Ohio History Journal
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ROBERT A. WHEELER
The Literature of the Western Reserve
The northeastern portion of Ohio, known
variously as New Connect-
icut, as the Western Reserve of
Connecticut or simply as the Western
Reserve, has been viewed as a unique
area by observers from the
eighteenth century to the present. The
region's distinctiveness stems
from its homogenous founding population
of transplanted New En-
glanders whose firm hold determined its
culture. Writers often agreed
these migrants implanted a set of values
including the importance of
education, the strength of
congregational Protestantism, and the reli-
ance on township government which gave
the Western Reserve a
distinctive character which belied its
location in the West. Interesting-
ly, the New England emphasis, typical of
many writers, only gradually
emerged in the nineteenth century and
was not without its qualifiers
and detractors.
This essay will trace the literature
written about the Reserve from
the early nineteenth century writers who
described, embellished, and
maligned the region to suit their own
purposes to the mid-century
residents who preserved the pioneer past
in county histories. After the
Civil War, their successors emphasized
the Puritan origins of the
Reserve and thought it "more New
England than New England itself."
Popular historians beginning with the
centennial of the region in 1896
celebrated it as a modern repository of
twentieth-century puritanism
and an important area which spawned
industrial growth while main-
taining a connection with the past.
Finally, in the late twentieth century
scholars have created a more complex and
intense, although limited,
portrait of the Reserve.
The first writers described the
landscape and evaluated its usefulness
for settlement. Some were impressed by
its flora and fauna. James
Smith, a Pennsylvania colonial captured
in 1755 by Indians, visited the
Cuyahoga Valley and wintered in the
eastern Reserve along the
Mahoning in 1756. He thought the
Cuyahoga was "a very gentle river,
... Deer here were tolerably plenty,
large and fat." The flood plains
Robert A. Wheeler is Associate Professor
of History and First College, The Cleveland
State University.
102 OHIO HISTORY
along it and other rivers were
promising: "the bottoms are rich and
large, and the timber is walnut, locust,
mulberry, sugar-tree ..."1 The
uplands were a different story. In
contrast to later descriptions designed
to entice settlers, Smith recorded:
"The upland is hilly, and principally
second and third rate land." He
noted the potential for trade since "the
East Branch of the Big Beaver creek"
empties into the Ohio river.2
Another visitor to the region, John
Heckewelder, a Moravian mis-
sionary who established a camp along the
Cuyahoga River near Tinker's
Creek in the 1780s, was more positive.
He found the bottom lands fertile
and that area swamps, if drained, could
"make good meadows."
Furthermore, "some beautiful small
lakes in this country [have] water
as clear as Chrystall and [are] alive
with fish." He knew "the Cuyahoga
Country abounds in Game such as Elk,
Deer, Turkey, Racoons etc."
and that large amounts of fur were taken
there.3 For Heckewelder, then,
the area was valuable for furs and could
be farmed profitably.
Exploration, observation, and temporary
settlement gave way in
1796 to colonization when the
Connecticut Land Company bought the
Reserve. Moses Cleaveland, who headed a
group of surveyors, thought
the area and its capital town had
promise. A rush of promotional
information soon followed, especially in
Connecticut newspapers.4
Enticing advertisements asserted:
"the character of this country is too
well known to require a particular
description. Suffice it to say that in
consequence of the mildness of the
climate, the fertility of the soil and
the increase of civil and religious
advantages, it is rapidly filling."5
These claims both reassured migrants
that familiar institutions would
ease their frontier experience and
ignored the slow advance in popu-
1. This list of useful trees and the
absence of pine trees which signalled poor land to
New Englanders appealed to potential
settlers and would appear in most descriptions
designed to entice easterners west. See John R.
Pankratz, "New Englanders, the written
word, and the errand into Ohio,
1788-1830" (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University,
1988), 85.
2. Ohio Historical Society, Scoouwa:
James Smith's Indian Captivity Narrative
(Columbus, 1978), 71 (all quotations).
The account was originally published in 1799.
3. John Heckewelder, Map and
Description of Northeastern Ohio, 1796, (Cleveland,
1884). Such notables as George
Washington and Benjamin Franklin saw the importance
of the link the Cuyahoga River made with
the Ohio River.
4. See Pankratz, "New
Englanders," 22. Pankratz argues that the written word was
vitally important to literate New
Englanders. Hence, newspapers were much more
important because they were a major form
of communication. New Englanders did not
"dream" about Ohio; they read
travel accounts and advertisements. These writings were
not always accurate, of course.
