OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: The Real Settlement of Ohio [1] *********************************************************************** 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. *********************************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 May 30, 1999 ********************************************** 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 ********************************************** All the emigrants who started in Conncticut, and some of the others, ended up in a section of northern Ohio called the Connecticut Western Reserve. And it happened like this: During the Revolution, Connecticut towns made good targets for the British, whose main base was in New York City. The British fleet controlled the sea and often raided up the coast. Connecticut provided a lot of rebels' supplies, and supplies from all over New England passed through Danbury. Early in 1777, General Washington established a forage depot and hospital at Danbury. The British, who knew that Washington had to keep most of his troops in New Jersey to counter a move against Philadelphia, and who needed stores themselves, decided to attack it. They loaded six regiments, about 1,500 men, into transport ships off Manhatten, sailed up the East River and into Long Island Sound, stopped at Oyster Bay to board about 300 Loyalist American soldiers, sailed to Compo Beach on the Connecticut shore, and landed on the evening of April 25th. They marched that night and the next day, went through Weston, Redding, Bethel, met small resistance, and entered Danbury about three o'clock on the afternoon of Saturday, April 26th.1777. Most of the inhabitants had fled Comfort Hoyt had a house and store in the middle of town He was already prosperous and was at the age of twenty five. He began to load his goods into wagons and carts, but rebel officers came and requistioned them to move supplies from the hospital. His goods were thrown down. His wife, who was pregnant, hid her coin-silver spoons and other silver in the ashpit of the chimney. In the Episcopal church across the street, supplies for the Continental Army -- barrels of pork, beef, nails, saltpeter,and tar, hogsheads of biscuits, rum, and brandy were piled up to the gallery. Out of respect for the church of England, the British took the supplies out before burning them. Hot pork fat ran ankle deep in the street. The Brittish could find no wagons to carry the spoils, so they spent that afternoon and night burning-- five thousand pairs of shoes ad stockings, a thousand tents ad several marquees imported from France, medicine,Indian corn, hospital bedding, coffee and oats. maybe they marked crosses with a chunk of lime on houses belonging to Torries to spare them from burning; in any event, they did burn at least nineteen houses, including Comfort Hoyt's house and store. At eight o'clock the next morning, they marched out of town headed back to the seacoast. When the Hoyts returned to their home they found nothing standing but the chimney, the silver still safe in the ashpit. Near the ruin was their other remaining possession, a round low table the British Officers had set, in the meadow, to mix their drinks on. The family later said that when they found it its top was custed inch-deep in brandy and sugar. People who lost property petitioned the Connecticut legislature for reparation, and in June the legislature sent agents to meet with the sufferers and take statements. The legislature eventually accepted 186 claims from Danbury. The raid was so sucessful for the Brittish they later hit New Haven, Fairfield, New London, Groton, and Ridgefield-- the destruction escalated as the war went on. The Constinental Army could not spare troops to guard all landing points on the coast, and the British wanted to punish Connecticut for supporting the rebellion.As in Danbury, the sufferers afterwards submitted claims to the legislature; by the end of the war. the claims numbered more than 1,800. The legislature proposed to pay not in money but in Western land. As a colony, and then a state, Connecticut had never accepted the finality of her western boundary. She preferred to think that her territory extended in a strip between the 41st parallel and two minutes above the 42nd parallel --her northern and southern boundaries-- clear across the continent, as per her original charter from Charles ll. Conecticut Yankees had even vaultd intervening parts of New York and New Jersey to start colonies in what they considered their territory in Pennsylvania, causing all kind of trouble between that state and theirs. During the revolution, nearly 300 of those colonists in Susquehanna Valley were killed by a force of British, Torries, and Indians in one of the worst massacres of te war. After the war, when other states were giving up their Western Lands, Connecticut said she would yield all but a strip of the Ohio country 120 miles long and about 50 miles wide. She said she reserved this section for herself, which is how it got its name Western Reserve. Congress finally accepted this reserve, maybe because of the massacre, maybe because Conneticut was so persistant it was just easier to let her have her way. In 1792, Connecticut used half a million acres of this western land to pay the suffers' claims. ******************************************** ( continued in part 2 )