The communities of the New England colonies were more industrial when compared to other regions of colonial America. Towns were more close knit, and normally contained different types of shops for the convenience of those who lived within the town. The farms of the north were based outside the towns but the "Farmers were expected to live together in villages, within eyeshot of a meeting house that doubled as chapel and town hall, within the earshot of the bells that summoned them to worship or to war, walking each morning to the fields that lay beyond the settlement."5 The towns of the north were heavily based on the relationships within the community, such as one's relationship to the town fathers or to the other members of the town church. As time moved on and towns began to sprout up throughout the north and heading west, "Public facilities such as the meetinghouse, schoolhouse, mill, and graveyard remained located along the private economic services of the tavern, shops, professions and craft industries."6 As new towns began to form, the basic structure remained the same, and by the time the Constitution was written, there were around 1,000 towns in New England alone. The basic community structure of the North contained various types of services and shops, and this industrial type economy separated the North from the other regions tremendously and its high concentration of people in certain areas helped to spread ideas faster and eventually led to the start of an organized colonial government.
Throughout the eighteenth century, northern towns became more and more industrialized and involved in more service crafts, industrial crafts, and maritime commerce as compared to the heaving farming and crop dependency of the other regions. Service crafts could be categorized into retail craft, such as a baker, a building craft, such as a bricklayer or carpenter, travel and transport services, such as a sailor or pilot, or other services such as a barber.
