To these two lines of influence the central states added the idea of a distinct administrative authority, which was composed in New York of a new body made up of the supervisors of the towns, in New Jersey of the local assessors and in Pennsylvania of special commissioners. These new departures were established in the latter part of the seventeenth century. In all of these states, it should be noted, the township also existed for a limited number of purposes, such as the care of the poor, for election, administration and for purposes of taxation. The westward movement of population had begun before the Revolution. Following in general the parallels of latitude of their native soil, the pioneers carried their local institutions with them for transplantation, regardless of the wholly different underlying conditions that now confronted them. In their closely populated, homogeneous settlements the New England pioneers that crossed over into the Western Reserve had been accustomed to act through town meetings. Nothing would do now but a reincarnation of the old institutions. The six-mile rectangles into which the surveyors had divided the western territory gave them their opening. There was accordingly developed in the open prairie among the isolated homesteads a unit of government that at least superficially resembled the old New England town. It was but a geometrical expression, to be sure, but the mere shadow of it seems to have given satisfaction. But in 1802, when the state of Ohio was carved out of this territory, this exotic growth was cut short and the “county-township” system of Pennsylvania was adopted. Indiana followed Ohio in this step and the system came to predominate in the Middle West, as for example, in Iowa, Kansas and Missouri. The instinct for harking back to precedents appeared also in the early history of Michigan. When it was organized as a territory it was divided up into counties. But in 1825, under the stimulus of immigration from New York where the township-supervisor plan was in vogue, townships had to be established for particular purposes to meet the prevailing demand for this type of self-government. In the South, Kentucky and Tennessee took their cues from Virginia and established the justices in control of the county administrative affairs. Mississippi and Alabama took Georgia for their model. In Louisiana, the parish authority corresponding to the board of supervisors or commissioners is the police jury, which is elected by wards very much on the principle of the New England town.