History of Medina county and Ohio, Part 29

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?; Battle, J. H; Goodspeed, Weston Arthur, 1852-1926; Baskin & Battey. Chicago. pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago : Baskin & Battey
Number of Pages: 1014

USA > Ohio > Medina County > History of Medina county and Ohio > Part 29

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Donation Traet is a body of 100,000 aeres, set off in the northern limits of the Ohio Company's tract, and granted to them by Congress, provided they should obtain one actual settler upon each hundred acres thereof, within five years from the date of the grant ; and that so much of the 100,- 000 aeres aforesaid, as should not thus be taken up, shall revert to the General Government.

This tract may, in some respeets, be considered a part of the Ohio Company's purchase. It is situated in the northern limits of Washington County. It lies in an oblong shape, extending nearly seventeen miles from cast to west, and about seven and a half' north to south.

Symmes' Purchase is a tract of 311,682 aeres of land in the southwestern quarter of the State, between the Great and Little Miami Rivers. It bor- ders on the Ohio River a distance of twenty-seven miles, and extends so far back from the latter between the two Miamis as to inelude the quantity of land just mentioned. It was patented to John Cleves Symmes, in 1794, for 67 eents per acre. Every sixteenth section, or square mile, in each town- ship, was reserved by Congress for the use of schools, and Sections 29 for the support of relig- ious institutions, besides fifteen acres around Fort Washington, in Cincinnati. This traet of land is now one of the most valuable in the State.

Refugee Tract, a body of 100,000 aeres of land, granted by Congress to certain individuals who left the British Provinces during the Revolutionary war and espoused the cause of freedom, is a nar- row strip of country, four and a half miles broad from north to south, and extending eastwardly from the Scioto River forty-eight miles. It has the United States twenty ranges of military or army lands north, twenty-two ranges of Congress lands south. In the western borders of this tract is situated the town of Columbus.

Freneh Grant is a traet of 24,000 aeres of land, bordering upon the Ohio River, in the south- eastern quarter of Scioto County. A short time after the Ohio Company's purchase began to be settled, an association was formed under the name of the Scioto Land Company. A contraet was made for the purchase of a part of the lands in- eluded in the Ohio Company's purchases. Plats and descriptions of the land contraeted for were made out, and Joel Barlow was sent as an agent to Europe to make sales of the lands for the bene- fit of the company; and sales were effected of a considerable part of the land to companies and individuals in France. On February 19, 1791, two hundred and eighteen of these purehasers left Havre de Graee, in France, and arrived in Alex- andria, D. C., on the 3d of May following. On their arrival, they were told that the Scioto Com- pany owned no land. The agent insisted that they did, and promised to seeure them good titles thereto, which he did, at Winchester, Brownsville and Charleston (now Wellsburg). When they arrived at Marietta, about fifty of them landed. The rest of the company proceeded to Gallipolis, which was laid out about that time, and were as- sured by the agent that the place lay within their purchase. Every effort to seeure titles to the lands they had purchased having failed, an appli- cation was made to Congress, and in March, 1795, the above grant was made to these porsous. Twelve hundred aeres additional, were afterward granted, adjoining the above mentioned tract at its lower end, toward the mouth of the Little Seioto River.

Dohrman's Grant is one six-mile-square town- ship of 23,040 acres, granted to Arnold Henry Dohrman, formerly a wealthy Portuguese merchant in Lisbon, for and in consideration of his having, during the Revolutionary war, given shelter and aid to the American cruisers and vessels of war. It is located in the southeastern part of Tuseara- was County.

Moravian Lands are three several traets of 4,000 acres each, originally granted by the old Continental Congress in July, 1787, and confirmed by aet of Congress of June 1, 1796, to the Mora- vian brethren at Bethlehem, in Pennsylvania, in trust and for the use of the Christianized Indians living thereon. They are laid out in nearly square farms, on the Muskingum River, in what is now Tuscarawas County. They are called by the names of the Shoenbrun. Gnadenhutten and Salem traets. Zane's Tracts are three several tracts of one mile

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square each-one on the Muskingum River, which includes the town of Zanesville - one at the cross of the Hocking River, on which the town of Lancas- ter is laid out, and the third ou the left bank of the Seioto River, opposite Chillicothe. They were granted by Congress to one Ebenezer Zanc, in May, 1786, on condition that he should open a road through them, from Wheeling, Va., to Mays- ville, Ky.

