Chapter Eight:
Speculators and Mutineers
The town of Canandaigua sits at the foot of the long and narrow glacial lake that shares its name in western New York. This is the Finger Lakes region, along a smooth, straight lowland on the plain of Lake Ontario. At Oneida Lake the plain joins the Mohawk Valley, which cuts a water path from the eastern Great Lakes through the Allegheny Plateau to the Hudson River, and from there to the superlative ports of New York, and from there on to the world. Such a perfect natural conduit could not be outdone by human minds or hands, and this route would supply the course for, first, the Erie Canal, then the railroads and, eventually, one and a half centuries later, Interstate 90. But during the American Revolution the canal was hardly a dream—and the interstate certainly unimagined. In the 1770s the site of the future Canandaigua lay on the main route west.
An American military expedition against the British and their Seneca Indian allies in 1779 under Gen. John Sullivan brought many New England farmers serving as soldiers to the region for the first time. The men saw promise in the rich land and some entertained hopes of settling it after the war. These men brought word of this desirable tract of real property with them back to Massachusetts where their descriptions piqued the interest of a wealthy and connected land speculator of that time and place named Oliver Phelps.
Phelps began neither wealthy nor connected. After his father died young Oliver's family sent him from his native Connecticut to a Massachusetts relative to apprentice in the merchandising trade. The youngster had charisma and confidence, and a way with country people, and as a young man learned to trade with them very well. His hard work and good sense earned him the trust of those with whom he did business. With that trust he acquired credit, which was not easy to come by in those times, and with that precious credit Phelps secured money which he then loaned to rural Massachusetts farmers, then offered them easy terms with which to pay it back. More than once Phelps' loans allowed these farmers to keep their homesteads in hard times. This made him extremely popular, and, as a pleasant bonus, rich. He translated his wealth and popularity into state political office, rising into the Massachusetts Governor's Council.
Phelps supported the Revolution from the first. He became a financier of the war and his political connections in Boston—among his close friends he counted both Samuel Adams and John Hancock—put him in a position after the conflict's end to know early the government's plans for the disposition of Western lands. In the Governor's Council Phelps met Nathaniel Gorham of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The two men shared similar backgrounds—both were sent from home young to apprentice in merchandising—and a common love of making money. Phelps and Gorham became business partners and began looking for a way to grow their fortunes in the disputed lands opening in the West.
The United States in 1783 reached from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River. At the close of the war the lands of present-day western New York vis‑à‑vis Massachusetts stood in a condition analogous to those of present-day Northeast Ohio vis‑à‑vis Connecticut, with unresolved conflicting claims from the former British colonies muddying titles to the regions. In 1786 the new American states of New York and Massachusetts arrived at a deal whereby New York could govern the region and consider it part of its territory, and the government of Massachusetts could own the land, sell it, and keep what profits there were to be made.
Oliver Phelps, with the glowing reports of Gen. Sullivan's soldiers in his ears, was eager to snatch it up. He and Gorham formed a syndicate to buy, survey and sell the land that today comprises much of the western part of the State of New York, an area that became known as the Phelps and Gorham Purchase.
Phelps visited the area of the Purchase in July 1788, and selected a plot on the west side of the outlet of Canandaigua Lake for his headquarters. Before autumn he had a land company office in operation in the newly surveyed town of Canandaigua, New York. For the next eight years Phelps supervised the survey and sale of 2.5 million acres of land and built roads—his obsession, which he was convinced would make or break his ventures—throughout the western Mohawk Valley. And settlers thronged to Canandaigua, cleared the forest, planted grain.
*
When the American colonies came together under the Articles of Confederation to form the embryo of the United States, vague boundaries and overlapping Western claims vexed this effort at consolidation. States with no Western lands argued that the states with such claims enjoyed unfair advantages in natural resources and room to expand. The states without Western lands eventually succeeded in their efforts to convince those with to surrender their claims to the common national government. Virginia and Connecticut both did, however both held claims in the Ohio Country and both had plans to use those lands to compensate their veteran soldiers and victims of war losses from the Revolution. Virginia surrendered her claim to a vast swath of North America in 1784, but reserved claim on the Virginia Military District in the central part of the Ohio Country to award to her soldiers for their service. Connecticut followed in a similar fashion two years later, surrendering most of the territory across the continent described as hers by old Royal charter, but reserving the piece south of Lake Erie above the 41st parallel stretching 120 miles west from the Pennsylvania border. Thus in 1786 the Connecticut Western Reserve was defined.
