)

-96.237.8.174 (talk) 21:33, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

The towns included in the new Norfolk County should be identified

It makes it very difficult to do genealogy when these articles are so vague. A list or map would be great. For example, was Medfield in Suffix County when absorbed? 2602:304:CDA6:51B0:ED:7FCF:42C9:4B07 (talk) 02:58, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Basic information missing

Time and time again I consult a Wikipedia article to answer the simplest of questions and time and again it fails.

I need to know how many municipalities there are in Norfolk County. Unbelievably, this article doesn't say.

At the risk of being obvious, a) add that fact, and b) state it in at least two places—in the first paragraph of the article, and in the inset at top right. Isn't it arguably about the first fact that should be in an inset about a county?

(I am not looking for the reply: "But the article has a table numbered 1 to 28." It is a table of other data. Moreover, the rows numbered 1 to 28 are interspersed with rows having a blank ranking, vitiating that column as an integral expression of the number of municipalities.)

So to repeat: In the first paragraph of the article, add e.g.: "Norfolk County comprises xx municipalities." And in the inset, add "No. of municipalities:  xx".

Jimlue (talk) 23:39, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jimlue: Well, that's an interesting complaint I thought someone should look into. It turns out Template:Infobox U.S. county doesn't even have a parameter for "number of municipalities". It looks like U.S. county article intros actually generally do not explicitly give a number, but instead expect readers who want to answer this question to count the entries in a list of cities or towns or whatever the local municipal forms are. Given that this article does have that numbered table listing which excludes CDPs from the count, the answer to your question should be obvious from that table: 28. You can also easily sort that table by type to count the number of cities and towns separately.

It's possible the reason the infobox doesn't have a parameter for the number is that counties across the United States vary widely in how local government is constituted. Massachusetts is unusual in that all of its land is incorporated at a single level of municipal government, but there are many counties with unincorporated communities, which some editors might feel should be counted. Many states have municipalities that are included inside other municipalities, whether that's civil townships between the county and city level, or towns and hamlets inside cities or overlapping in various ways. Would you count only townships (which are often unremarkable) because they might fill the entire county, or also or only count the cities or towns that some of them contain? New York City is divided into multiple counties, so would the number there be a fraction? It does seem like just giving readers a list of the various types made explicit covers all this complexity, and does not trouble them too much in answering questions like yours.

If you feel strongly U.S. county articles should include one or more municipality counts, you could try to achieve consensus for some solution to this complexity at Template talk:Infobox U.S. county. It would of course then be a large effort to count the municipalities in over 3,000 counties and equivalents according to whatever rules achieve consensus. It would also not be unreasonable to add "has X As, Y Bs, and Z Cs" to the prose in each county-equivalent's introduction. Not sure why that's not general practice; perhaps editors generally de facto feel this exact number isn't important to mention unless the number of municipalities is very small? -- Beland (talk) 03:44, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Seat that is not a city

Fluff

"It is the fourth most populous county in the United States whose county seat is neither a city nor a borough, and it is the second most populous county that has a county seat at a town." It's really a stretch to consider either of these to be noteworthy. The technicalities of the numerous forms of municipalities is really getting down into the weeds of irrelevant technicalities. The definitions of "city" and "town" vary widely from state to state, and thus any comparisons drawn have little or no validity. And there are no "boroughs" in Massachusetts. Also, these absurd and trivial claims have no supporting citation, so I plan to delete them on that basis alone. 174.196.195.2 (talk) 15:57, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Is Suffolk County, New York the most populated whom County seat is a town?

In the desc, it states "second most populous county who's seat is a town" I'm guessing its Suffolk County, NY who is #1? 69.122.240.116 (talk) 00:14, 5 November 2023 (UTC)