OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Ohio -- The Frontier (Part 6)
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Darlene E. Kelley
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
October 9, 2001
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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
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Ohio's Frontier -- Part 6
Western Reserve 
Article by S.L. Kelly
Plains Dealer
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Know Your Ohio
Ohio's Frontier -- Part 6

Western Reserve

In my last article I tried to explain how Connecticut had acquired the
frontier land of The Western Reserve and to whom the land belonged
to,and how it was divided, in which the Connecticut Land Compay was
formed. Its purpose being to support Connecticuts public schools.

By September 2, 1795, the action was fast, the eight man committee had
sold the land for $1,200,000. But they had not sold it in small plots.
Thirty five Connecticut men had banded together to buy the entire three
million acres. They did not pay cash, they had given bond, and a
mortgage against the property. Some of them of the 35, however, were
representing not only themselves but others, so that actually 57 men
were involved with the purchase.

These men did not plan to work together after the purchase was complete
as each intended to develop and resell his own portion. But before the
could do that, it was necessary to give each man his land. This was not
done by dividing from a map and was not assigned simply in appropriate
areas, but in the quality of the land.  

A system for distributing the land fairly was necessary, and before a
system could be invented, somone would have to go west and explore,
classify, and measure the lands. Someone must remove from the tracts the
Indians not party to or not acknowledging the Greenville Treaty.
Connecticut had sold the land to the purchasers on an as is basis.

The buyers had chosen seven men as their directors and from these
directors they appointed General Moses Cleaveland of Canterbury,
Connecticut, as superintendent of an exploration and surveying party.
Augustus Porter, as deputy superintendent and principal surveyor;
Theodore Shepard, as physician; Joshua Stow, commissary; Seth Pease, as
astronomer-surveyor; and Amos Spafford. John Holley, Richard Stoddard
and Moses Warren, surveyors.

These men in turn hired some 37 men for boatmen, chainmen, packmen,
polemen, blacksmith, cooks, axemen, and general labor.

They were to measure off the Reserve into townships, five miles square
in vertical ranges, with survey beginning at Pennsylvania's west border,
and numbered east to west from one to 24.

While Cleaveland led the party west, Seth Pease, the
astronomer-surveyor, traveled to Philadelphia to purchase special
instruments and get instructions from the distinguished astronomer,
David Rittenhouse. Pease had done considerable surveying for the large
land jobber, Oliver Phelps, who was also a director of the Connecticut
Land Company and its largest shareholder. But surveying in New England,
Pease had been working with existing boundary lines and corners, while
out on the Connecticut Western Reserve, there was not a mark on the land
save  square of blazes outlining the salt lands purchased by Moses
Warren, and those marks related to nothing. So Pease had to start with
the stars.

If the party was fortunate, they might find
the western boundary of Pennsylvania well marked, but they would have to
check it, and there had been talk that Mr. Ludlow, who had laid it off
many years before, had favored Pennsylvania some.

In 1796, there was no settlement at Buffalo or Black Rock, nor any
between the mouth of the Cuyahoga and the Ohio River. Erie was the
nearest settlement to the mouth of the Cuyahoga. 

Now the map that Cleaveland was using was made by John Heckwelder, an
Indian Missionary. It was quite accurate in relating the Cuyahoga to
lake Erie and shaping the shoreline. Otherwise it was nearly blank. In a
paper which included the map, Heckwelder, had written, 
" Cujahaga will hereafter be a place of great importance."

It is my admission that Historians dismiss Moses Cleaveland kindly and
lightly. he made no ringing pronouncemets, fought no wars, and once a
city had been amed for him, went back to Connecticut and stayed.
Historian accustomed to documenting the actions of soldiers and
statesmen, are not always accustomed to evaluating a suberb executive.
Moses Cleaveland was that.

His assignments was not to settle in the west, but to survey 120 miles
of it accurately, and then bring his men home safely. Few have noticed
that in doing these jobs for the Connecticut Land Company, Cleaveland
was also required to extinguish the Indian titles as he proceeded. He
performed that major and very ticklish chore smoothly and at a good
price, gaining not only title but good relations. If it may be said that
his deal with the Indians was a little too canny for good grace, it must
be added that he stuck strictly to the terms and bounderies and forced
all other white men to do likewise. He faced a strike on the part of his
crew, and handled it in a way to give advantage to the men without
damaging the Connecticut Land Company. 