There are also three other tracts, of one mile square each, granted to Isaac Zane, in the year 1802, in consideration of his having been taken prisoner by the Indians, when a boy, during the Revolutionary war, and living with them most of his life; and having during that time performed many acts of kindness and benefieenee toward the American people. These tracts are situated in Champaign County, on King's Creek, from three to five miles northwest from Urbana.

The Maumce Road's Lands are a body of lands averaging two miles wide, lying along one mile on each side of the road, from the Maumee River, at Per- rysburg, to the western limits of the Western Re- serve, a distance of about forty-six miles, and com- prising nearly 60,000 acres. They were originally granted by the Indian owners, at the treaty of Brownstown, in 1808, to enable the United States to make a road on the line just mentioned. The General Government never moved into the busi- ness until February, 1823, when Congress passed an act making over the aforesaid lands to the State of Ohio, provided she should, within four years thercafter, make and keep in repair a good road throughout the aforesaid route of forty-six miles. This road the State government has already made, obtained possession, and sold most of the land.

Turnpike Lands are forty-nine seetions, amount- ing to 31,360 acres, situated along the western side of the Columbus and Sandusky turnpike, in the castern parts of Seneca, Crawford and Marion Counties. They were originally granted by an act of Congress on March 3, 1827, and more specifi- eally by a supplementary act the year following. The considerations for which these lands werc granted were that the mail stages and all troops and property of the United States, which should ever be moved and transported along this road should pass free from toll.

The Ohio Canal Lands are granted by Congress to the State of Ohio, to aid in constructing her extensive eanals. Thesc lands comprise over one million of acres.

School Lands-By compact between the United States and the State of Ohio, when the latter was admitted into the Union, it was stipulated, for and in consideration that the State of Ohio should never tax the Congress lands until after they should have been sold five years, and in consideration that the public lands would thereby more readily sell, that the one-thirty-sixth part of all the territory in- cluded within the limits of the State should be set apart for the support of common schools there- in. And for the purpose of getting at lands which should, in point of quality of soil, be on an average with the whole land in the country, they decreed that it should be selected by lots, in small tracts each, to wit: That it should consist of Section No. 16, let that seetion be good or bad, in every township of Congress land, also in the Ohio Company's and in Symmes' Pur- chases, all of which townships are composed of thirty-six scetions each; and for the United States military lands and Connecticut Reserve, a num- ber of quarter-townships, two and a half miles square each (being the smallest public surveys therein, then made), should be selected by the Secretary of the Treasury in different townships throughout the United States military tract, equivalent in quantity to the one-thirty-sixth part of those two traets respectively; and, for the Virginia military traet, Congress enacted that a quantity of land equal to the one- thirty-sixth part of the estimated quantity of land contained thercin, should be selected by lot, in what was then called the "New Pur- ehasc," in quarter - township traets of three miles square each. Most of these selections were accordingly made, but in some instances, by the carelessness of the officers conducting the sales, or from some other causc, a few Sections 16 have been sold, in which case Congress, when applied to, has generally granted other lands in lieu thereof, as, for instance, no Seetion 16 was re- served in Montgomery Township, in which Co- lumbus is situated, and Congress afterward granted therefor Section 21, in township eorner- ing thereon to the southwest.

College Townships are three six-milc-square townships, granted by Congress ; two of them to the Ohio Company, for the use of a college to be established within their purehasc, and one for the use of the inhabitants of Symmes' Purchase.

Ministerial Lands-In both the Ohio Company and tlic Symmes' Purchase cvery Section 29 (equal to every one-thirty-sixth part of every township)

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is reserved as a permanent fund for the support of a settled minister. As the purchasers of these two tracts came from parts of the Union where it was customary and deemed necessary to have a regu- lar settled clergyman in every town, they therefore stipulated in this original purchase that a perma- nent fund in lands should thus be set apart for this purchase. In no other part of the State, other than these two purchases, are any lands set apart for this object.

The Connecticut Western Reserve and the Fire Lands are surveyed into townships of about five miles square each ; and these townships are then subdivided into four quarters ; and these quarter townships are 3 2 numbered as in the accompanying figure, the top being considered north. And for individual conven- 4 1 ience, these are again subdivided, by private surveys, into lots of from fifty to five hundred acres each, to suit individual purchasers.

