Townships and Boroughs are governed by some similar laws, yet other laws are separate for each. When Pennsylvania was first settled and started growing centuries ago, it was obviously very rural. Townships were the first incorporated municipalities, and they were large and rural. Eventually, a center of commercial activity started to develop where everyone went to the general store, blacksmith, livery, and eventually the post office. Originally, this was unofficially called the village. Gradually, new development started to occur closer to the village and the village became more heavily and densely populated.

Beginning in the mid-1800's, many of these areas sensed a difference between themselves and their more rural neighbors, and they decided to apply to the state to become their own municipality. These new municipalities were called Boroughs, and they were much smaller than the Townships, but had all of the commercial buildings and were characterized by dense populations, the town school and the churches.

In several parts of the state (the areas of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Harrisburg, Erie and York), the population was so large that they applied to be their own different type of municipality, which was called a City. By the 1900's, the population of the Boroughs in many areas had exceeded that of the Townships, and they were the commercial and activity hubs of their regions. Some areas in the Townships that were smaller, built up areas were called Villages (such as Shelly, Applebachsville, Milford Square and Spinnerstown), but this is just a historic reference; Villages are not separate municipalities.

In the 1950's and 60's, many of these Boroughs were approaching capacity, and future development was more attractive to developers and residents in the Township areas. With the more common use of the automobile, traveling was not a problem and the population of the Townships was beginning to exceed the Boroughs. Today, Pennsylvania has become a very fragmented state in terms of municipal structure. There are over 2,600 municipalities, including Cities, Boroughs and Townships. Many of the Boroughs have only 500-1,000 residents, such as Trumbauersville and Richlandtown. With a population of 8,931, Quakertown is actually considered a larger Borough.

Another confusing part of local government is the structure of the post office. In many states where towns and cities are larger, there is always a post office in each town. Therefore, the name of your mailing address is always the name of the town in which you live. Not so in Pennsylvania. Going back to the beginnings of the post office in Pennsylvania, the post office branches were always in either Boroughs or in villages. The reason for this was that these areas were the built-up parts of the region where you found the commercial activity. However, despite the fact that the Townships' populations have grown larger than many Boroughs, the post office has not increased the number of post offices. For instance, in the Quakertown area, the post offices' names (and locations) are Quakertown, Richlandtown, Milford Square and Spinnerstown. These are names of two Boroughs and two villages. No one has a mailing address of Milford or Richland, even though these two townships now have a greater population than any Borough in our area.