USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Annals of the Early Settlers Association of Cuyahoga County, number I > Part 10
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Nearly 400 years have passed since then. Twelve gener- ations only of mankind, but in that period the prondest.
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achievements of the race have been won. Men and women have passed away, generation after generation, but the race remains and continues in apparently immortal youth and vigor. Thus did America rise from the obscurity of the great unknown sea that rolled its untraveled waters between the two continents.
The history of the settlement of the Western Reserve is not so romantic, not so wonderful, but it too has its story of trial, adventure, suffering, and discovery, and deserves to be chronicled for future generations.
I accepted the invitation of your president to address you on this occasion, not because I have lived forty years in the county, and could thus be a member of the Early Settlers' Association of Cuyahoga County, but because I was requested to speak on a subject that has always possessed a charm to my mind that has made its study a pleasure.
Voyaging into this life from unknown seas, I was landed on the Western Reserve. Here I have always lived, and here, in all probability, I shall again take passage over other un- known seas to voyage to other worlds, yet to be discovered by us all.
Ohio has been conspicuous, of late years, in the history of the country, and the Western Reserve has been conspicuous in Ohio. Ohio is peculiarly situated. Its northern boundary is mostly in Lake Erie. Its southern boundary is the great river, 900 miles in length, flowing from the mountains of Pennsylvania to the great central valley of the Mississippi. After the war of the revolution, when this great Northwest
was an unbroken, and almost unexplored, wilderness, this great river was the natural highway from the Atlantic States to the West and South. Railroads were then undreamed. Steam, that great giant and slave of modern civilization, was like the sleeping beauty in the fairy tales, awaiting the advent of some knight who should penetrate the thickets of ignorance and wake it into life. Boats moving with the current or propelled
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by oars, were the easiest means of travel and transportation. The only other methods of penetrating into the country were the ax to cut a road, and a team of horses or oxen to pull and push the way. Hence this mighty river, sweeping onward be- tween full banks, overhung with dense foliage, was the nat- ural highway for traffic and travel, and to the survivors of the revolution it had all the mystery and romance of the river Nile. The Ohio, the beautiful river, laid the wand of en- chantment on the imaginations of the men who had survived the long war for liberty and independence, and when, at length, by the terms of peace, all this vast continent of the Northwest, this scat and nursery of great States yet to be, was thrown open for settlement and occupation, the soldiers who had suffered for eight years, who came ont of the war for independence with nothing but wounds on their bodies and fiat dollars in their pockets, turned toward the great West with an inexpressible longing and hope that we to-day can scarcely imagine.
They, therefore, came through the wilderness-the Puri- tans of New England and the cavaliers of Virginia, and blended in years into that community of people now consti- tuting the Commonwealth of Ohio. To each Ohio offered ad- vantages of climate, fertility of soil, and mineral resources that were boundless, and that have resulted in that immense and varied industry which characterizes the State. The pio- neer to Ohio did not come on a railroad, to be landed on a farm already cleared and outlined by a furrow, with all the luxuries of civilization at the nearest station. You could track his way through the forests only by the blaze of the ax on the trees, by the struggle with panther or bear, or by the treacherous Indian ambush. No canned fruits and meats beguiled him on the way to his new home. No prairie, with its stumpless, undulating sea of verdure, greeted him on his arrival. No new town or village sprang, as if by magic, into existence, at the nearest railway station, to offer ready oppor-
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tunity to exchange his corn and wheat and dairy products for calicoes and groceries, for silks and gewgaws, or for any of the luxuries of modern civilization. No great railroad corpora- tion searched him out in Europe and carried him at a cheap rate across an ocean and a continent, to be landed among his friends, fully equipped to break the soil.
The modern pioneer to Kansas and Nebraska, to Dakota and Texas, has his tribulations and sorrows, no doubt; his sickness, poverty, drouth, famine and fever, but still his lot is one of ease and comfort compared with that of the pioneer to Ohio, who traveled for weeks and months with an ox team, to be landed at last in an unbroken forest, to fell and clear which was the sturdy task of ten or twenty years to come. Want, anxiety, fear of the treacherous savage, the sorest of toil and privation, were the daily companions and experiences of the men and women who left the Atlantic slope to build them new homes and altars in this great State.