In its history, the Western Reserve is far more importaut than any other of the early arbitrary divisions of the State. It was peopled by a dom- inant class that brought to this wilderness social forms and habits of thought that had been fostered in the Puritan persecutions of England, and crys- tallized by nearly half a century of pioneer life in Connecticut, into a civilization that has not yet lost its distinctive characteristics. Dating their history back to the early part of the seventeenth century, the true descendant of the Puritan points with pride to the permanency of their traditions, to the progressive character of their institutions, and marks their influence in the commanding power of the schoolhouse and church.

The carliest measure which may be said to have affected the history of the Reserve, originated in 1609. In this year, James I, granted to a com- pany called the London Company, a charter, under which the entire claim of Virginia to the soil northwest of the Ohio was asserted. It was clothed with corporate powers, with most of its members living in London. The tract of country embraced within this charter was immense. It commenced its boundaries at Point Comfort, on the Atlantic, and ran south 200 miles, and thence west across the contincut to the Pacific; com- mencing again at Point Comfort, and running 200 miles north, and from this point northwest to the sea. This line ran through New York and Pennsylvania, crossing the castern end of Lake Erie, and terminated in the Arctic Ocean. The

vast empire lying between the south line, the east line, the diagonal line to the northwest, and the Pacific Ocean, was claimed by virtue of this char- ter. It included over half of the North American Continent. Notwithstanding the charter of the London Company included all the territory now embraced within the boundaries of Ohio, James I, on the 3d of November, 1620, by royal letters patent, granted to the Duke of Lenox and others, to be known as the Council of Plymouth, all the territory lying between the fortieth and forty- eighth degrees of north latitude, and bounded on the east by the Atlantic, and on the west by the Pacific. This description embraced a large tract of the lands granted to the Virginia or London Company. Iu 1630, a portion of the same ter- ritory was granted to the Earl of Warwick, and afterward confirmed to him by Charles I. In 1631, the Council of Plymouth, acting by the Earl of Warwick, granted to Lord Brook and Vis- counts Say and Seal, what were supposed to be the same lands, although by a very imperfect de- scription. In 1662, Charles II granted a charter to nineteen patentees, with such associates as they should from time to time elect. This asso- ciation was made a body corporate and politic, by the name of the Governor and Company of the English Colony of Connecticut. This charter constituted the organic law of the State for up- ward of one hundred and fifty years. The bound- aries were Massachusetts on the north, the sea on the south, Narragansett River or Bay on the east, and the South Sea (Pacific Ocean) on the west. This description embraced a strip of land upward of six miles wide, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, including a part of New York and New Jersey, and all the territory now known as the Western Reserve.

In 1681, for the consideration of £16,000 and a fealty of two beaver skins a year, Charles II granted to William Penn a charter embracing within its limits the territory constituting the present State of Pennsylvania. This grant iu- cluded a strip of territory running across the en- tire length of the State on the north, and upward of fifty miles wide, that was embraced within the Connecticut charter. Massachusetts, uuder the Plymouth Charter, claimed all the land between the forty-first and forty-fifth degrecs, of north lati- tude. In 1664, Charles II ceded to his brother, the Duke of York, afterward James II, by letters patent, all the country between the St. Croix and the Delaware. After the overthrow of the gov-

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ernment of "New Netherlands," thien existing upon that territory, it was claimed that the grant of the Duke of York extended west into the Mis- sissippi Valley.

Thus quatters stood at the commencement of the Revolution. Virginia elaimed all the territory northwest of the Ohio. Connecticut strenuously urged her titles to all lands lying between the par- allels 41° and 42º 2' of north latitude, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Pennsylvania, under the eharter of 1681, had taken possession of the disputed land lying in that State, and had granted much of it to actual settlers. New York and Massachusetts were equally emphatic in the asser- tion of ownership to land between those lines of lat- itude. The contention between claimants under the Connectieut and Pennsylvania charters, on the Susquehanna, frequently resulted in bloodshed. The controversy between those two States was finally submitted to a Court of Commissioners, ap- pointed by Congress, upon the petition of Pennsyl- vania, under the ninth artiele of the confederation, which gave Congress power to establish a Court of Commissioners, to settle disputed boundaries be- tween States, in ease of disagreement. The court deeided in favor of Pennsylvania, and this decision terminated the controversy. The question of the title to lands lying west of Pennsylvania, was not involved iu this adjudication, but remained a sub- ject for future contention. A party sprung up during the war that disputed the title of the States asserting it, to lands outside of State limits, and which insisted upon the right of the States by whose common treasure, dominion was to be secured, to participate in the benefits and results arising from the joint and common effort for inde- pendence. This party was particularly strong in the smaller States. Those eolonies that had not been the favored recipients of extensive land grants, were little inclined to acquiesee in claims, the justice of which they denied, and which eould be secured to the claimants, only by the sueeess of the Revolution.

