OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Ohio -- The Frontier (Part 7)
***********************************************************************
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 7
Western Reserve 
Article by S.L. Kelly
Plains Dealer
***********************************************

Know Your Ohio
Ohio's Frontier -- Part 7

Western Reserve

The members of the Connecticut Land Company were largely men with land
sense, but one among them was an experienced land developer, Oliver
Phelps. He had operated on a large scale in new England and on the
Genesee in New York State. He was one of the largest single shareholder
in the Connecticut Land Company and he believed in it. He believed in
the existence of the excess land in the Reserve.  So he and a handful of
others including General Hull, the same Hull of the brilliant
Revolutionary War record ( later to be dimmed by his surrender of
Detroit in 1812 ), formed the Excess Company. 

The Excess Company offered the Connecticut Land Company, for a fixed
price all land which might be found in the Reserve in excess of the
three million acres and the Firelands. This proposal came before the
three man executive committee of the board of directors and was accepted
by them, as might be expected, with Oliver Phelps being on the approval
committee. With the proposal accepted, and with the powerful real estate
name of Phelps connected with it. Excess Company stock was in big
demand.

Pressure to cross the Indian line and explore the excess hit the
surveyors, who were slowing down from sickness and disappointment.
Fighting fever and hunger, they felt little loyaly to them in the east,
who were in a hurry to know how much excess land they had bought.

General Moses Cleaveland had held scrupulously to his promise to the
Indians not to cross the Cuyahoga, but now his company wanted to push a
survey west to the 120 mile limit in order to discover the shape of the
shoreline and the amount of excess land they owned.

Therefore, Augustus Porter, second in command of the survey pary,
hastened his survey of the fourth range line from the 41st parallel to
the lake, and then was excused from running the parallels to create the
townships. He hurried to the stone marker at the northwest corner of
Pennsylvannia and began his traverse at the lake front, planning to go
all the way to the end of the 120 miles -to make an accurate shoreline
map which to show the quantity of excess.

As Porter and his crew began this trek west, other crews were suddenly
becoming disturbed about the parallel deviation in their north south
lines. They were not so worried about it as they had been before, cause
they now had bigger worries. Men were sick so frequently that the
surveyors could not have full field crews, some were dying. It was
necessary to take men off the surveying crew to care for the sick. So
those crews dragged themselves through the forest. Running line, which
ordinarily took one day now took four.

At this point the seldom chronicled executive duty of Moses Cleaveland
came into play. He deployed his men with great care to replace the sick,
and tryed to not overwork those who were able to drag themselves around.
He tried to get medicine. He obtained assistance for overworked Dr.
Sheppard, and he kept his eye on the calender to be sure to get the
group out of the area before snowfall.

The men who were running the horizontals consecutively from south to
north now skipped a few and moved north to see how much actual
convergence there was in the meridians, because of compass variations.

To their surprise, they found the variations which were a matter of feet
just 67 miles south on the south line had now grown to variations of a
half mile and more. Some townships were only four and a half miles wide
at the top while others were five and a half miles. This meant that some
of the northern farms were going to be pie-shaped, and there would be
work for attorneys for a hundred years to come.

But the men were tired, and they continued the survey, leaving the
slanting lines behind them. They were working as long as they could stay
on their feet, and now were grumbling.

Meanwhile, Augustus Porter pressed his traverse vigorously. He had
reached the mouth of the Cuyahoga, and he was disappointed. He had
positively established that there was a slashing southwest angle to the
Lake Erie shore. There was no excess this far. But perhaps west of the
Cuyahoga the shoreline would again sweep north.

Cleaveland's agreement with the Five Nations Indians prescribed that
surveyors would not cross the river. But Porter crossed the Cuyahoga,
and pushed his line along the Lake shore heading for Sandusky Bay, to
the point where his calculated westings told him he was due north of the
west end of the 120 mile length of the Connecticut Western Reserve.

He almost reached that end. His later report to the directors explained
he was not able to run the west line completely, on account of the
Indian title not being extinguished. But he explained that he came close
enough that by a simple map exercise, he could calculate the acreage at
3,450,753 acres, including the Firelands which did not belong to the
Connecticut Land Company. 

Instead of reporting an excess, he was therefore reporting a shortage.
We can see the man trying to come at least back up to the starting
point, like any businessman at the end of a bad quarter. He added that
this figure did not include the islands of Lake Erie and Sandusky
Bay,that was supposed to exceed the islands in quantity about 30,000
acres.

Now word filtered back to the Excess Company and they refused to believe
it.
They stated " Why the errors in Porter's survey are too Massive! We
already know the compasses are not agreeing by what's happening east of
the Cuyahoga. They say the men are getting very careless from fatigue.
they don't stretch the line tight, and in getting around the swamps, we
hear they are just making the offsets by eye."

The Excess Company now challenged the survey even before the report was
made to them. They requested a mathemtics professor from Yale to be
ready to audit the field notes of the surveyors.

While irritation was setting in at home in Connecticut, out on the
survey, outrage was setting in. These men had not signed on to write a
piece of frontier history, they signed on only for wages. But the new
land forced men to heroism and even death, as the ague fever continued
to grow. They began to call this fever the Cuyahoga fever, acually it
was a form of malaria and was carried airborn from the swamps and
mosquito ridden grasses. It was thinning the ranks. It made the crews
truculent.

Cleaveland saw that he was not going to finish by snow fall, and that he
would not be able to keep these men alive through the winter. He decided
on expediency, he would settle and complete the survey on those six
townships which were not to be parceled out among the stockholders but
were reserved to the Connecticut Lad Company, which would sell them to
raise funds to continue further surveying. 

While Porter continued his study of the lake shoreline, Pease, Spafford,
and Stoddard were to run the short laterals in the northeast corner,
while Holley's crew brought north more range lines. The men were eating
rattlesnake, bear, muskrat, and rabbit.

Cleaveland was trying to get the headquarters city survey complete. The
men were trying to go home. So there came the day when 18 of them
approached Cleaveland with an ultimatum, either more money or they would
pull out for Connecticut. This tested Cleaveland's leadersip severely.
He had no more allowable budget, but the Connecticut Land Company did
have land to burn. Cleaveland therefore selected one township near the
heart of the Western Reserve. He pointed to it on a map, and talked to
the men about the hordes of immigrants who would follow to buy land,
about the city which would grow at the mouth of the Cuyahoga, which " I
believe will grow to nearly the size of Old Windham, Connecticut."

He told the men that the Connecticut Land Company would grant in fee
simple, one equal share in the township to each member of the crew who
would agree to the following;
1 -- By 1797 ( the following year ) there must be 11 people resident in
the township.
2 -- In 1798, they must settle 18 more families on it, each to clear
five acres.
3 -- In 1799, there must be 12 more families, who must have eight acres
in wheat.
4 -- In 1800, 41 families must be in the township.

Forty one of the men signed these articles, seven abstained. The signers
divided the township with survey lines, and being surveyors, they named
the township in honor of the father of geometry. -- Euclid.

***********************************************

to be continued in part 8