
SW Corner of Connecticut Western Reserve
Posted by:
Sprinterman
N 41° 02.647 W 082° 46.914
17T E 350236 N 4545183
Located on US 224 west of Willard Ohio at the intersection of 224 and Section Line Rd.
Waymark Code: WM6Q1E
Location: Ohio, United States
Date Posted: 07/05/2009
Views: 5
This marker is set to mark the SW corner of the Connecticut Western Reserve.
The Connecticut Western Reserve
In 1662, King Charles II granted a charter to the new colony of Connecticut extending its boundary westward across Connecticut "from sea-to-sea". Other royal charters were granted to New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. When the American Revolution ended, the new states ceded their western land claims, except Connecticut which was permitted to sell off roughly three million acres of the land called the Western Reserve. Bounded by Lake Erie on the north, Pennsylvania on the east, it extended 120 miles westward. On the South, The Reserve's line was set at 41 degrees north latitude. Some 500,000 acres of land at the western end were set aside and called the Firelands for those whose home, business or farm had been burned out or destroyed by the British during the Revolution as compensation for their loss. The remainder of the land was sold to the Connecticut Land Company - set up by a group of investors. The first surveying party to plot the new capital city of the Reserve arrived on July 22, 1796 near the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. Its leader was Moses Cleaveland— Revolutionary War General, lawyer, and investor in the Company. The new capital city would be located on the bluff overlooking the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie and named in honor of him. Years later the spelling was changed to Cleveland. Each year thereafter, new surveying parties came to plot the many cities and townships that would spring up as settlers gradually purchased land and moved westward. Settlement was slow until the opening of the Ohio & Erie Canal in the 1830's. The name Western Reserve is still frequently used today to describe this area, its institutions and businesses. In the 1960's the ESA commissioned the placement of stone markers at the four corners of the Western Reserve.
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