5. March 23. 1803. Cited in George
Knepper, "Early Migration to the Western
Reserve," The Western Reserve
Magazine, 5 (November-December, 1977), special
insert.
Literature of the Western
Reserve 103
lation. In March 1809 an advertisement
in The Connecticut Courant
said enterprising farmers could acquire
the "best farms for a small
sum." A year later William F.
Miller of Windsor, Connecticut, wrote:
the goodness of the New Connecticut soil
for wheat, Indian-corn, Oats, Grass,
Apples, and Peaches: the healthiness of
the climate; the mildness of the
winters; the warmth of the summers; the
Philadelphia cattle market; the new
discovered Lake market of Montreal; and
the great yearly increase of the
population, afford encouragement to the
active and enterprising Farmer who
wishes to increase his wealth, as one of
the first settlers of a new country.6
Farming opportunities were not the only
economic prospect. Ac-
cording to another advertisement,
"this may be a great manufacturing
country, perhaps not inferior to that of
the interior of Germany."7 This
interesting comment, merely speculation
at the time, was prophetic.
The early promotional literature which
focused on shortening or
escaping the difficult frontier period
was not particularly effective
because its rosy descriptions could not
overcome the lack of uprooting
factors in the East. Settlement was slow
until after the close of the War
of 1812 when many saw increased
opportunity in the West.
As migration picked up some observers
sought to correct the flowery
reports. A particularly stinging account
entitled Western Emigration
(1817), written by Henry Trumbull,
sought to deter people from leaving
New England "where the state of
society is unrivalled, and the
conveniences of life amply abound."
While Trumbull did not live in the
Reserve, he warned his New England
readers, including many headed
for New Connecticut, not to come to Ohio
at all. He cautioned migrants
not to be "deceived by fairy tales,
and specious colorings of land
speculators." The bountiful animals
were not easily caught, he warned,
and the political and military offices
were not prestigious. He concluded
the "land of promise" was such
a hoax that it would be better to be a
pig farmer in New England than a major
officeholder in Ohio.8
Several years later Zerah Hawley
published a searing account follow-
ing a Year's residence in ... New
Connecticut or Western Reserve ....
He wanted to "undeceive the
community, respecting a portion of the
Western country, which has been
represented as an earthly Paradise,
where every thing necessary, every thing
convenient, and almost every
thing which is considered as a luxury,
might be had almost without care,
6. The Connecticut Courant, November 7, 1810.
7. The Connecticut Courant, January
21, 1807. No reasons were given for the
speculation.
8. Henry Trumbull, Western
Emigration: Journal of Doctor Jeremiah Simpleton's
Tour of Ohio (1817), 3 (first quotation), 9 (second quotation), 36
(third quotation).
104 OHIO
HISTORY
labour, or exertion." Hawley
witnessed "privations and disadvantages,
under which the inhabitants" live
far from an "advantageous market."
Even items readily available in
Connecticut such as shoes, clothes, and
beds could not be found. Moreover, the
supposedly mild climate was
more severe than in New England. Most
distressing for Hawley was the
gradual degeneration of manners and
minds from the grandparents born
in New England to their grandchildren
who knew little of the East and
culture. Hawley discouraged immigrants
from settling on the Reserve
and recommended western New York instead
because it was closer to
markets and had more
"advanced" religion and literature.9
Hawley correctly linked lack of markets
to the poverty and primitive
conditions on the Reserve. However, he
was so intent on calendaring
negative evidence that he ignored signs
of prosperity. He was part of an
increasing chorus of concerned New
Englanders alarmed by the
exodus from many Connecticut towns.
They, unlike Yale President
Timothy Dwight (who rejoiced in the
exodus of shiftless migrants),
began to look for ways to stem the tide
of immigration.10 In fact,
according to James Kimball, the rich
were at fault since they did "not
pay mechanics" enough and did not
pay promptly. Kimball argued,
"[the rich] are the ones who should
set the example: in fact, they help
drive them off." Better to take
"land on shares" in Ohio "than [own]
farms in eastern Massachusetts," he
advised.11
Fortunately, produce from Reserve farms
had ever-expanding mar-
kets when the Erie Canal opened in 1825,
and the northern portion of
the Ohio Canal was completed in the late
1820s.12 Improved connec-
tions with the East made the Reserve
more accessible and attractive. By
1835, when D. Griffiths Jr., an
Englishman, wrote about his stay in the
Western Reserve, prospects were good.
