OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Ohio -- The Frontier (Part 5) *********************************************************************** OHGENWEB NOTICE: All distribution rights to this electronic data are reserved by the submitter. Reproduction or re-presentation of copyrighted material will require the permission of the copyright owner. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net/oh/ *********************************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 October 9, 2001 *********************************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio The Kelley Family Collections Newspaper article, Plains Dealer compiled by S.J. Kelley-- 1925 And Then They Went West by Darlene E. Kelley 1998 *********************************************************************** Ohio's Frontier -- Part 5 Western Reserve Article by S.L. Kelly Plains Dealer *********************************************** Know Your Ohio Ohio's Frontier -- Part 5 Western Reserve -- Before the second wave of Indans on the Cuyahoga, the first wave of white settlers arrived. Although Brady's leap is only an episode, it was part of the buildup to the major Indian War which was brewing. The story of Tecumseh's rising confederation built around the Wyandots, Shawnees, Miamis, and the Delawares is not part of the Cuyahoga story, except that when it came to climax in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, against General Anthoney Wayne, in western Ohio, the Greenville Treaty resulted. The treaty established the western boundary of the United States as a line from the mouth of the Cuyahoga upstream to the big bend, south across Portage Path to the head of the Tuscarawas to Fort Laurens, then southwest staunchwise across Ohio to Greenville, and southwest across the bottom of Indiana country. But this treaty directly affected settlement of the Cuyahoga valley this way. With the Indian title to eastern Oho now extinguished, the area was finally available to white settlement. The settlement of the Cuyahoga was unique. Connecticut people traveling to northern Ohio were always startled to find themselves at home. The towns and streets have Connecticut names. The houses had Connecticut architecture. The towns had Connecticut type governments. Cayahoga County and northeast Ohio was settled as they were because Connecticut men wanted good schools, in Connecticut. Today they owe their good schools to the Cuyahoga. East of the Alleghenies, the random shapes of the towns and farms and meandering roads reflected colonists beating paths to where they needed to go and shaping their farms to hug the streams and shun rocky hills. Some of the Ohio frontier was also settled in a scatter pattern as Revoluntionary War bounty land warrent holders found their way across the Alleghenies into the Ohio county and settled where they wanted. However, the Cuyahoga Country was settled with a graph paper calaulation by plotting Connecticut men. It was a three million acre real estate venture, which began with Connecticut's conviction that she owned what was northern Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada. And she had very able attorneys. who partially proved it. They referred back to their Charter. On March 19,1631, Earl Robert conveyed for Charles I to Viscount Say amd Sele, the patent of Connecticut. This document the King signed said that Connecticut would begin at the Western boundry of Providence Plantations ( Rhode Island ), its south and north boundries would be the 41st and 42nd parallels. Not knowing a good landmark for the boundry, and not believing the continent could be very wide anyway, he wrote with a flourish that Connecticut would then extend west to " the great south sea." Connecticut attorneys naturally interpreted " the great south sea " as the Pacific Ocean. So they came out in their view as a strip of land about 67 miles deep, but 3,000 miles wide. Other colonies had equally pretentious claims. Naturally these claims all overlapped. After the Revolution, when the young Republic was trying to organize itself, it became important to get settlers onto those lands to hold them. The question was who, and who owned the land? Each colony or state, expected to start by granting lands in its western parts to its Revolutionary War veterans as payment for service. Virginia began this practice immediately. Hence the conflict came quickly to a legal battle. The small landlocked states, which had no claims to western lands ( Maryland, Rhode Island, and New Jersey ), maintained that the war was won by the common blood and that the lands thus won, belonged to the Republic, not merely to the large states. The colonies' lawyers were holding up America. Finally Virginia, with some practicality and a lot of patriotism, gave up its claims. New York followed. Pennsylvania was not so gracious, and she and Connecticut came to gunfire and bloodshed over it. But Pennsylvania finally ceded. Connecticut was the holdout, and she was able to drive a hard bargain, for two reasons. First, the nation was eager to get on with it, and willing to stretch a point. Second, Connecticut had great sympathy on her side because of the brutal massacre of Connecticut men by Pennsylvanians in a land war. On September 14,1786, Connecticut therefore drove her bargain. She finally ceded her claims through Pennsylvania, then her claims beyond Lake Erie to the Pacific, but reserved to herself a 120 mile strip of her original claim from the Pennsylvania border, west between the 41st and 42nd parallels along the south shore of Lake Erie. The Republic agreed to this, and the land came to be called the Connecticut Western Reserve, or New Connecticut. With that settled, the United States established a government over the territory north and west of the Ohio River, seated at Cincinnati, called the northwest territory. The question now arose of the 120 mile strip along Lake Erie containing the Cuyahoga. Connecticut's plan was to sell the land and use the money as the investment capital for a public school system, which was to be supported on the annual yield from the money. She tried two methods of selling the land which did not work. Finally in 1795, the General Assembly in Hartford appointed a committee of eight men, representing each Connecticut county, and enpowered them to sell the land at a certain price. It was estimated that the Reserve contained in excess of three million acres, not counting a half million set aside for the Connecticut fire victims. (During the Revolutionary War, British raiding parties, inflicted severe damage on several towns in Connecticut, burning and pillaging. In 1792, the legislature of Connecticut granted to the sufferers, their heirs, and assigns 500,000 acres, consisting of ranges 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24 of the Connecticut Western Reserve, in Erie and Huron counties.) Connecticut insisted that the three million acres produce one million dollars in revenue, an average price of 33 cents per acre. But the Assembly insisted that the committee sell the entire tract before they could issue papers on a single acre of it. Anything the buyers of the land could make on it over and above what they paid was fine with Connecticut. She eschewed later, high profit in favor of a quick million for seed money to start her " perpetual school fund," the interest from which would be used only for schools. ********************************************** to be continued in Part 6.