OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Gen. Parsons [2]
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Darlene E. Kelley
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
June 28, 1999
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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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Part 2--
Gen. Parsons Surveyed Western Reserve

North of the Ohio--

     Gen. Samuel Parsons, the most outstanding figure in the very early
history of the Western Reserve, after his career in the Revolutionary
War, was several times elected a member of Connecticut's Legislature. A
great movement was afoot to open and settle lands north of the Ohio
River. But the Wyandots and Delawares on their big reservation,
extending from the Cuyahoga to Toledo and 60 miles south of the lake,
were restless. The Shawnees along the Ohio and the Miami Valley at the
southwest were threatening war at the advance of the white man.
     On Sept.22,1785, congress appointed Parsons, the famous Gen. George
Rogers Clarke and Gen. Richard Butler, commissioners to extinguish
Indian claims to lands northwest of the Ohio River. On Oct.4, he left
his home in Middletown, passed Fort Pitt and at the last of the month,
began the lonely journey down the Ohio to the mouth of the Miami Valley
at the southwest where he reached his destination, Nov.13, and met his
fellow commissioners.

Signed Treaty--

     After a long wait the Shawnees appeared and on Feb.1,1786, eight of
their chiefs signed a treaty, drafted by Parsons, agreeing to live and
hunt in a wide western tract bordered by the Wabash. By midsummer, he
was home in Connecticut. A year later, Congress passed the Ordinance of
1787, creating the huge territory of the northwest, and on Oct.5th,
elected Arthur St.Clair Governor, and Samuel Parsons, with two others,
judges of the tract, which included the later states of Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin.
     In 1786, the Ohio Company was formed in Boston, an association
designed to enable Revolutionary soldiers to purchase lands of the
United States in the west, paying for them with their Continental
certificates received when discharged. On July 23, 1787, the same month,
the territory was created, and an act was passed allowing the Ohio
Company to purchase about 1,500,000 acres, facing the Ohio River, near
the southeast corner of the territory. Gen.'s Rufus Putnam and Parsons
were the leading promoters of the plan, directors of the Company and
large owners of the land.

Marietta--

     Plans were at once made to lay out Marietta on the Ohio, on the
east bank of the Muskingun, and the building of the large fort, Camp
Martius, begun. In May, 1788, Gen. Parsons arrived on the site, and on
July 15, took part in the inauguration of Gov. St. Claire, and soon
after, with the Governor and other judges began the civil and criminal
code which was to govern the territory. 
     In Oct. 1787, five months before his departure west to Marietta,
Parsons had been appointed by the State of Connecticut, to survey the
Western Reserve on the shore of the lake.  The commission reads that he
was to begin as early as possible, engage a reliable surveyor and
assistants. He was instructed to first locate the 41 degrees, parallel
of latitude, which was always designated as the southen border of the
Reserve, and which today runs about two and a quarter miles south of
Poland, then straight west almost through Seville in Medina County.  At
that junction of the   parallel with the Pennsylvania line, he was to
start north, following the State's border, setting up marks or monuments
at the end of every six English miles, until he came to Lake Erie.

Township Tiers--

     Parsons was to use these markers running six-mile wide
townshiptiers, westward. He was directed to "lay down the lake," on his
chart as " it truly is." In doing this, some of the northern tier lines
would be cut off by the southwest slant of the shore, and at the end of
every such broken line, he was to set a monument 
" by the lake."  At the mouth of the Cuyahoga," where it falls into Lake
Erie" he was to follow " the Indian line up to the head of said river,"
and from there take 
" the line of the Indian's land " to the south border of the Reserve.
What is meant by those lines must have been the center of the river and
the Portage, for the Indians were in complete possession of
Connecticut's tract west of the Cuyahoga, and remained so for a score of
years after, when their title was extinguished. Along this watery
western line of his survey, " monuments " were to be placed every six
miles, opposite those on the Pennsylvania line.

Six Miles Square--

      Townships were to be six miles square, and Parsons was directed to
survey six-mile ranges, beginning with Pennsylvania's border line and
continuing west until he had " laid out six tiers, or more." Did Gen.
Parsons make this survey of all lands east of the Cuyahoga, with its
giant townships, as he was ordered to do by the owner of the Reseve, the
State of Connecticut? Each contained 23,040 acres and were half the size
again of Moses Cleaveland, who was to partly lay out exactly the same
territory 10 years later. Research shows that he began it and then
stopped. It also shows that the part surveyed contained what were
thought to be valuable salt deposits. That a gigantic sale of these
particular lands was made to Parsons and associates; that this tract
remained untaxed for the next decade, during which time all sales
stopped on the Reserve.
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To be continued--