His Two Year's Residence
offered "a plain account of the New
Settlement on the Western
Reserve, which is the section of Ohio,
certainly the most eligible for
agricultural emigrants."13 Griffiths
found villages flourishing and labor
scarce. Unlike Hawley, he was encouraged
and impressed by the
9. Zerah
Hawley, A Journal of a Tour through
Connecticut, Massachusetts,
New-York, the north part of the state
of Ohio, including a Year's residence in that part
of the state of Ohio, styled New
Connecticut, or Western Reserve (New
Haven, 1822),
3 (first quotation), 3-4 (second
quotation), 41-42, 63, 75, 157-58.
10. Richard J. Purcell, Connecticut
in Transition, 1775-1818 (New Haven, 1918, 1963
edition), 91, 100-01.
11. James Kimball, "A Journey to
the West in 1817; Notes of travel by a Salem
mechanic on his way to the Ohio fifty
years ago," Historical Collections of the Essex
Institute, 8
(1868), 235 (first quotation), 243 (second quotation).
12. Timothy Flint, A Condensed
Geography and History of the Western States,
2 volumes, (Cincinnati, 1828), 2:336-37,
340-41.
13. D. Griffiths, Jr., Two Year's
Residence (London, 1835), vi.
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Literature of the Western Reserve 105 |
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106 OHIO HISTORY
"yankee" population working
diligently to improve their individual
farms. Griffiths noticed the people were
principally New Englanders
and that New England revivals followed
"the track of New England
Emigrants" especially to the
Reserve. These religious ties and the
region's physiognomy of neat white
houses impressed him. Griffiths
encouraged migrants because they could
buy larger farms on the
Reserve and be more respected there than
they could in England.14
Griffiths identified the overriding
theme of many later writers when
he emphasized the "yankee"
strain. Earlier writers thought Yankees
should stay closer to home, but those
who followed thought the Reserve
especially attractive because it
preserved this heritage so completely.
Within the next fifteen years the
economic situation improved con-
siderably in the Reserve despite the
general stultifying effects of the
Panic of 1836 on the nation. Some early
settlers, inspired by success and
concerned that the pioneer contribution
might be lost, wrote the first
local histories. To these writers
individual lives were more important
than historical trends and their works reflect
this emphasis.15 Charles
Whittlesey's "Sketch" of
Tallmadge township, written only thirty-four
years after the first arrival of
settlers, was the earliest such history. To
Whittlesey the migrants had "too
much enterprise and independence of
[religious] feeling," which
unfortunately doomed the early attempt to
form a religious commune in Tallmadge.
This same enterprise inspired
the early formation of schools, a
lending library, an academy, and a plan
to support benevolent societies: all of
which celebrated their New
England heritage and love of
independence. In Whittlesey's view, then,
New England farmers overcame the Ohio
wilderness with hard work
and transplanted institutions.16 His
account helped define Yankees, or
Puritans, as those who supported schools
and churches.
The first historian of the entire
region, John Barr, established a
recurrent theme when he lauded the
Reserve's Puritan heritage. Moses
Cleaveland's surveying party, he wrote
in 1845, "spent their landing-
day as became the sons of the Pilgrim
Fathers-as the advance
pioneers of a population that has since
made the then wilderness of
northern Ohio 'blossom like a rose.'
" To Barr settlers "brought with
14. Griffiths, Two Year's Residence, 162
(quotation), 75.
15. Pankratz, "New
Englanders," 330, 372.
16. Charles Whittlesey, A Sketch of
the Settlement and Progress of the Township of
Tallmadge (Tallmadge, 1842), 12 (first quotation), passim. Also
see Charles Whittlesey,
"Sketch of the Location,
Settlement, and Progress of the City of Cleveland," in Fugitive
Essays upon Interesting and Useful
Subjects relating to the Early History of Ohio . . .
(Hudson, 1852), 215-32 which recounts
rather than analyzes.
Literature of the Western
Reserve 107
them into the forests of Ohio, New
England feelings, affections, and
laws; so that separated from the
substance of these agents of social life,
they yet governed their actions by the
spirit of the society from which
they were sprung, and which they
reverenced." The "spirit" of the
New England heritage was characterized
by "integrity, industry, love
of country, moral truth, and enlightened
legislation ...17 Barr found
not only the direct connections
introduced by Griffiths but also a
distinct Yankee cultural continuity
which, however vaguely defined,
characterized much of the literature
which followed.
