The Western Reserve

After the Trenton decision--perhaps even as an outside political arrangement--Connecticut was compensated for the loss of Wyoming with a huge grant just west of Pennsylvania called the Western Reserve. The acquisition, organization, and disposal of this vast tract can be studied in Harlan H. Hatcher, Western Reserve: The Story of New Connecticut in Ohio (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1949). There is a revised version published by Kent State University Press in 1991. Other useful or interesting works include these:

Beasley, James R. "Emerging Republicanism and the Standing Order: The Appropriation Act Controversy in Connecticut, 1793-1795." William and Mary Quarterly. 3rd series 29 (October, 1972) 4:587-610. The proceeds from the sale of the Reserve were much desired by several factions in the state. Ultimately they were given to the towns to support local education.

Brown, Jeffrey P. "Samuel Huntington: A Connecticut Aristocrat on the Ohio Frontier." Ohio History 89 (Autumn, 1980) 4:420-38. Huntington was nephew and stepson of the Connecticut governor of the same name. "Huntington's career illustrates the ease with which a prominent easterner could win high office in the sparsely settled west." (p. 420) He was a major land speculator in the Western Reserve.

Burpee, Charles W. "The Story of the State's School Fund." Hartford Daily Times (August 21, 1933). A good piece, despite its newspaper publication.

Carpenter, Helen M. "The Origin and Location of the Firelands of the Western Reserve." Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 44 (1935):163-203. Connecticut patriots burned out of their homes during the British raids on New Haven, Fairfield, and Norwalk in 1779 and on Groton and New London in 1781 were compensated with lands in the Western Reserve. This is an excellent short account, with two maps, full citations, and bibliography of thirty towns on the southern shore of Lake Erie.

Collier, Bonnie B. "The Ohio Western Reserve: Its Influence on Political Parties in Connecticut in the Late Eighteenth-Century.” The Connecticut Review 9 (November, 1975) 1:50-61. Questions of who was going to be lucky enough to purchase the Reserve and make millions and what to do with the money once the state had it dominated Connecticut politics during the mid-1790s.

Downs, Randolph C. "Frontier Ohio, 1788-1803." Ohio Historical Society Collections 3 (1935).

McCormick, Virginia E. and Robert W. McCormick. New Englanders on the Ohio Frontier. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1999.

George, Milton C. "The Settlement of the Connecticut Western Reserve of Ohio." Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, 1950.

Harris, Marc L. "Social Entrepreneurs: Economic Enterprisers and Social Reformers on Ohio's Western Reserve, 1795-1845." Dissertation, Johns Hopkins, 1984.

Larned, Ellen. "New Connecticut, or Western Reserve." Connecticut Quarterly 2 (1896) 4:86-95 and 3 (1897) 1:88-99. A nice piece by an old-fashioned but reliable historian.

Livermore. Shaw. "The Connecticut Land Company," in his Early American Land Companies. (New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1939). There are ten pages on the Connecticut Land Company and much more on many others based in the state, such as the Gore Land Company. This is a good, scholarly study that puts the Western Reserve and westward migrations in their legal context.

Murdock, Aubrey. "The Connecticut School Fund." Freehold 1 (1937) 7.

Shepard, C. L., ed. "The Connecticut Land Company." Tracts of the Western Reserve Historical Society. An important collection of documents.

Upton, H. T. History of the Western Reserve. (Indianapolis: Lewis Publishing Co., 1910). Focus is on home life. "Women, as well as men, laid the foundations of the Western Reserve and helped build its walls, and no work which neglects to take notice of this fact is a history." (Introduction) Many illustrations.

Webb, T. D. "Connecticut Land Company...Western Reserve." Collections of the Mahoning Historical Society I (1876):142-65. This is a competent narrative, which includes a chart of individual cash contributions and other information not found in more readily available works. But it is for the serious scholar.

Wheeler, Robert A. (ed.). Visions of the Western Reserve: Public and Private Documents of Northeastern Ohio, 1720-1860. Columbus Ohio State University Press, 2000.

Williams, William W. History of the Fire Lands, Comprising Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio. Cleveland: Leader Printing Co., 1879.

See also

Adams, Herbert B. "Maryland's Influence upon Land Cessions to the United States." Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science 3 (1885):1-54. A professionally done piece by a major historian, this should be read with (or ignored in deference to) work by Merrill Jensen, especially "The Cession of the Old Northwest." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 23 (1936) 27.

Baldwin, Simeon E. "Connecticut in Pennsylvania." (cited above)

Bond, Beverly W. The Civilization of the Old Northwest. New York: Macmillan, 1934.

Collier, Christopher, Roger Sherman's Connecticut. (cited above)

Granger, James N. "Connecticut and Virginia a Century Ago." Connecticut Quarterly 3 (1897) 1:100-05 and 2:190-98. Deals with Connecticut speculators--notably Gideon Granger--who invested in a half million acres in what is now West Virginia.

Holbrook, Stewart H. The Yankee Exodus. New York, 1950; reprinted by University of Washington Press, 1968. See Chapter III. A standard, popular treatment.

Mathews, Alfred. Ohio and Her Western Reserve. New York: Appleton, 1902.

Rosenberry, Lois K. M. Migrations from Connecticut Prior to 1800; and Migrations from Connecticut After 1800. Tercentenary pamphlets XXVIII and LIV (1934). These pamphlets are taken entirely from The Expansion of New England, written by Mrs. Rosenberry under her maiden name, Lois K. Matthews. (Boston, 1909) They are based on her 1906 Radcliffe dissertation and are just super.

The Ohio side of the Western Reserve story can be read in histories of that state. The Harvard Guide to American History (1974), I:314, lists some twenty of them.