The Connecticut legislature made an abortive effort to survey, sell and settle the Reserve east of the Cuyahoga River that same year, but with Indian hostilities still active succeeded in only one sale of a salt spring on the Mahoning River. Six years after this failed attempt, an interval which included Harmar's and St. Clair's respective defeats to the Indians, they compressed the area set aside for war victims to the western half million acres of the Western Reserve tract, giving the area southeast of Sandusky the name it still bears today, the Firelands, indicating the means by which its awardees lost their homes to the British.
In 1793 Connecticut gathered a committee of eight men, one from each county of the state, to brainstorm new ways to sell the Western lands and to decide what to do with the revenue. After two years of wrangling, and renewed optimism a profitable scheme could succeed following Wayne's victory at Fallen Timbers, the Connecticut legislature gave the committee power to dispose of the Western Reserve at a price of not less than $1 million, and agreed the money the sale generated should be spent on Connecticut's schools.
One month after the Treaty of Greenville looked as if it had finally secured the region from Indian threat a consortium of 35 investors stepped forward to make a bid. On September 2, 1795, the consortium offered Connecticut $1.2 million for title to the Western Reserve tract, excluding the Firelands. The committee of eight made a recommendation to accept the offer to the legislature and the lawmakers concluded the sale of the land to the consortium six weeks later. Thus at the end of 1795, the lands of the future Northeast Ohio, along with those of the future Euclid Township passed into private hands for the first time. The largest individual investor in the consortium was Canandaigua's Oliver Phelps. Another significant investment belonged to a 42‑year-old Revolutionary War veteran from Canterbury, Connecticut, named Moses Cleaveland.
As a young man Cleaveland left Yale College to volunteer in Boston after Lexington and Concord in 1775, but his father forced him back to Yale to finish his studies. Two antsy years later Cleaveland finally graduated and headed straight back to the muster, where he rose to the rank of brigadier general of the Fifth Connecticut Brigade. With the war in North America apparently won Cleaveland resigned his commission in 1781 and took up the legal profession in Canterbury before making a financially expedient marriage into the family of Henry Champion, supplier of American forces during the war with Governor Trumbull and the second-largest investor in the Western Reserve consortium.
The group passed articles of association among themselves three days after the purchase deal had been struck, calling their business concern the Connecticut Land Company. They selected a board of directors, including Phelps, Cleaveland, and Champion, and spent the early months of 1796 preparing their first expedition to the land they'd bought though had yet to lay eyes upon in the spring.
*
The organizers and recruits for the first Connecticut Land Company survey expedition assembled at Phelps' headquarters at Canandaigua in the winter and spring of 1796 and stocked themselves with enough flour, whiskey, chocolate, salt pork and survey equipment for a summer in the wilderness. They departed Canandaigua for the Western Reserve at the end of May.
Among the employees recruited to make the survey that year was a 19‑year-old apprentice named Amzi Atwater. As part of his studies young Atwater kept a journal of his sojourn to the Western Reserve preserving a fascinating snapshot of what was soon to be Northeast Ohio still in a more or less pristine state. He also put to paper his impressions and the scant biographical information he possessed of the officers of the expedition:
"Gen. Cleveland, the Agent
Was a short thick set man, with a broad face, dark complexion, very coarse features and slovenly dress, and very vulgar in his conversation and manners.
"Mr. Porter, the Principal Surveyor
Was full middling in height, stout built, full faced, rather dark or brown complexion, and in a woodsman dress. We might see by his appearance he was capable and determined to go through thick and thin in the business in which he was engaged. He had lost (by the bursting of a gun) the entire thumb of his left hand.
"Mr. Pease, the Surveyor
Was a man not more than middling in stature, rather slim and fair, with black piercing eyes, very active in all his movements. He had a thoughtful and persevering appearance. He understood mathematics better than any other man I ever knew.
"Mr. Warren Esq., the surveyor
Was a tall man, tolerable straight, with a pleasant smiling face, a friendly address and appearance, rather more ready to tell a good story than to persevere in the woods. But was a very kind and friendly man. Moses Warren was born in Hopkington R.I. Sept. 5, 1762—his father was Moses Sr who went to R.I. from Mass. and from R.I. to Lyme. Left Mass. married Melutabel Raymond 18th Jan'y, 1784. Was about 6 ft 2 inches tall—weighed 225 to 250 lbs.
"Maj. Spafford, the Surveyor
Was more than middling tall, very straight set built, broad on the forehead, a sober serious countenance, and rather slow motions. But on the whole he was an excellent man.