I shall not attempt to-day to tell the story of Ohio and its settlement. It requires volumes; but I will briefly recall to you men and women who compose this Old Settlers' Associa- tion of Cuyahoga County, the story of the settlement of this little "neck in the woods." I cannot feast you on personal recollections and memories of Cleveland and Cuyahoga coun- ty, as did those venerable pioneers, Rice, Spalding, Til- den, Williamson, Foot, Allen, Addison, Merwin, and Mar- shal at your last year's feast of reason and flow of soul. I may possibly live to be so ancient a-pioneer that another gen- eration may be interested in my personal experiences and recollections of Cleveland, but now I can only hope to repro- duce something for the annals of your Society which may have a slight historical value. I must beg your patience while I rehearse so much of the history as will give my sketch any value as a historical contribution to your Society, and in doing so must go back with you into the eighteenth century.
England and France for centuries contested for the owner-
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ship of the entire region west of the Alleghanies. The Eng- lish, under Cabot, had explored the Atlantic coast from New- foundland southward, claimed and settled the Atlantic coast, never doubting but that the South Sea or Pacific Ocean lay but a few hundred miles west of the Chesapeake and Dela- ware. On the other hand, the French, having discovered the mouths of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi, laid claim to all the unknown country drained by these mighty rivers and their tributaries. And so their traders and missionaries, by way of Canada and the great lakes on the north, and by way of the Mississippi and Ohio on the south, had pushed their way for centuries into this great Northwest, until, by 1750, they had girdled the colonies of the Atlantic slope with a belt of mili- tary forts and auxiliary outposts that actually threatened to hem in the English to the region east of the Alleghanies. The French held all of Canada and had their forts at Buffalo, at Erie, Sandusky, Pittsburgh, and other points in the West.
The English trader and colonist had pushed west of the Alleghanies to the Ohio and its tributaries. Thus the two leading powers of Europe, England and France, were brought face to face in Ohio. The desire to trade with the savage brought the Englishman to the West. The desire to trade with the Indian and save his soul within the embrace of the mother Church, brought the Frenchman.
This condition of things could not continue long without a conflict between the two great civilizations represented by the colonists who had come from England, and the traders and missionaries sent from France. The French claimed all the territory west of the Alleghanies, and had erected their forts at Buffalo, Erie, and on the Alleghany, with a view of hemming in the English to the Atlantic slope. And it is a remarkable fact in the history of Ohio and the great North- west, that the English, as a compromise, offered to surrender to the French all the territory west of Pennsylvania and north of the Ohio, they retaining the territory east of that line.
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But the French were confident of their right to push the English beyond the mountains, and of their ability to main- tain their hold on the great West. The Indians were their friends, their forts were numerous, and they alone had be- come intimately acquainted with the vast wilderness that lay west of the mountains, clear to the Mississippi and beyond, and so they refused. The imagination alone can attempt to determine what would have been the result on the future of the race, had this great Northwestern and Southern Empire passed under the control, permanently, of the French. Here in Cleveland the nasal twang of the French might have been heard, instead of its being resonant with Yankees from New Hampshire and Connecticut. Anglo-Saxon civilization might have struck root only in the stubborn soil of New England, and a vast French Empire been erected in the valley of the Ohio and Mississippi. But this was not possible. France is not a colonizing nation. From her loins spring no such mighty nations as from the Anglo-Saxon race. And had she then assented to the terms of compromise, it would not have been many years before the colonies, having achieved their own independence, would have pushed the Frenchman west- ward to the South Sea, if room were needed for the expansion of the new nation. The great event of the eighteenth cen- tury, a bloody war, short, sharp and decisive, followed. The French were attacked in all their strongholds, and in a couple of years that vast, undeveloped empire, which they had been quietly creating in Canada and in the north and west parts of the United States, fell to pieces. In 1760 the war was ended. The English had captured the country between the Allegha- nies and the Mississippi, and had driven the French out of Canada. And so the great country east of the Mississippi came under English control, and of course, after the Ameri- can revolution, fell into the possession of the United States. So soon as peace was declared, in 1783, between England and her rebellious colonies, the United States took immediate
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measures to obtain perfect title to the Northwestern terri- tory, by getting concessions of land from the Indians. In 1785-6 treaties were concluded with the Six Nations and many western tribes, and in 1787 Congress passed the cele- brated ordinance which established a territorial government over Ohio and the other territory west to the Mississippi, and ordained that this vast country should forever be dedicated to freedom and free schools.
