The Connecticut Western Reserve was land claimed by Connecticut from 1662 to 1800 in the Northwest Territory in what is now northeastern Ohio.
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Although forced to surrender the Pennsylvania portion (Westmoreland County) of its sea-to-sea land grant following the Yankee-Pennamite Wars and the intercession of the federal government, Connecticut held fast to its claim to the lands between the 41st and 42nd-and-2-minutes parallels that lay west of the Pennsylvania border.
Within Ohio the claim was a 120-mile (190 km) wide strip between Lake Erie and a line just south of Youngstown, Akron, New London, and Willard, about 3 miles (4.8 km) south of the present-day U.S. Highway 224. Beyond Ohio the claim included parts of what would become Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. The east boundary of the reserve follows a true meridian along Ellicott‘s Line, the boundary with Pennsylvania. The west boundary veers more than four degrees from a meridian to maintain the 120 mile width, due to convergence.[1]
Connecticut, like several other states, gave up western land claims in exchange for federal assumption of its American Revolutionary War debt. The deed of cession was issued on 13 September 1786. However, Connecticut retained 3,366,921 acres (13,625.45 km2) in Ohio, which became the "Western Reserve".[1] [2] In 1796 (or possibly 12 August[3] 2 September [1], or 5 September 1795[2]), Connecticut sold title to the land in the Western Reserve to the Connecticut Land Company for $1,200,000.[1][2][3]
The Land Company was a group of investors who were mostly from Suffield, Connecticut. There were initially eight in the group (or possibly 7[3][1] or 35[2]). They planned to divide the land and sell it to settlers from the east. The Indian title to the Reserve had not been extinguished. Clear title was obtained east of the Cuyahoga River in the Greenville Treaty in 1795,[4] and west of the river in the Treaty of Fort Industry in 1805.[5] The western end of the reserve included the 500,000 acres (2,000 km2) Firelands or "Sufferers Lands" reserved for residents of several New England towns destroyed by British-set fires during the Revolutionary War.
The next year, the Land Company sent surveyors led by Moses Cleaveland to the Reserve to divide the land into townships. The townships laid out in this survey were squares 5 miles (8.0 km) on each side (25 square miles (65 km2)), unlike most of the those elsewhere in Ohio, which are 6 miles (9.7 km) on each side (36 square miles (93 km2)), following the guidelines of the Land Ordinance of 1785.
Cleaveland's team also founded the city of Cleveland, which became the largest city in the region. (The first "a" was dropped by a printer early in the settlement's existence, Cleveland taking less room on a printed page than Cleaveland.)
The territory was originally named "New Connecticut", which was later discarded in favor of "Western Reserve." Over the next few years, settlers trickled in. Youngstown was founded in 1796, Warren in 1798, Hudson in 1799, Ashtabula in 1803, and Stow in 1804.
In 1800, Connecticut finally ceded sovereignty over the Western Reserve. It was absorbed by the Northwest Territory which established Trumbull County there. As the former county seat of the territory, Warren calls itself "the historical capital of the Western Reserve." Later, several more counties were carved out of the territory.
The name "Western Reserve" survives in the area in various institutions (see Western Reserve (disambiguation)).
Congress has considered declaring the Western Reserve a National Heritage Area, to encourage preservation of historical sites and buildings there. There are 49 National Heritage Areas in the United States, one already in Ohio – the Ohio Canal of the Ohio and Erie Canal. A study on this decision was to be presented to Congress in 2011.
Architecture in the Western Reserve mimicked that of the New England towns from which its settlers originally came. Many of the buildings were designed in the Georgian, Federal and Greek Revival styles. Towns such as Aurora, Canfield, Gates Mills, Hudson, Medina, Milan, Norwalk, Painesville, and Poland exemplify the mixture of these styles and traditional New England town planning. Cleveland's Public Square is even characteristic of a traditional New England town green.
The following publications are in the collection of the Connecticut State Library (CSL):
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