"John Milton Holley
Was a very young man (said to be there but 18-years-old but appeared older) He was a very tall, stout built, handsome young man, with a fair countenance, a smiling face and good appearance. He is a most beautiful penman.
"Richard M. Stoddard, the Surveyor
Was a tall slim young man, light complexion, white hair and very assuming in his ways and manners...
"...The whole party were extraordinary healthy and no serious accident happened to any of the party except a few disappointments as to provisions, and not so many of them as might have been expected. The men were as might to be expected of various kinds the good bad and indifferent collected like the recruits of an army from all quarters—but a large portion of them were enterprising young men whose object was to see the country. Many had studied the superficial parts of the surveyors' art and were looking for employment. As to language with few exceptions they were far from being civil but in general very friendly toward each other. I should think there was not an instance of a real quarrel amongst them, nor an instance of theft except of things which were considered as public stores, although we were destitute of any law except what was considered the law of honor."
After several weeks' journey, hauling their provisions and equipment with them overland and by boat near the shore upon Lake Erie, the Connecticut Land Company expedition crossed into the Northwest Territory on July 4, 1796. They marked just the twentieth Independence Day at the mouth of Conneaut Creek, just about a mile west of the Pennsylvania border, which, to honor the day, Gen. Cleaveland christened Port Independence. Cleaveland's record of the event from his journal reveals his ambition not merely to settle the area, but to become father of a new state of the American Union:
"On this creek ("Conneaught") in New Connecticut land, July 4th, 1796, under General Moses Cleaveland, the surveyors, and men sent by the Connecticut Land Company to survey and settle the Connecticut Reserve, and were the first English people who took possession of it. The day, memorable as the birthday of American Independence, and freedom from British tyranny, and commemorated by all good freeborn sons of America, and memorable as the day on which the settlement of this new country was commenced, and in time may raise her head among the most enlightened and improved States. And after many difficulties perplexities and hardships were surmounted, and we were on the good and promised land, felt that just a little tribute of respect to the day ought to be paid. There were in all, including men, women, and children, fifty in number. The men, under Captain Tinker, ranged themselves on the beach, and fired a Federal salute of fifteen rounds, and then the sixteenth in honor of New Connecticut. We gave three cheers and christened the place Port Independence. Drank several toasts, viz:
1st. The President of the United States.
2d. The State of New Connecticut.
3d. The Connecticut Land Company.
4th. May the Port of Independence and the fifty sons and daughters who have entered it this day be successful and prosperous.
5th. May these sons and daughters multiply in sixteen years sixteen times fifty.
6th. May every person have his bowsprit trimmed and ready to enter every port that opens.
Closed with three cheers. Drank several pails of grog, supped and retired in remarkable good order."
*
From base camp at Conneaut the expedition split up. One group traveled down the lakeshore to the mouth of the Cuyahoga, both the largest river on the Reserve and conveniently central, where the principal city was to be established. There they made headquarters. Others worked along the lakeshore east of the camp at Conneaut. They located a stone marker from an older Pennsylvania survey on the Lake Erie shore indicating the western boundary of that state. From it this second team traveled down the Pennsylvania line to the 41st parallel, the southern bound of the Western Reserve. Within a day or two men and equipment all stood ready, and the work for which they had all long prepared at last could begin.
At this crucial moment, however, Cleaveland came up against an expensive and time consuming obstacle. Augustus Porter, chief surveyor of the 1796 expedition, described the incident in an 1843 letter:
"All things being thus arranged, and about to muster our men for a start, we formed some disposition in camp to mutiny or what would now be called a strike for higher wages."
Porter's use of the pronoun "we" suggests the officers of the expedition were in on the strike, or mutiny as he put it. Cleaveland must have felt something between desperation and fury. In the quasi‑military organization of the expedition the mutiny, strike, blackmail, whatever one wished to call it, was a direct slap at Cleaveland, his authority, his war service. This was not just a labor dispute, but a betrayal.
But the general was desperate to get the work moving, time his constant enemy. From the moment they left Canandaigua they had been racing the onset of winter, and every day of expense before the land could be sold was a loss. Furthermore, for this loss the company would hold him responsible. At that strategic moment the striking surveyors had Cleaveland at a disadvantage. There was, after all, no one else to do the work. Under these pressures the old soldier had no choice but to make a deal.
Augustus Porter:
"For the purpose of settling this difficulty, Gen. Cleaveland agreed that before the close of the season and after some of the township lines should have been [illegible: drawn? made?], a township should be selected and set apart to be surveyed into lots of three hundred and twenty acres each, and that each individual of the party who should choose might have the privilege of purchasing a lot in a long [illegible] + at a stipulated price... This settled the matter + all became satisfied."