And now the old dispute between the colonies and the crown arose again. For a century Virginia and Connecticut had disputed as to their territorial limits. After the defeat of the French, and their expulsion from the territory west of Pennsylvania, the colonies began their contentions over this great empire of land. This dispute continued down to the revolution, and was only silenced by the guns at Lexington and Bunker Hill. After the revolution, the dispute was not with the crown, but with the new power that had emerged from the flames of war; the young republic that had just been born through the terrible throes and agonies of war; a nation among the nations. Subdued and chastened by the sacrifices of the revolution, the colonies renewed the struggle for the possession of the mighty West, whose possibilities had just begun to dawn on the imaginations of the people.
And now let me direct your attention to the history and settlement of the Western Reserve. The claim of Connecticut was in conflict with that of Virginia. Virginia claimed, un- der a contract granted May 29th, 1609, by King James of England. This is the territory ceded by King James: "All those lands, countries and territories situated, lying and being in that part of America called Virginia, from the point of the eastern land called Cape or Point Comfort, all along to the sea west, to the northward 200 miles (and now notice carefully the description), all that space and circuit of land lying from the sea coast of the precinct aforesaid, up into the land, throughout, from sea to sea, west and northwest; and also all
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the islands lying within 100 miles along the coast of the both seas of the precinct aforesaid."
It will be seen from this description, the writer supposed that the Pacific Ocean or South Sea was not far west of the Atlantic, and that by extending the northern boundary north- west from the sea coast limits, 200 miles north of Point Com- fort, that it included almost all of Pennsylvania, the whole of Ohio, and in fact about one-half of the continent of North America.
Connecticut claimed under a charter by King Charles II., on the 23d day of April, 1662, and which swallowed up and submerged all previous grants to persons of the present ter- ritory of Connecticut. The charter of King Charles reads as follows: "And know ye further, that we, of our abundant grace, certain knowledge and mere mention, have given, granted, and confirmed, and by these presents, for us, our heirs and successors, do grant and confirm unto the said gov- ernor, and company, and their successors, and that part of our dominion in New England, in America, bounded on the east by Naragansett River, commonly called Naragansett Bay, where the said river falleth into the sea, and on the north by the line of the Massachusetts plantation, and on the south by the sea, and in longitude, as the line of the Massachusetts colony, running from east to west; that is to say, from the said Nar- agansett Bay on the east, to the South Sea on the west part, with the islands thereto adjoining."
This description, like those of the Virginia charter, is: magnificently indefinite and all-embracing; yet it is by virtue of this description that Connecticut claimed and finally ob- tained that part of Ohio known. as the Western Reserve. The charter granted by King Charles II. to the Duke of York, was in the Connecticut patent, and is now a part of New York and New Jersey. King James the II. granted to William Penn what is now Pennsylvania. These charters both con- flicted with the one to Connecticut, but New York and Con-
C
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necticut settled their dispute by an agreement in 1683, which was finally ratified in 1733. But with the colonies of Penn- sylvania and Virginia there was serious dispute. Connecticut claimed all that part of Pennsylvania in the same latitude as Connecticut, and actually sold seventeen townships on the Susquehanna River to certain individuals, and attached it to the county of Litchfield, and representatives from this part of Pennsylvania sat in the Connecticut Legislature before the revolution. Pennsylvania protested, and both colonies sent agents to England. Soon after the war, Pennsylvania sent an armed force and drove these Connecticut settlers on the Susquehanna out of the State. The controversy was finally submitted to a court held at Trenton, New Jersey, in 1787, and this court declared that the claim of Connecticut, under her charter of Charles II. was not good against the terri- tory covered by the patent of the King of England to Wil- liam Penn. But Connecticut still insisted that her charter covered all the territory west of Pennsylvania, and in the same latitude as Connecticut.
