Prior to the arrival of European colonists, the land surrounding the southern shore of Lake Erie was inhabited by the
Erie people. At the close of a war against the
Iroquois from 1654 to 1656, the Erie were almost completely annihilated. Their towns were destroyed, and any survivors were assimilated into neighboring tribes, mainly the
Seneca. The state sold the Western Reserve to the
Connecticut Land Company in 1796 (possibly 12 August, 2 September, and west of the river in the
Treaty of Fort Industry in 1805. The western end of the reserve included the
Firelands or "Sufferers' Lands", reserved by Connecticut in 1792 for residents of several
New England towns which had been 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 square
townships, on each side (. Cleaveland's team also founded the city of
Cleveland along Lake Erie, which became the largest city in the region. (
The first "a" was dropped; spelling of names was not standardized at the time.) In 1798, surveyors laid out the Girdled Road, indicated by
girdled trees, which ran from Cleveland to the Pennsylvania state line near Lake Erie. A modern portion of Girdled Road
still exists by that name. The territory was originally named "New Connecticut" (later discarded in favor of "Western Reserve"), and settlers began to trickle in during the next few years. Youngstown was founded in 1796,
Warren in 1798,
Hudson and
Ravenna in 1799,
Ashtabula in 1803, and
Stow in 1804.
Legal issues with title A major issue faced by the Land Company was that their purchase of the land was of questionable legality. Connecticut claimed to have sold them not only the title to the Western Reserve, but also the right to govern its inhabitants. It was unclear whether a state could sell its jurisdiction to a private company. This legal gray area caused queasiness by investors, so in 1797, the Connecticut legislature signed a bill to transfer the land to the federal government. However, the shareholders and customers of the Land Company feared that this offer would cause them to lose their titles, and they instead requested that Connecticut intervene to have Congress recognize the jurisdiction of the Land Company. In February 1800, a federal committee headed by
John Marshall found that the titles and jurisdiction of the Western Reserve remained formally in the hands of Connecticut, observing that this created an
exclave with significant practical problems for governance. He proposed that the federal government simply obtain direct jurisdiction over the land. == Dissolution and legacy ==