With all finally settled, the Connecticut Land Company survey of the Western Reserve began at long last, on the seventh day of July, 1796.
*
By 1796 the scientific art of land survey had changed little since the advent of Gunter's Chain nearly 200 years earlier. Named for its inventor, Welsh mathematician Edmund Gunter, the demarcation tool consisted of 100 metal links each approximately eight inches long, totaling 66 feet in all. This seemingly odd constellation of distances was actually a clever synthesis of the units of the traditional English system of land measurement which was still widely used at the time and based on multiples and fractions of four, not coincidentally the number of sides in a square parcel, and the emerging but as yet sparsely adopted decimal method based on ten. A linked chain was flexible, which made it portable and easy to use to determine distances on uneven ground, and its metal fabrication prevented inaccuracies caused by stretching and shrinking such as surveyors encountered making measurements with materials such as rope. Supplementing the long chain the surveyor often brandished a pole known as a rod or perch 16 and a half feet in length useful in measuring the final few feet of a longer survey line.
In addition to the chain and rod for determining distance the late 18th century surveyor employed two more principal tools: the staff and the compass. The compass was at its heart just that: a magnetic compass of the type used for centuries on sailing ships, which the surveyor used in precisely the same way as the sailor to find magnetic north and plot his direction. The survey compass had been modified to incorporate two aligned sights on the front and rear of the device through which the surveyor would look to line up the distant point or object he wished to map. These sights flipped down on hinges over the face of the compass and protected both it and the sights when the device had to be carried through the thickets and brambles often encountered in the course of mapping new territories. Encircling the face of the compass were a number of marks used to measure the angle between two sighted points. The apparatus mounted horizontally on a swivel device atop the surveyor's staff, a heavy pointed unipod stand often reinforced with iron or steel for strength and durability during harsh use in wilderness conditions.
The surveyor worked with a crew of assistants consisting of axemen, to clear saplings and brush from the line of sight, and chainmen, who extended the chain over the land being measured. From a point of origination the surveyor would plant his staff in the ground and mount his compass atop it. Using the compass to guide him, the surveyor looked through the instrument's sights and directed the chainman to the correct end point, with the axeman hacking away obstructions before him. The process could be repeated as often as necessary to divide any expanse and thus used to chart and measure parcels of any size. The only limit on the practicability of the method was the straight distance the surveyor could observe through the sights of his compass. If a large tree obstructed the line it would be assimilated into the survey as a "sight tree" and used as a point of reference. Such a tree was marked with notches by the axemen and its distance from the original sighting point recorded on the surveyor's map. The tree itself then became the new sighting point and the work could continue from its location.
The chain and rod provided the distance and the compass the angles between two objects from a fixed position. In his mind the surveyor then imposed imaginary triangles on the land. Knowing the length of one side of the triangle as measured by the chain, and the angles of the corners pointing to a removed spot as measured by his compass, he could easily calculate the distance to that spot using trigonometry, and with the lengths of the sides of a parcel in hand its area could then be determined with a few more simple calculations. The surveyors collected these measurements along with notes on the type and quality of the lands in various parcels. With this information they compiled maps and brochures and used them for the ultimate goals of the entire effort: return on investment, sale for profit.
To perform all the necessary calculations the surveyor first needed to know exactly where on the face of the Earth he stood, one definite point of origin. In 1796 latitude could be easily calculated using another sailing device, the sextant, to measure the angle of the sun above the horizon and then comparing the measurement to a book of mathematically computed tables to reveal how far north of the equator one would have to be to observe the sun at that particular angle at that particular time on that particular day. As for longitude, one's position east and west on the Earth's surface, it had been possible for nearly 40 years by that time to determine using highly accurate and portable mechanical chronometers. For every 15 degrees of longitude one travels over the surface of the Earth the local time differs one hour from that at the point of departure. Local time would be determined through observations of the sun and stars, and an accurate clock would keep the time at the home office. The difference in the two readings would reveal the distance between the two points. As the astronomer of the 1796 expedition, it would have fallen to Seth Pease to make these crucial celestial observations.
