OHIO STATEWIDE FILES OH-FOOTSTEPS Mailing List Issue 181 *********************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net/ *********************************************************************** OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest Volume 01 : Issue 181 Today's Topics: #2 Fw: Know Your Ohio -- Ohio -- The ["MaggieOhio" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <010d01c14c4d$7a4acdc0$0300a8c0@local.net> Subject: Fw: Know Your Ohio -- Ohio -- The Frontier -- Part 1 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- From: "Darlene & Kathi kelley" Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E.Kelley Sept 30, 2001 *********************************************** Historcal Collections of Ohio Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley Ohio -- The Frontier Part 1 *********************************************** Ohio -- The Frontier Part 1 The history of Ohio is the story of its people. Its early years were shaped by courageous Men and Women, the best that New England had to offer. The ability to swing an ax, outwit the cunning Indian, bring down game with a trusty rifle, and maintain equilibrium in spite of potent raw whiskey, proved the mettle of the frontiersman. From the trees of the forest, he built his cabin home, fashioned its furnishings and utensils, and secured his fuel. Having laboriously cleared a parcel of land and planted it with seeds from his homeland, a meager crop of essential foods and grains, would result if the weather was favorable. Nothing was wasted, out of necessity, as the fontiersman had resourcefulness and put everything to use. There was work for every member of the household. Clothing was the product of the spinning wheel or was made of the hide of an animal. Grain was pounded into meal before the advent of the grist-mill. Tallow candles and whale oil lamps furnished illumination. Salt was a luxury that either came from Onondaga or from Pittsburg, and sold for $20.00 a barrel. It was soon found that it could be secured at the salt springs, nine miles west of Youngstown. It was made by boiling down the saline waters. Wild honey and maple sugar was a great blessing to the homemaker. Indian tribes, reluctantly, gave up their lands to Ohio. At the opening of the decade, the Western Reserve became established legally, and shortly afterward became the State of Ohio. The new proprietors assumed the responsibility for their real estate purchases in the reserve. Trails became widened to accompany clumsy wagons making their way into the frontier. Mail service was inaugurated bringing the outside world a little bit closer to Ohio. The port on the Cuyahoga was officially opened launching Cleveland's shipbuilding industry. The Birth of Ohio -- To understand the origins of Ohio, we must go back over 200,000 years ago, when 3/4 of Ohio lay thick under a sheet of ice a mile thick. Vast glaciers covered much of North America. Eventually the ice field melted away, leaving hills and valleys. rivers and small lakes, and a clear evidence of natural advantages that played an important part in the march of civilization. These glaciers helped to shape the Great Lakes, a mighty influence upon Ohio's growth and progress. They were responsible for the natural setting of the Erie canal through the Mohawk Valley, and for the Portage Lakes that largely determined the location of the Ohio Canal. Another heritage was fertile soil that made Ohio surpassingly rich in agriculturial products. Discoveries have indicated that men lived in Ohio during the glacial period, evidence found in the form of stone impliments and other relics left in terraces formed by the glaciers. The advent of the mound builders, a later race, is variously placed between six and twelve centuries ago. Their mysterious entrance into history and their veiled exit from human records are matters that research has been unable to explain. Ohio has many evidences of their early civilization in the form of earthern mounds built for various purposes. Villiage sites, fortifications, and burial grounds have been found. Relics, consisting of tools, utensils, and fabrics have also been found. With the coming of the red man, the wilderness that became Ohio was a hunting ground of migrating, warfaring tribes. In the North, the most prominent were the Wyandots, Huron, Ottawas, Neutral Nation, Andastes, Iroquois, and Eries, for whom Lake Erie was named. The Eries developed great power, and gained control of the Southeren shore of the Lake from Sandusky Bay to the site of Buffalo. Their kin, the Iroquois, however, became their bittter enimies, and organized smaller tribes into the mighty Five Nations to oppose them. In the middle of the seventeenth century came a merciless war and the Iroquois. with their allies, superior in numbers, practically exterminated the Eries, to become masters of Northeastern Ohio. Early in the eighteenth century, the Five Nations became the Six Nations when the Tuscarora came North. The Cuyahoga River was the boundry line between the shores of Lake Erie, finding customers among venturious French and English traders. Among the early Missionaries in 1772, was Dr David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder, who