Talk:Massachusetts Convention of Towns

List of towns

At the end of Richard D. Brown's article is a list of delegates to the convention, sorted by county and town. 112 towns are listed. So 112 towns sent delegates to the convention, right? But no, that would make too much sense. Brown uses symbols to indicate whether a given delegate had represented his town in the 1768 House. Where there's no symbol, Brown says, the delegate did NOT attend the convention. Why he couldn't have made a separate list for that, instead of including non-attendees in a list of attendees, I have no idea. Anyway, there are 19 such entries. 112 - 19 = 93 towns that sent delegates to the convention.

There's no symbol next to the delegate for Cambridge, which according to Brown indicates that Cambridge did not send a delegate. But he contradicts himself in his own note, saying he added the Cambridge delegate to the list because town records showed he had been sent. So what is he saying - did Cambridge send a delegate or not? (According to Miller, Cambridge did not participate.)

Finally, according to Brown, his own list is missing two towns, or two delegates - it's not clear which. He says the convention proceedings indicate that "96 towns and 8 districts" were represented, "whereas this list includes only 102 towns and districts." My list, which is entirely drawn from his list, includes 93 towns, therefore 3 towns are missing.

If anyone can shed some light on this, please do. I could avoid the issue altogether by deleting the list, but anyone from Massachusetts who reads this article is going to want to know if their town was there. --MopTop (talk) 05:28, 3 September 2017 (UTC)