Having confirmed where Pennsylvania ended and the Northwest Territory began the party commenced their measure of the land at its intersection with the parallel of 41 degrees north latitude, the point that's now the southeast corner of Poland Township in Mahoning County near Youngstown. Using their axes, chains and compasses they cut the line west. At five mile intervals crews turned north and ran perpendicular survey lines toward Lake Erie, creating Boardman, Canfield and Ellsworth Townships, with Poland the first of the Western Reserve. The names came later though. Initially these were merely the first townships of the first, second, third and fourth ranges. Westward and northward the numeric appellations of townships and ranges increased, creating a regular grid by which the surveyed parcels could be easily located and described. What's now Jefferson Township in Ashtabula County began life as Township No. 11 in the 3rd Range of the Connecticut Western Reserve. Middlefield Township in Geauga County was surveyed as Township No. 7 in the 6th Range, Orange Township in Cuyahoga County as Township No. 7 in the 10th Range. Etc.
South of the lake the scheme worked well, creating a regular series of orderly townships of consistent size which could be assessed for value according to the type and quality of land they contained. But the irregular coast of the lake complicated matters at the north end of the Reserve. East of the Cuyahoga River the southwesterly slope of the lakeshore created a series of triangular parcels atop the neat grid of townships. The surveyors called these areas "gores," a term borrowed from the makers of sails to describe the odd bits of cloth they sometimes had to incorporate into their products to make them usable on the unique individual ships for which they were intended. In New Connecticut larger gores of land could be salvaged to create oddly shaped townships which could still maintain their value through access to communication and commerce via the lake and the ancient lakeshore trail. Smaller gores unlikely to be viable units of administration were simply attached to the townships immediately adjacent them, creating a series of townships of irregular sizes and shapes along the lake.
Township No. 8 in the 11th Range was one such irregular township. The surveyors included a triangular gore of lake plain, too small to justify the creation of an additional ninth township in the range, with the regular square township mostly on the plateau above the escarpment to its south, making a large trapezoidal township, nine miles on its eastern side, and four and three quarter miles on its west, between the five mile long northern line of Township No. 7 and the Lake Erie shore.
Though heavily wooded and swampy on the lake plain, with the attendant danger of malaria that condition entailed for whoever first settled it, the township was one of the better ones surveyed in 1796. When the sand pushed into bars at the mouths of the creeks by lapping lake waves was cleared the swamps would drain and yield fertile farmland. It lay on the main artery in, out and through the Reserve and sat, strategically, just east of the mouth of the principal river of the territory where lots of its capital city were already being measured and staked.
*
Fifty years after the survey Amzi Atwater recalled (perhaps a bit smugly?) spending his evenings in the summer of 1796 in study, trying to advance himself in the surveyors' art, while his rougher fellows frittered their time:
"The party were with few exceptions much attached to card playing. It was encouraged by the example of most if not all of the overseers and followed by nearly all hands. It was made use of (if for nothing else) to amuse their minds at their leisure hours, and to relieve them from the fatigues which were, as might be expected, very tedious, but in many instances it was carried so far as to engross time and attention which ought to have been otherwise applied. It was to me a source of affliction. I knew not how to play and [had] no inclination to learn. This I am now convinced was a great advantage to me. While my comrades were amusing themselves (if amusement it might be called) shuffling and handling over an old pack of cards worn off at the corners nearly to an oval, ragged and dirty as pasteboard could well be, and about as spotted on one side as the other fighting gnats + musketos [sic] and sometimes apparently almost ready to do the same with each other, I was eagerly engaged in making preparation to make our camp comfortable or in some way to forward the business, often assisting the surveyor in taking and examining minutes observing the Pole Star and taking the variation of the [compass] kneedle [sic]; for this and other little extra services he gave me much good instruction and advice and afterwards recommendations for which I shall never be able to reward him... "
Atwater's catalog of the wildlife the men of the first survey encountered included many species still familiar to the present-day denizens of the former Euclid Township: deer, raccoon, rabbits, hedgehogs—of which he was very impressed and described at length—quail, pigeons, ducks, ravens, eagles, turkey buzzards and partridges. Other species Atwater encountered are now completely extinct in the area, such as bears and elk, along with the panthers, both black and grey, which would terrify the first settlers and from which the Erie derived their "Cat Nation" moniker. Insects vexed the men that summer, and Atwater described yellow hornets, mosquitoes, gnats, bees, and "a large kind of black fly that are very troublesome to horses and cattle."
