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With the American victory in the Revolution, Washington
negotiated several treaties between the United States Government and separate Indian tribes. The treaties failed. Washington, seeing how explosive the situation was, had Anthony Wayne training an army in Ohio territory while he negotiated with the Indians. Problems with the Indians intensified until the war of 1812. |
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Meanwhile, there were other claims to Ohio Territory. New York,
Massachusetts, Connecticut and Virginia finally ceded their claims when Maryland refused to sign the Articles of Confederation, forming a new nation, unless all western lands were given to the United States and the new states formed in the west would be admitted on equal terms with the original thirteen states. |
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Connecticut reserved a region 120 miles west of Pennsylvania
which became the Western Reserve. In 1792 one half million acres at the western end of the Reserve was granted to citizens of Connecticut whoes property had been burned or destroyed by the British in the Revolution. Few of the original "sufferers" settled on the Firelands because it was many years before the land was ready. In 1805 the Indians ceded their title to the land. The survey began in 1806. Huron County was authorized in 1809 but not organized until 1815 because the War of 1812 intervened. |
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In 1816 Burton Canfield, Bennett French, Joel Crane, Waite
Downs and others in Southebury, Connecticut formed a company bought from Jesup Wakeman, Isaac Bronson and Ebenezer Jesup, Jr. forty eight hundred acres at two dollars an acre. Included was the nearly 16,500 acres of Wakeman Township. They agreed to furnish one settler a year for each of the thirty sections. Actually the land was occupied long before the thirty years was up. |
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The early settlers of Wakeman came mainly from the Connecticut
counties of Southebury New Haven, Litchfield and Fairfield. Augustin Canfield was the first landowner to make the arduous three week trip from New Milford, Connecticut with his wife Betsy and four children, his brother Burton and the hired man, Seymour Johnson. They arrived in the Spring of 1817 and built the first log cabin in the unbroken wilderness. Six weeks later they built a larger log house, leaving the first one for future settlers. |