were Moravan missionaries, and built the Gnadenhutten and Schoenbrunn villages for friendly Christian Indians on the Tuscarawas River. The ninety inhabitants were brutally murdered or massacred in 1782 by irresponible whites, and acts of revenge by furious Indians of several tribes followed. Hoping to establish a new colony, and believing that the bitter conflicts were over, Zeisberger and Heckewelder founded a settlement called Pilgerruh, meaning Pilgram's Rest, in May, 1786 near the junction of the Cuyahoga River and Tinker's Creek. A chapel and log cabins were built and a few of the residents engaged in agriculture. Indians and hostile whites interfered and the new project became abandoned. The Moravians left a map and a discription of the area which has been housed and preserved by the Western Reserve Historical Society. The Indians were not the sole claimants of Northeastern Ohio. The Cabots, who stumbled against Newfoundland's bleak shore. led England to claim North America. The French, because of their explorations and discoveries, considered themselves the rightful owners. Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia had vague claims under early charters, granted by English Kings. These monarchs, through geographical ignorance or political expediency, made their gifts with little consideration for boundry lines, and often one King gave what his predecessor had already given. In 1662, the State of Connecticut persuaded Charles II of England. whose knowledge of liqueur was said to have been greater than his understanding of geography, granted her a vast territory of western land, for her questionable title deed. It lay between the parallels which bounded the State, and extended from sea to sea. Ownership was a confused issue and was settled only after the thirteen States had agreed to relinguish disputed lands to the Federal Government so that they might be admitted to the Confederation as new states. Connecticut waived part of her claim, on Sept 14, 1786 and reserved a tract of land in which became northeastern Ohio as compensation for her comparatively small size. This area became known as the Western Reserve. It extended southward from the Lake to the forty first parallel of North latitude, and continued westward 120 miles from the Pennslvania line. It was called New Connecticut. The Ordinance of 1787, passed in July by the Congress of Confederattion, provided the machinery for government in the Northwestern Territory. This vast area. appended to the Thirteen States, was originally bounded by the Ohio River on the south, the Mississippi on the west, the Great Lakes on the North and Pennsylavania and Virginia on the east. The Ordinance was a significant achievement, setting the form by which subsequent western territories were created and later admitted into the Union, marking the beginnings of western expansion and increasing the powers of the Federal Government. A scholarly soldier, Arthur St.Clair was chosen governor, and the seat of government was established at Marietta, Ohio, on July 15, 1788. Slavery was prohibited within the Territory. ********************************************** Con't in part 2-- ______________________________ ------=_NextPart_000_065E_01C152C2.3AE05D00 Content-Type: message/rfc822; name="Fw_ Know Your Ohio -- Ohio -- The Frontier -- Part 2.eml" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Fw_ Know Your Ohio -- Ohio -- The Frontier -- Part 2.eml" X-Message: #3 Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 16:44:10 -0400 From: "MaggieOhio" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <010e01c14c4d$7a865020$0300a8c0@local.net> Subject: Fw: Know Your Ohio -- Ohio -- The Frontier -- Part 2 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- From: "Darlene & Kathi kelley" Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley Sept 30, 2001 *********************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley Ohio-- The Frontier Part 2 *********************************************** Ohio -- The Frontier Part 2 In May, 1792, Connectict set apart 5000,000 acres of the western end of the Reserve for the benefit of citizens who had suffered losses by fire or otherwise during the Revolution, and the area was commonly known as the " Firelands " ( Erie and Huron Counties ). the remaining tract of about 3,000,000 acres was offered for sale by the General Assembly in May, 1795, and the proceeds provided Connecticut with a permanent school fund. Citzens of the State, organized as the Connecticut Land Company, purchased the unsurveyed Western Reserve lands, sight unseen, for $ 1,200,000 or 40 cents an acre, the individual members receiving quitclaim deeds. There were forty nine original shareholders, who gave mortgages for ther interests, payment to become due in five years. The orignal shareholders; Joseph Howland and Daniel L. Coit, $ 30, 461. Elias Morgan ------------------$ 51,402 Caleb Atwater -----------------$ 22,846 Daniel Holbrook ---------------$ 8,750 Joseph Williams ---------------$ 15,231 William Love --------------------$ 10,500 William Judd --------------------$ 16,256 Elisa Hyde and Uriah Tracy --$ 57,400 James Johnson -----------------$ 30,000 Samuel Mather, Jr. ------------$ 18,461 Ephraim Kirby, Elijah Boardman, and Uriel Holmes, Jr. ----------$ 60.000 Samuel Griswold ----------------$ 10,000 Oliver Phelps and Gideon Granger, Jr -----------------------$ 80,000 William Hart ----------------------$ 30,462 Henry Champion II --------------$ 85,675 Asher Miller -----------------------$ 34,000 Robert C. Johnson --------------$ 60,000 Ephraim Root --------------------$ 42,000 Nehemiah Hubbard, Jr ---------$ 19,039 Solomon Cowles -----------------$ 10,000 Oliver Phelps ---------------------$ 168,185 Asahel Hathaway ----------------$ 12,000 John Caldwell and Pegleg Sanford ----------------------------$ 15,000 Timothy Burr --------------------- $ 15,231 Luther Loomis and Ebenezer King, Jr.