A decade later the rattlesnakes of Euclid Township would become legendary among its early settlers, and Atwater's 1796 journal includes an unfiltered description of one who encountered the creatures when the land was undeveloped and the animals still lived in their natural state:
"Rattlesnakes are the most frequent [animal found in the Western Reserve] of the reptile kind. They are of two kinds, one are [sic] much larger than the other. The largest kind are generally of a yellow colour [sic]. The smaller kind are not often more than 2 ft in length. They are very thick about 1/3 of the way from the head toward the tail, but they gradually [narrow] towards the head and tail. The neck and tail are very slim. Where we found one we were always certain of finding another if we took pains to look it [sic], but sometimes we did not care to stay very long to look for them. One of these snakes are [sic] commonly black, and the other a dark brown, checked with grey. The black one is commonly the largest. They never seem to have any inclination to bite, unless they were first provoked. The flesh of the rattlesnakes, if it can be eaten without prejudices, is extraordinary good food. It is very white and tender. It resembles fish more than any other kind of food I've ever tasted... "
Gnats and rattlesnakes, however, were not the only hardships to the easterners on the Reserve in the summer of 1796. To complete their task the men faced swamps, hunger pounding summer sun, driving rain, slow supply of provisions, torn clothes, failing shoe leather and a persistent fear of attack by begrudged lingering Natives. The journals of the surveyors show various members of the party constantly wracked by incapacitating illness. It is interesting to note that the mutiny of the surveyors occurred at the beginning of the expedition prior to the actual survey. Over the summer, as the men got a look at the fruit of their labor action, it appears that their enthusiasm for homesteading it abated.
*
At the end of September, with the weather finally turning cooler and the work season rapidly coming to an end, the survey team held a general meeting in the newly-founded village of Cleaveland, at that moment just a couple of rough cabins and a collection of stakes and string marking the positions of future roads and the phantom of today's Public Square.
"Proceedings at Cleaveland, Sept. 30, 1796.
"Substance of a contract made at Cleaveland, Sept. 30th, 1796, between Moses Cleaveland, agent of the Connecticut Land Company, and the employees of the Company, in reference to the sale and settlement of the township... No. 8, in the eleventh Range.
"On the part of the surveyors forty one persons signed the agreement. Each party to have an equal share in the township, at the price of one dollar per acre, with interest from Sept. 1st, 1797, to remain in the service of the company faithfully to the end of the year..."
Forty-one members of the survey party participated in the partition. Cleaveland and Porter, the most senior officers, were excluded, although other company shareholders Pease and Stow participated, as did Shephard the physician and all four of the surveyors, Holley, Spafford, Stoddard and Warren. Joseph Tinker the boatman was included, as was Job Stiles, the expedition quartermaster, though his wife, Talitha Cumi, was not. Nor was the other woman on the 1796 expedition, Anna Gun, wife of employee Elijah. The two butchers and Indian traders, Nathan Chapman and Nathan Perry, were deemed ineligible, as well as (for as yet mysterious reasons) employees Barnes, Burbank, Sawtel and Shulay.
The township was divided on paper into three distinct sections: a series of narrow lots along the valuable lakeshore, an irregular gore section south of these forming a right triangle, then the rest of the township mostly occupying the Heights forming a more traditional square. The shore lots upon the headland jutting into the lake were narrower, permitting more of the men a chance at the desirable land there, and also equalizing the overall acreage of the longer lots with shorter but thicker ones near the east and west ends of the township's lakeshore. An ingenious solution to balance the number of lots of various sizes in the three distinct portions of the township was made in placing square Lots 41 of the First Draft and 82 of the Second Draft in the southeast corner of the gore section. This original scheme for dividing the township would form the basis for every one of its subsequent apportionments and underlies the size, shape and location of its boundaries, borders and property lines to this day.
Four random drawings were conducted—first for the lake lots, then lots in the gore, then two series, a first and second draft, for the square lots in the southern section—with one chance for each of the 41 men in each drawing. This ensured a random geographic distribution of the lots, hopefully in a fair manner, then once the men knew what their positions were they could wheel and deal among themselves, perhaps consolidating adjacent lots through trade or even agreements for sale.
This all was literally just on paper though, as there were conditions—all or nothing conditions in fact—attached to the official transfer of these lots from the Connecticut Land Company to the men involved.
Again, from the Proceedings at Cleaveland:
"...to remain in the service of the company faithfully to the end of the year and to perform certain acts of settlement, as follows:
"To settle, in the year 1797, eleven families, build eleven houses, and sow two acres of wheat around each house—to be on different lots.
"In the year 1798 to settle eighteen more families, build eighteen more houses on different lots, and to clear and sow five acres of wheat on each. There must also be fifty acres of grass in the township.
"In the year 1799, there must be twelve more families occupying twelve more lots, (in all forty-one,) with eight acres in wheat. On all the other lots three acres additional in wheat for this year, and in all seventy acres to be in grass."