By some it was contended that the vast territory west of the Alleghanies should be appropriated by the new govern- ment for the benefit of all the States. The controversy for a time threw a dark shadow on the prosperity of the Union. Congress appealed to the States to remove the danger by ces- sion for common benefit. New York led the way and agreed to surrender all claims to western territory for the benefit of all the States. Virginia finally followed New York, and then Massachusetts followed Virginia, under a pledge from the General Government that all the territory so ceded should be held for the joint benefit of the original States, and new States should be carved out of it from time to time; and finally, in 1786, Connecticut made a deed of cession to the United States of all right, title and interest to the territory west of Pennsylvania, reserving, however, what is now the Western Reserve; but in 1780 all claim of political jurisdiction was re-
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leased to the United States, and the absolute right of Connec- ticut to the soil of the Western Reserve was fully established and confirmed.
The precise limits of the land reserved by Connecticut are described in a deed of cession to the United States, made Sep- tember 13, 1786, whereby she released all her right, title, inter- est, jurisdiction and claim, which she had to certain western lands, except a section which she had in northeastern Ohio, beginning at the west line of Pennsylvania, and at the 41st degree of latitude, thence west on the 41st degree of latitude 120 miles from the west line of Pennsylvania; thence north until it comes to a point 42 degrees 2 minutes north latitude; thence east to the western line of Pennsylvania; thence south on the western line of Pennsylvania to the 41st degree of north latitude to the place of beginning. This included all of the counties of Ashtabula, Lake, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Trum- bull, Portage, Summit (except two townships,) Medina, Lo- rain, Huron and Erie, the ten northern townships of Mahoning county and three northern townships of Ashland; or some- what more than the area of Connecticut itself. Connecticut has 4, 750 square miles, or 3,040,000 acres of land, while the Western Reserve, according to a computation by the late Leonard Case, had 3,333,699 acres of land. Before this time the other States had relinquished all right to the territory northwest of the Ohio, and so the Western Reserve became indisputably the property of the State of Connecticut. The next year-1787-the United States passed the famous ordi- nance of 1787, and appointed Gen. St. Clair governor of all the territory northwest of the Ohio. He proceeded to divide the country into counties. He organized all the territory in Ohio east of the Cuyahoga, the Tuscarawas, and Muskingum into Washington county, with Marietta for the county seat. The counties of the Reserve, west of the Cuyahoga river, were in Wayne county, with Detroit for the county seat. The establishment of these two counties, so as to include the West-
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ern Reserve, was regarded by Connecticut as an interference with territory over which she claimed undisputed jurisdic- tion.
Let me now consider briefly the manner in which Connec- ticut disposed of the Western Reserve. During the Revolu- tionary War the British had invaded Connecticut, and a large number of people lost property, mostly by fire, in consequence of this invasion. The sufferers, after the war, appealed to the Legislature for relief, and after several years discussion, examination and delay, in May, 1792, the Legislature decided to compensate them by giving to the sufferers by fire and their heirs 500,000 acres of land off the west end of the Reserve. This included Erie and Huron counties, which were known as Fire Lands, but did not include the islands in the lake; and these lands were divided among them according and in pro- portion to their several losses.
