Court of General Sessions of the Peace, Township of Liverpool fonds

Administration for the community founded at Liverpool, Queens County, N.S. was originally in the hands of township officers. The New England model of township self-government, with town meetings and locally-elected officials, appealed to the predominant planter population. However in 1765, a law was passed at Halifax, vesting responsibility for local governance to the Courts of General Sessions of the Peace. The jurisdictions of these courts were usually co-extensive with county boundaries. The Courts of General Sessions of the Peace, also known as Courts of Quarter Sessions, Courts of Sessions, or simply as "the Sessions," were presided over by Justices of the Peace, appointed by the government in Halifax. A government appointed county sheriff served as the Justices' executive officer. From a list of land owners residing in each jurisidiction, the sheriff selected the court's Grand Jury. Although the Sessions did function as courts of law, much of their time was devoted to matters of local administration, including: the appointment of local officers; licencing of taverns; levying of county and poor rates; control over roads and bridges, prisons and hospitals, and other public works; and hearing petitions on matters of local concern. Since the implementation of the Sessions, virtually all powers were stripped from township governments, thus the term "township" ceased to have much meaning, except in describing a particular geographic area or an electoral district. Nevertheless, the proprietors of the Township of Liverpool continued to meet throughout the nineteenth century and then again in the twentieth century to deal with undivided township lands. In 1879, the provincial government passed the County Incorporation Act. This act divided rural Nova Scotia into municipalities, based on the boundaries of Sessions districts, and made the incorporation of these administrative units compulsory. It also replaced the non-elected sessional officers with elected councilors. In accordance with this act, the Municipality of the Queens County was formed and in 1897 the residents of Liverpool voted to become an incorporated town.