Cleaveland must have seen an opportunity in the concession at least to populate his purchase. Where settlers lived, others might follow, so he included a provision in the agreement to award land to the surveyors that required the men not only to own the land, but to live upon it, to improve it and to make it fruitful, or at least to get others to do so.
The Proceedings:
"There must be, in the year 1800, forty-one families resident in the township. In case of failure to perform any of the conditions, whatever had been done or paid was to be forfeited to the company."
The men then again drew lots to decide whose turn it was to settle when.
*
As the proprietors—for the moment at least—the men had the honor of naming their township.
It was Moses Warren, the 34-year-old Rhode Islander, one of the officers, "a tall man tolerable straight with a pleasant smiling face... rather more ready to tell a good story than to persevere in the woods," who suggested they honor the Alexandrian geometer who was the great great grandfather of the surveyors' profession. The men assented, and on September 30, 1796, Township No. 8 in the 11th Range of the Connecticut Western Reserve became Euclid.
*
Two weeks later they were two weeks closer to the killing winter and stowing their equipment in preparation of heading to warm homes and soft beds back in New England. At three a.m. on October 18, 1796, the men of the first survey of the Connecticut Land Company in the Western Reserve shoved Captain Tinker's boats into the lake and sailed up the coast.
Surveyor John Milton Holley marked the event in his journal:
"Tuesday, Oct. 18th.—We left Cuyahoga at 3 o'clock 17 minutes for HOME... There were fourteen men on board the boat, and never I presume were fourteen men more anxious to pursue an object than we were to get forward... Walnut creek [sic] [probably Doan Brook], a pretty stream twenty or thirty links wide, empties into the lake about seven miles east of Cuyahoga; not navigable for boats. The Township of Cleaveland lies on the lakeshore, eight miles, four chains, seventy links. About one hundred and thirty chains east of the corner [of Cleaveland Township] a stream considerably larger than Walnut creek [sic] empties into the lake [Euclid Creek]. This is the town purchased by the surveyors, and named (by Moses Warren, Esq.,) Euclid, in memory of the man who first made the principles of geometry known... "
Seth Pease recorded the departure as well. His journal entry from that day includes a curious note:
"This being a clear moon light night—after resting till 3 O.C. we put to Sea, the wind off land was favourable [sic]; we pass along by the Township of Euclid, the banks of which are not high, the beach for the most part good; we put ashore where 2 small runs empties [sic] into the Lake near the Eastern part of Euclid; I walked by land a small distance to a Settlement begun by the Canandarqua [sic] Company, Maj. Well agent—received some provision which had been lent them—"
Note of the mysterious settlement appears in Holley's journal too:
"Wednesday morning, 3 o'clock.—Clear and pleasant; moon shone bright, and we hoisted sail. About daybreak it began to thicken up in the west, and by sunrise the sky was hid from sight. Just before sunrise we passed the first settlement (except those made by ourselves) that is on the shore of the lake in New Connecticut. This is done by the Canadaiqua [sic] Association Company, under the direction of Major Wells and Mr. Wildair."
Little direct information exists regarding Canandaigua Company settlements in Ohio. One of the few experts on the topic is William H. Siles, Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Prof. Siles has made his career studying post‑Revolutionary War settlement in western New York State, and the life and career of Oliver Phelps.
According to Prof. Siles, many, many letters survive from settlers in the Canandaigua region in the early 1790s who knew that Phelps was involved in a new speculative venture in the Northwest Territory petitioning him to allow them to settle in the Connecticut Western Reserve. One of these was a restless veteran of the Revolution named Benjamin Wells who arrived on the frontier in Canandaigua from Hatfield, Massachusetts, in 1789. Wells practically begged Phelps to let him go west on his behalf, telling the wealthy speculator that he had a group ready to go and ready to buy, perhaps hoping to get the best deal on the best land by being there first when it became available for purchase. The evidence from the journals of Pease and Holley suggests that Wells got the permission from Phelps that he was seeking. According to Prof. Siles, Wells and his party likely traveled into lakeshore Ohio ahead of the Connecticut Land Company expedition in the late spring or early summer of 1796.