There is little doubt, that the confliet in the early charters, respecting boundaries, grew out of the ignorance of the times in which they were granted, as to the breadth or inland extent of the American Continent. During the reign of James I, Sir Francis Drake reported, that, from the top of the mountains on the Isthmus of Pan- ama, he bad seeu both oceans. This led to the supposition that the continent, from east to west, was of no considerable extent, and that the South

Sea, by which the grants were limited on the west, did not lie very far from the Atlantic ; and as late as 1740, the Duke of Neweastle addressed his letters to the " Island of New England." Henee it was urged as an argument against the claims of those States asserting title to Western lands, that the term. in the grants, of South Sea, being, by mutual mistake of the parties to the charter, an erroneous one-the error resulting from misinfor- mation or want of certainty concerning the local- ity of that sea-the elaiming State ought not to insist upon an ownership resting upon such a foot- ing, and having its origin in such a cireumstanee. Popular feeling on the subject ran so high, at times, as to cause apprehension for the safety of the eonfed- eration. In 1780, Congress urged upon the States having elaims to the Western country, the duty to make a surrender of a part thereof to the United States.

The debt incurred in the Revolutionary contest, the limited resources for its extinguishment, if the public domain was unavailable for the purpose, the existenee of the unhappy controversy growing out of the asserted claims, and an carnest desire to ac- eommodate and pacify conflicting interests among the States, led Congress, in 1784, to an impressive appeal to the States interested, to remove all cause for further discontent, by a liberal eession of their domains to the General Government, for the eom- mon benefit of all the States. The happy termi- nition of the war found the public mind in a con- dition to be easily impressed by appeals to its pat- rioti-m and liberality. New York had, in 1780, eeded to the United States, the lands that she claimed, lying west of a line running south from the west bend of Lake Ontario ; and, in 1785, Mas- saehusetts relinquished her c'aim to the same lands -- each State reserving the same 19,000 square miles of ground, and each asserting an independent title to it. This controversy between the two States was settled by an equal division between them, of the disputed ground. Virginia had given to her soldiers of the Revolution iry war, and of the war between Franee and England, a pledge of bounties payable in Western lands ; and, reserving a sufficien' amount of land to enable hier to meet, the pledge thus given, on the 1st of March, 1784, she relinquished to the United States, her title to all other lands lying northwest of the Ohio. On the 14th day of September, 1786, the delegates in Congress, from the State of Conneetieut, being au- thorized and directed so to do, relinquished to the United States, all the right, title, interest, jurisdic-

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tion and claim that she possessed to the lands ly- ing west of a line running north from the 41º north latitude, to 42º 2', and being 120 miles west of the western line of Pennsylvania. The territory lying west of Pennsylvania, for the distance of 120 miles, and between the above-named degrees of lat- itude, although not in terms reserved by the in- strument of conveyanee, was in fact reserved-not having been conveyed-and by reason thereof, was called the Western Reserve of Connecticut. It embraces the counties of Ashtabula, Trumbull, Portage, Geauga, Lake, Cuyaloga, Medina, Lorain, Huron, Erie, all of Summit, save the townships of Franklin and Greene; the two northern tiers of townships of Mahoning; the townships of Sulli- van, Troy and Ruggles, of Asliland; and the islands lying north of Sandusky, ineluding Kelley's and Put-in-Bay.