-----------------------------$ 44,318 William Lyman, John Stoddard, and David King --------------------$ 24,730 Moses Cleaveland ----------------$ 32,000 Samuel P. Lord --------------------$ 14,092 Roger Newberry, Enoch Perkins and Jonathan Brace ---------------$ 38,000 Ephraim Starr -----------------------$ 17,415 Syvanus Griswold ------------------$ 1,683 Joseb Stocking and Joshua Stow -----------------------------------$ 11,423 Titus Street --------------------------$ 22,846 James Bull, Aaron Olmstead and John Wyles ---------------------$ 30,000 Pierpoint Edwards ------------------$ 60,000 For convenience in business transactions, the interests of the land company were placed in the hands of three trustees -- John Caldwell, John Morgan, and Johathan Brace. On the board were Oliver Phelps, Henry Champion II, Moses Cleaveland, Samuel W. Johnson, Ephraim Kirby, Samuel Mather, Jr., and Roger Newberry, all men of prominence in their home state. Ephraim Root became secretary. It was decided by the investors that the Indian claims should be extinguished and that 16,000 acre townships should be speedily laid out and surveyed in lots suitable for sale and settlement. A sawmill and a gristmill were to be erected in each townships at company expense to attract settlers. General Moses Cleaveland, a shareholder, and a man of courage and experience, was selected as superintendent of the Western Reserve surveying party, He was commissioned on May 12, 1796. Vested in the General were broad powers to act and transact business, to make contracts, and to draw on the company treasury as the necessity required. He was a man of action,and early in June his officers and men had been organized for the expedition to Schenectady. The surveying party included; General Moses Cleaveland as superintendent, Augustus Porter, principal surveyor and deputy superintendent, Seth Pease, astronomer and surveyor, Amos Spafford, John Milton Holley, Richard M. Stoddard and Moses Warren as surveyors, Joshua Stow as commissary, and Theodore Shepard as Physician. Employees of the company consisted of the following; Joseph Tinker as boatsman, George Proudfoot, Samuel Forbes, Stephen Benton, Samuel Hungerford, Samuel Davenport, Amzi Atwater, Elisha Ayres, Norman Wilcox, George Gooding, Samuel Agnew, David Beard, Titus V. Munson, Charles Parker, Nathaniel Doan, James Halket, Olney F. Rice, Samuel Barnes, Daniel Shuley, Joseph M'Intyre, Francis Gray, Amos Sawtel, Amos Barber, William B. Hall. Asa Mason, Michael Coffin, Thomas Harris, Timothy Dunham, Shadrach Benham, Wareham Shepard, John Briant, Joseph Landon, Ezekiel Morly, Luke Hachet, James Hamilton, John Lock, and Stephen Burbank. Cleaveland led the first company survey party to the Reserve in 1796 and negotiated a treaty with the Iroquios whereby the tribe gave up claim to all lands east of the Cuyahoga River. He also founded the settlement of Cleveland on tis trip. The surveys of the Reserve took the company several years to complete, but Cleaveland returned to Connecticut later that year and never returned to Ohio. Settlers were slow to purchase Reserve lands. The company had not made provisions for education within the Reserve, and other land was more conveniently available in western New York. Other States also claimed the territory; the title of the land and the right to govern it were disputed. In 1800, a congressional commitee led by John Marshall reported " As the purchasers of the land commonly called the Connecticut Reserve hold their title under the State of Connecticut, they cannot submit to the government established by the United States in the Northwest Territory and the jurisdiction of Connecticut could not be extended over them without much inconvenience." Settlers ignored the authority of the governor of the Northwest Territory, while Connecticut refused company pleas that the State exercise the authority, and territorial rights ceded in 1786. On April 28, 1800, President Adams signed the " Quieting Act," in which the U.S. gave Connecticut claim to the Reserve so that the company's land titles be quieted and guarenteed. The bill assumed that Connecticut would then grant the U.S. jurisdiction over the Reserve; that was accomplished on July 10, 1800, when the Western Reserve became Trumbull County, a part of the Northwest Territory. The company divided its lands in drafts in 1796,1802,1807, and 1809. In each draft, some townships were subdivided and sold to benefit the entire