The descriptions in the journals of Pease and Holley would place the Canandaigua Company outpost in the vicinity of today's Sims Park in the City of Euclid, an excellent location, as will be described in more detail shortly. The nature of the Canandaigua Company outpost there can only be determined by extrapolation. The pattern of the pioneer settlers associated with the Phelps and Gorham Purchase were small expeditions of 20 to 30, perhaps as many as 40, men—no women—ahead of the main body of settlers who traveled out early in the year to survey and clear the land. They stayed until mid‑November, at which point they returned east for the winter, knowing the weather would make it nearly impossible to continue frontier work until the spring. It's likely that this previous pattern would have been the one followed by the Canandaigua Company camp in what became Euclid Township. The men who went west to prepare the way were seldom the bosses of the company and their winter respite provided a convenient time to make their report to their superiors on the progress of the outpost on the Western purchase. The reports these men brought back aided higher‑ups such as Phelps in setting the price they would charge prospective homesteaders for the land.
Prof. Siles speculates that Benjamin Wells could have made a land purchase in what became Euclid Township from Oliver Phelps under the auspices of the Canandaigua Company, and was perhaps administering the outpost on the company's behalf. Wells could have been acting as a land agent for the company, and by the point he appears in the Connecticut Land Company surveyors' journals may have even sold some of the land to individual farmers. In return for his services Wells probably expected to be compensated with a large piece of land in the Western Reserve, perhaps as much as an entire township. If it was official, operating on Phelps' behalf, the outpost in what became Euclid Township would have been a collection of temporary wooden structures which would have been used in combination as living space and business offices, as well as for storage of surveying equipment, food and firewood. Or the Wells camp in Euclid could have even been a band of squatters, operating in hopes that Phelps would acquire the deed and then sell them the land. They may have had a formal or informal agreement with Phelps on this score, which the September 30 agreement with the Connecticut Land Company surveyors perhaps complicated or nullified.
Exactly who "Mr. Wildair" was is more difficult to ascertain, but several men of the Wilder family, originally of Connecticut—Gamaliel, Daniel, Ephraim, Jonas, Joseph, Timothy, Asa—were among the early homesteaders of the Canandaigua region of New York. One of them may have been among the first Americans to live in Euclid Township.
While Moses Cleaveland and the Connecticut Land Company are among the most indispensable facts in the catalog of the history of all of Northeast Ohio, in Euclid Township they arrived a close second. Oliver Phelps and the Canandaigua Company got there first.
*
Back in Hartford that winter Moses Cleaveland was in trouble, explaining to the other trustees of the company the half-completed survey, the delay in extinguishing the Indian claim, the exorbitant expenses to which he'd subjected the company—not the least of which being the sale at the negligible price of one dollar per acre of one of the largest marketable townships to 41 mutinous surveyors, no way to run a business. Cleaveland survived the excoriation but he was through with Northeast Ohio. He never returned to the West, and died in Connecticut in 1806 at the age of 52.
Capricious fortune tossed Oliver Phelps as well. Financial difficulties shortly after the turn of the 19th century cost him his Eastern home in Suffield, Connecticut, and forced his permanent relocation to Canandaigua. From there he rose in county government and into the U.S. Congress, but fell from that perch too, and for all his lifelong striving and past success he fell into poverty in his old age. He died in debtors' prison in 1809.
The Connecticut Land Company was a failure. It dissolved, bankrupt, that same year.
The information in Chapter Eight is drawn from the following sources:
"Euclid, Ohio Board of Commissioners." WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Atwater, Amzi. Journal of Amzi Atwater, April 13 to December 1, 1796. WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Harmon, Elias and Orrin. Harmon Papers. WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Harmon, Orrin. Orrin Harmon Papers. WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Pease, Seth. The Journal of Seth Pease on the Reserve & at Cleaveland from June 6, 1797 – Oct. 25, 1797. WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Porter, Augustus. Letter to John Barr, January 10, 1843. WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Linklater, Andro. Measuring America, How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy. Walker & Company, 2002.
Milliken, Charles F. A History of Ontario County, New York and its People. Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1911.
Underhill, Charles R., History of Moses Cleaveland and Observance of 175th Anniversary of Grand Lodge of Connecticut A.F. & A.M. Moriah Lodge, 1964.
Western Reserve Historical Society. The Connecticut Land Company and Accompanying Papers. WRHS, 1916.
Whittlesey, Charles. Early History of Cleveland, Ohio. Fairbanks, Benedict and Co., 1867.
Untitled map of Euclid Township. Map MS2871_OV1_19. Leonard Case Family Papers, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
"A Plan of the Town of Euclid." Map MS3610_1_vol 1. WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
"Plan of the Town of Euclyd" [sic] and reverse "Proprietors of Euclid." Map MS495. WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Expert Consultation:
William Siles, PhD. Associate Professor of History, University of Illinois at Springfield.