During the Revolution, the British, aided by Benedict Arnold, made incursions in the heart of Connecticut, and destroyed a large amount of property in the towns of Greenwich, Norwalk, Fairfield, Daubury, New and East Haven, New London, Richfield and Groton. There were up- ward of 2,000 persons and families that sustained severe losses by the depredations of the enemy. On the 10th of May, 1792, the Legislature of that State set apart and donated to the suffering inhabitants of these towns, 500,000 acres of the west part of the lands of the Reserve, to compen- sate them for the losses sustained. These lands were to be bounded on the north by the shore of Lake Erie, south by the base line of the Reserve, west by its western line, and east by a line par- allel with the western line of Pennsylvania, and so far from the west line of the Reserve as to in- clnde within the described limits the 500,000 acres. These are the lands now embraced within the counties of Huron and Erie, and the Township of Ruggles, in Ashland County. The islands were not included. The lands so given were called "Sufferers' Lands," and those to whom they were given were, in 1796, by the Legislature of Con necticut, incorporated by the name of the " Pro- prietors of the half-million acres of land lying south of Lake Erie." After Ohio had become an independent State, this foreign corporation was not found to work well here, not being subjeet to her laws, and, to relieve the owners of all ember- rassment, on the 15th of April, 1803, the Legisla- ture of this State conferred corporate power on the owners and proprietors of the " Half-million acres of land lying south of Lake Erie," in the

county of Trumbull, ealled "Sufferers' Land." An account of the losses of the inhabitants had been taken in pounds, shillings and penee, and a priee plaeed upon the lands, and each of the suf- ferers received land proportioned to the extent of his loss. These lands subsequently took the name of " Fire Lands," from the circumstanee that the greater part of the losses suffered resulted from fire.

In 1795, the remaining portion of the Reserve was sold to Oliver Phelps and thirty-five others, who formed what became known as the " Connect- icut Land Company." Some uneasiness eoneern- .ing the validity of the title arose from the faet that, whatever interest Virginia, Massachusetts or New York may have had in the lands reserved, and claimed by Connecticut, had been transferred to the United States, and, if neither of the claim- ing States had title, the dominion and ownership passed to the United States by the treaty made with England at the elose of the Revolution. This condition of things was not the only source of difficulty and trouble. The Reserve was so far from Connectiont as to make it impracticable for that State to extend her laws over the same, or ordain new ones for the government of the inhabit- ants; and, having parted with all interest in the soil, her right to provide laws for the people was not only doubted, but denied. Congress had provided by the ordinance of 1787 for the gov- ernment of the territory northwest of the Ohio; but to admit jurisdiction in the United States to govern this part of that territory, would east grave donbt upon the validity of the company's title. It was therefore insisted that the regulations pre- scribed by that instrument for the government of the Northwest Territory had no operation or effeet within the limits of the Reserve. To quiet apprehension, and to remove all cause of anxiety on the subject, Congress, on April 28, 1800, anthorized the President to execute and deliver, on the part of the United States, letters patent to the Governor of Connecticut, whereby the United States released, for the uses named, all ight and title to the soil of the Reserve, and confirmed it unto those who had purchased it from that State. The execution and delivery, however, of the letters patent were upon the condition that Connecticut should forever renounee and release to the United States entire and complete eivil jurisdiction over the territory released. This condition was accepted, and thereupon Connecticut transferred her jurisdiction to the United States, and the

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United States released her claim and title to the soil

While this controversy was going on, there was another contestant in the field, having the advan- tage of actual occupancy, and in no wise inclined to recognize a title adverse to his, nor yield, upon mere invitation, a possession so long enjoyed. This contestant was the Indian. By the treaty at Greenville in 1795, preceding treaties were con- firmed, and the different tribes released their elaims to all territory east of the line of the Cuya- hoga River and south of the Indian boundary line. This left the larger part of the territory of the Western Reserve still in the hands of the savage. On July 4, 1805, a treaty was made at Fort Industry with the chiefs and warriors of the different nations settled in the northern and western seetions of the State, by which the Indian title to all the lands of the Reserve, lying west of the Cuyahoga, was extinguished. By this treaty all the lands lying between the Cuyahoga and the Meridian, one hundred and twenty miles west of Pennsylvania, were eeded by the Indians for $20,000 in goods, and a perpetual annuity of $9,500, payable in goods at first eost. The latter clause has become a dead letter, because there is no one to elaim it. Since this treaty, the title to the land of the Re- serve has been set at rest.

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History of Medina county and Ohio, Part 29

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?; Battle, J. H; Goodspeed, Weston Arthur, 1852-1926; Baskin & Battey. Chicago. pub Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Chicago : Baskin & Battey Number of Pages: 1014

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?; Battle, J. H; Goodspeed, Weston Arthur, 1852-1926; Baskin & Battey. Chicago. pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago : Baskin & Battey
Number of Pages: 1014