Moses Cleaveland graduated from Yale in law and after two years accepted
a Captaincy in the sappers and miners in te Army of the United States.
He resigned to enter the Connecticut Legislature and was later appointed
general officer in the Fifth U.S. Brigade. He was a heavily muscled man,
dark in complexion that he was frequently taken for Indian by Indians,
especially when dressed in his usually forest stained clothes.

While Cleaveland had made his satisfactory bargain with the Indians at
Conneaut, the surveyors set out to find the west boundary of
Pennsylvania, finding it not hard. The boundary monuments had been well
preserved, and because the Penns had cut such a wide path through the
timber on the border, even the second growth identified it clearly. From
the diaries of the surveyors, they were quite impressed to locate the
first marker. The plan was to move south on this boundary to the 41st
parallel, then run their own southern boundary west from it for 120
miles. Seth Pease, the party's astronomer, who was responsibe for the
instruments, made use of the trip south over the Pensylvania border to
check the variation in his compass.

At the 41st parallel, the party ran the Western Reserve's south line,
not the full 120 miles, but just far enough to give them a line in which
to get started on a few vertical range lines. They split into four
crews, then drove these range lines north to the lake, but soon became
concerned about the disparity in their compasses. Were they converging
seriously as they went north was their concern. they would not know
until they ran their parallels , which would slice the ranges into
square townships.

While the surveyors woried about this, Moses Cleaveland, who made good
use of his limited manpower, left a supply installation at Conneaut,
Elijah Gunn and Joshua Stow, while he took th rest of the party west
along the coastline by boat to find the Cuyahoga River.

He had several reasons. First, he anticipated that he should establish
the headquarters for the region on its banks. Second, Cuyahoga was about
in the middle of his 120 mile Western Reserve. Third, it was officially
the western boundary of the entire United States. He should demonstrate
to the Indians that would go to the east bank of it exactly, and would
not cross it, so he established his storehouse for supplies on the east
bank. Job Stiles was in charge of it.
While he was exploring the Cuyahoga valley and establishing a
headquarters, Cleaveland planned the area.

The four surveying crews completed running the four vertical ranges and
began now to run parallels to slice the ranges into townships exactly
five miles square. However, as the surveyors cut their way through the
forest, they found the tops of the townships were not exactly five miles
wide. Those compass variations which had worried Pease and Holley were
making the north-south lines converge and diverge. Now these small
diffeneces in the size of townships at the south end of this wide land
would not be serious, of course, but  as the surveyors worked their way
north to the Lake Erie, the differences would increase. How bad would
they be to the tops? So they continued the survey.

Back in Connecticut there were growing interest in the inaccuracy. The
Heckwelder map of the Cuyahoga country, now being used by Moses
Cleaveland, showed about three-million acres in the Western Reserve.

But there was extant another map of the area made by an explorer named
Lewis Evans in 1755. This was a much more exciting map, a more
promotional map. It placed the Cuyahoga River with accuracy, the
Portage, and the Tascarawas. It showed the salt springs near Youngstown.
Perhaps then, Evans map was equally accurate in other matters. Mr. Evans
map showed Lake Erie running more nearly east and west and less of a
southwest slant to it, and this meant less water and more land. Possibly
there were a lot more than three million acres in the Western Reserve.
Suddenly the men of the Connecticut Land Company keenly interested in
map collecting. 

They found another map made by another man, named Henry Popple, made
about 1730. It showed Lake Erie much larger, but again set squarely east
west in the continent and not cutting an enormous bay out of the Western
Reserve.

So while the Moses Cleaveland surveying party was rapidly becoming
heartsick in the west from ague, hunger, dysentery, and low pay, the men
then were beginning to wonder why they had accepted this work at three
dollars a week., the 57 stockholders were impatient for the men to
return with completed survey. A small splinter group of these 57 were
getting a special flinty eyed look of greed. They began to feel they had
bought far more than three million acres.

Then they unrolled an old map made by Thomas Hutchins, a map by the
highly regarded surveyor, later to become the national geographer. His
map was believed to be quite accurate, and,  as they studied it, they
found again that Lake Erie did not tilt so sharply as Heckwelder had
mapped it. They began to believe there was not only land in excess of
the three million acres, but vastly in excess.

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To be continued in part 7.