Prior to that time the State had sold to Samuel Parsons 24,000 acres of land on the Mahoning River. So there re- mained all but the Fire Lands and the land sold to Parsons. The land which Parsons purchased in 1786 of the State of Connecticut, is now included by parts of the townships of Lordstown and Weathersfield in Trumbull county, and Jack- son and Austintown in Mahoning county. General Parsons had ascertained that there were salt springs in that section, and expected to make his fortune out of them as much as some more modern speculators expected to find big bonanzas of oil and salt in Mecca and other places. But his expectations were never realized, and he himself was drowned in 1789 in the Beaver. As Parsons never paid for the land, after his death it reverted to the State of Connecticut, but the Con- necticut Land Company never had anything to do with it, al- though in the heart of their possessions.
The purchasers of the Western Reserve supposed it to con- tain about 3,000,000 acres. At a session of the Legislature held in October, 1786, the State of Connecticut resolved to
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put into market all that part of the Reserve east of the Cuya- hoga and the Portage path, leading from the Cuyahoga to the Tuscarawas; that the land should be sold for the public se- curities of that day, and it was determined to have the lands surveyed into townships six miles square and numbered from the lake south. The land was to be sold at 50 cents an acre. In 1787 the Legislature modified the plan of selling and sur- veying, and that townships should be numbered northward from the 41st parallel. No sales except that of Parsons, I be- lieve, were made under these resolutions. In May, 1795, the Legislature passed another resolution to sell the lands of the Reserve. They resolved to appoint a committee to obtain propositions for the sale of all the lands in the Reserve. This committee was authorized to make such contract as it could and give deeds to the purchasers. The purchasers were to give their personal notes for the price, payable to the Treas- urer of the State, bearing interest at six per cent., at not more than five years from the date. These notes were to be secured by good and sufficient sureties residing in Connecticut, or by a deposit of State or United States stocks. The committee was authorized to sell the whole of the Reserve except the 500,000 acres of Fire Lands in Huron and Erie counties al- ready given to the sufferers in the Revolutionary War, and the 25,000 acres sold to Parsons, for not less than $1,000,000 in specie, or, if time was given, not for a sum of less value than $1,000,000 in specie with interest at six per cent. You see how your thrifty ancestors had no faith in fiat money or any other kind than coin. Eight men were appointed on the com- mittee, one from each county in the State. Propositions were received from various parties and by September, 1795, this committee succeeded in selling the entire remaining land of the Reserve for $1,200,000. As the lands remaining were sup- posed to be about 3,000,000 acres, this was at the rate of 25 cents an acre. The sale was made to a combination of thirty- five persons, who put down their names and the amounts taken,
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and the whole footed up $1,200,000. This sum became the basis of the Connecticut school fund and now amounts to over $2,000,000. The largest interest was taken by one Oliver Phelps. He took $168,185 worth, and was the leading man in effecting the purchase. These parties and some others they represented in making the purchase, constituted the Connec- ticut Land Company. This committee of eight made a deed to each of these buyers of so many 1,200-thousandths of the Reserve according to the amount of money invested by each. As there were thirty-five buyers, thirty-five deeds were made. These thirty-five buyers, for convenience in handling the property, united in a deed to three trustees, John Cadwell, Jonathan Brace and John Morgan. These trustees all sur- vived, I believe, until 1836, long after the Connecticut Land Company had dissolved.
On the same day, September 5th, 1795, the Connecticut Land Company was formed, and adopted fourteen Articles of Association and Agreement. This document is drawn with much skill and great care, and showed that the management of the Company was well considered. Article third provided for the immediate election of seven diretors who were author- ized, in addition to other powers, first, to procure an extinc- tion of all Indian titles to the Western Reserve: second, to survey the whole of the reserve and lay it out into townships containing not less than 16,000 acres each; third, to fix on a township in which the first settlement should be made, to sur- vey it into small lots, and dispose of it to actual settlers only, and to erect in it a saw and grist mill. (Cleveland township was selected for this purpose); fourth, to sell five other town- ships to actual settlers only. The five townships selected for this purpose were Euclid, Willoughby, Mentor, Madison, and one on the Mahoning. The work of surveying was begun in 1796. The surveying party consisted of about forty-six men, of whom General Moses Cleaveland was the superintendent. They landed at Conneaut Creek, on or near the Pennsylvania
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