Thank you all for your suggestions and additional thoughtful questions!

Colleagues here at Berkeley turned up a promising github project: (
https://github.com/cbgoodman/muni-incorporation/blob/master/README.md) and
also told me about the Census Bureau's survey of governments which at least
sometimes asks about incorporation date (take a look at the Census of
Governments, the questionnaire from 2012 includes a question that asks for
the year when the county or city government was formed.
https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/gus/technical-documentation/questionnaires/2012-gus.pdf).
However, unfortunately the public use data files for the census of
government organizations do not include a date of incorporation for the
cities/townships:
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/gus/data/orgpublicusefiles.All.List_1216629514.html

So far it seems like the Github project is the most promising. I'll keep
you all informed if anything else turns up, though :)

Have a great weekend, and thank you again!
Susan

On Fri, Feb 3, 2023 at 2:54 AM Nat Case <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Many individual states have date of incorporation (different from
> "founding" in a settlement sense, but there you are) in datasets of
> incorporated areas, both tabular and geodata-based.
>
> Date of settlement is a little fuzzier: date of first recorded human
> settlement? first non-indigenous settlement (the landmark of record in a
> lot of older sources)? establishment of a church or post office or store?
> And incorporation is a little confusing because merging of cities, change
> in status of incorporated area (village vs city in Wisconsin, for example),
> and other quirks of sub-state organization may get in the way. Was New York
> City incorporated in 1653, the date of its charter, or 1898, when the new
> City of New York was formed from multiple older municipalities, including
> the old City of New York?
>
> Nat Case
> INCase, LLC
> Minneapolis, MN USA
> 612-702-1333
>
> On 2/2/23 2:53 PM, Susan Powell wrote:
>
> Hello all,
> I received a question from a researcher looking for a "dataset of all the
> towns in the USA and the dates they were founded."
>
> The first thing that came to my mind were gazetteers, but none of the
> digital/data-based once I looked at included dates.
>
> There are a few book gazetteers I found that appear to have founding date
> information:
> Historical Gazetteer of the United States by Paul T. Hellmann (not
> comprehensive)
> American places dictionary : a guide to 45,000 populated places, natural
> features, and other places in the United States ... in four volumes by
> Abate, Frank R.
> Omni gazetteer of the United States of America, by Abate, Frank S
>
> The researcher mentioned a Census dataset that costs money.
>
> Does anyone know of something like this that's available in dataset form?
> Many thanks!
> Susan
>
> --
> Susan Powell
> GIS & Map Librarian
> UC Berkeley
> [log in to unmask]
> pronouns: she/her/hers
>
>

-- 
Susan Powell
GIS & Map Librarian
UC Berkeley
[log in to unmask]
pronouns: she/her/hers