company, while others were divided among company proprietors themselves. The three trustees were responsible for making the property deeds. During the early years, slow land sales forced the company to offer settlers moderate rates, free bonus land for running grist and sawmills, and other incentives. Because of company management, not many of the original proprietors made profits. Many of these proprietors had not moved to the Reserve and the company never opened a sales office in Cleveland or anywhere else in the Reserve. The 1809 annual report on the Connecticut School Fund showed that a large amount of interest on the company's debt was unpaid and that the collateral of the original debt was not safe. The debtors, themselves, also were scattered in different States. The company was dissolved with the last draft on Jan 5,1809, when all remaining land was divided among the proprietors. Where to find the Records; From 1800, until officially organized on June 1,1810, the area of Cuyahoga County was part of Trumbell County, and some early records may be found in the office of the Trumbell County Recorder in the Western Reserve Draft Book, pages 5-73. The Litchfield ( Connecticut ) Historical Society has the original Connecticut Land Compnay proceedings. The Connecticut State Library in Hartford has photostatic copies of Western Reserve Deeds 1800-1807 and the proceedngs of the Connecticut Company. The Western Reserve Historical Society also has a fairly complete collection of these early records. After 1843 there was little change in the county bounderies. Now to the story -- Accompanying the party were Elijah Gunn and his wife Anna, who were to have charge of the company stores at Conneaut; Job Stiles and his wife, Tabitha Cumi; Nathan Chapman and Nathan Perry, who provided the surveyors with fresh meat and traded with the Indians. Thirteen horses and some cattle were transported with the expedition. Employees were enlisted in the company service, ( like as they were in the Army for two years, provided it took that long..) After a hazardous journey down swift streams and through uncharted wilderness, the surveyors reached Buffalo Creek on June 22. Here General Cleaveland held diplomatic meetings with the Mohawk and Seneca representatives of the mighty Six Nations. After shrewed persuasion, the Indians relinquished their claim to the lands east of the Cuyahoga River in exchange for 500 pounds New York currency, two beef cattle, and 100 gallons of whiskey. Proceedng westward on June 27, the expedition reached Conneaut Creek on the evening of July 4. Raising the new flag of the new nation, the place was christened Port Independence, with a gunfire salute. Thus Independence Day was celebrated for the first time on the Reserve. There they enjoyed a feast of Pork and beans, six spirited toasts were drunk, the first three being proposed to the President of the United States, the State of Connecticut, and the Connecticut Land Company. The erection of a cabin headquarters called " Stow's Castle " in honor of the commissary manager, was begun the next day. It was a nondescript structure of " " uncouth appearence such as to provoke the laughter of the builders and the ridicule of the Indians." Here Stow retaliated by introducing everyone to a delicious dish of rattlesanke meat, Much to everyones surprise, they were surprised that it tasted much " like a good chicken, and no one got sick." General Cleaveland's preparation for permanent settlement stirred the Massasagoes, an Indian tribe in the vicinity, and they summoned him for an explanation. After considerable discussion, an understanding was reached, with the assurance that they would not be disturbed in their possessions. The pipe of friendship and peace was presented to Cleaveland by Chief Paqua in exchange for wampum, trinkets, and whiskey, valued at about $ 25.00 to seal the agreement. This friendly meeting forestalled future requests for charity and gratuities, especially for " fire water." The land company employees having separated into groups to expedite the surveying of the Western Reserve, Cleaveland and his party journeyed westward on the lake in an open bateau. With him were Commissary Stow and the Stileses, and a hardy men numbering a boatload. Historians claim that the explorers started up the Chagrin River by mistake, believing it to be the Cuyahoga, and discovering their error, their leader named the River Chagrin. This story is however, discredited by the maps found that was made before the Revolution, on which the name Chagrin appears. There is also reports that the early French traders named the stream Chagrin after having suffered a misfortune near its mouth. However the probable source of the name is Shagrin or Shaguin an Indian name meaning " clear water." The final stage of the Historic journey to the mouth of the Cuyahoga River was uneventful and Moses Cleaveland little dreamed that he was nearing the site of a city, that was destined to achieve greatness. ********************************************* to be continued in part 3. -------------------------------- End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V01 Issue #181 *******************************************