520.
Original Proposal for the Settlement of Western Reserve Lands.

Proposal for the settlement of Western Reserve Lands and the Ohio Territory April 18, 1798. Framed six pages front and back, including envelope.

The Connecticut Land Company purchased the State of Connecticut's Western Reserve in Northeast Ohio in 1795. The Company surveyed the 3 million acre tract in 1796 and 1797. Sales of five-mile square tracts, entire townships, began in early 1798. The group of investors who bought the township later named Canfield prepared and signed this "Constitution" in April of 1798 in the State of Connecticut, before any of them had seen the land which they had purchased in what was then the Western part of the United States.

This document provides a plan for the early settlement of the Township. Provisions are set forth to send workmen to the Ohio Township to build log houses on the proprietor's land. Provision is made for the subdivision of the Township and the subsequent sale of parcels. Recording of deeds is to be made in Connecticut as there were no courthouses in Northeast Ohio in 1798.

An unusual feature is the placing of the proprietor's signatures to the document on the "sleeve" in which the document was stored. The reverse of the "sleeve" is docketed with the word "Constitution", certainly an echo of the U.S. Constitution ratified 11 years prior to the signing of this one.

The document names this township "Campfield". This was the name given the area during the Connecticut Land Company's surveying, as the surveying crew, headed by Moses Cleveland, used this land as its main camp. The name was later changed to the present name of Canfield in honor of two of the original proprietors whose signatures appear on the document.

Eighteenth-Century plans for the settlement of western lands of the newly formed United States are quite rare. This lengthy one is therefore of considerable importance to the history of the early settlement of Northeast Ohio. The document has not been published at the date of this writing.

1798

1000/2000     SOLD: $575.00

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