Undoubtedly this perspective appealed to
many writers and readers
because their homogenous perspective was
fueled by a healthy dose of
cultural chauvinism. Significantly, Barr
ignored the disaffection of
many migrants, such as Kimball, who left
New England with bitter
tastes in their mouths.
Barr shared both his reverence for
pioneers and his healthy distrust
for newcomers with Leonard Case, a
prominent Cleveland banker and
early resident, who remarked, "I
have seen too many of the after-
riders who come to these diggings in these latter days in easy
Stages on
Palace like Steam Boats, eating the good
roast ... procured for them
by the labour sweat and privations of
those who came before them ...
[and who] turn up their noses ... at the
doings of their betters the
pioneers." 18 These
pioneers, like the Indians, were faced with oblivion
unless their accomplishments were
recorded.19 Barr set out to rescue
the deeds and was the first resident to
emphasize the uniqueness and
significance of the area as he preserved
its history.
Eleven years later the Reverend G. E.
Pierce, President of Western
Reserve College, in an address
commemorating the settlement of
Hudson, echoed Barr's links to the
Puritan past.20 Pierce's boldness
ignored most colonists who were
ordinary, but disaffected, easterners
looking for a better future. He
confidently asserted that the "most able,
intelligent, and enterprising citizens
of the State [of Connecticut]"
bought lands in the Reserve and
17. John Barr, "Western
Reserve" National Magazine, 2 (December, 1845), 602 (first
quotation), 606 (second quotation),
602-03 (third quotation). Barr's filiopietic comments
were probably the result of two national
trends: rising sectional jealousies and the
increasing foreign immigration. Both
caused him to emphasize the cultural contributions
of native-born northern New Englanders.
18. Leonard Case to Mr. Plain Dealer,
1847, John Barr Papers, Western Reserve
Historical Society (hereafter cited as
WRHS). The letter was originally addressed to the
newspaper and ended up in Barr's
collection.
19. Pankratz, "New
Englanders," 337.
20. Anonymous, Proceedings of the
Fifty-sixth Anniversary of the Settlement of
Hudson, . . . (Hudson,
1856). For Pierce's speech see xiii-xxviii.
108 OHIO HISTORY
their early settlement by a people, well
educated, of steady habits, and good
morals, and for the most part attached
to the interests of religion; a people
hardy, robust, resolute, and well
prepared to endure the hardships of frontier
life, lay the foundation of a good
society and prepare for the best institutions
of learning and religion.
In fact, "the consequence was that
the Western Reserve has become
the garden of the West." Pierce,
true to his ministerial vocation, found:
in the plan of God, the Western Reserve
had a place. In the days of old, and as
far back as the period when our
ancestors landed on Plymouth Rock,
commenced a series of Providential arrangements,
whereby this fair land, this
goodly heritage of ours, was given to a
peculiar people.21
Providence "ordered each occurring
event which bound the Western
Reserve to an Eastern colony" and
kept it from becoming just another
western territory. Fortunately, in
Pierce's view, Connecticut was an
ideal source for settlers since it had
passed the dangers of early
settlement and was "stable in its
government and institutions, and
moral and religious habits, but had not
yet reached the period of wealth,
and luxury, and effeminacy which
occasion the decline and downfall of
states and empires."22 Pierce
believed the Reserve was destined to
establish a community based on these
eastern values and institutions.
More practical, less judgmental
histories were written in the 1850s to
record the quickly-disappearing frontier
past. They did not carry Barr's
cultural torch but concentrated more on
the detail and uniqueness of
early events. The first county history, Historical
Reminiscences of
Summit County, compiled by Lucius V. Bierce, identified important
"firsts" in each township. In
contrast to Barr's subjects, Bierce's
residents are real people-hardy,
practical folk who do not always
behave as stereotypical Puritan stock
should. Trickery, folly, heathen-
ism, and drunkenness are common. Unlike
his successor's portrayals,
21. Settlement of Hudson, xiv
(first quotation), 14-15 (second quotation, 15 (third
quotation). Pierce stated "there is
not a territory that will compare with it, west of the
Alleghenies" because of "the
intelligence and thrift of its people," its schools, churches,
and support of religion. He asserts the
Reserve was superior to Connecticut in terms of
supporting religion and learning. See
xv.
22. Settlement of Hudson, xvi
(first quotation), xvii (second quotation), xxii. Pierce
thought the Reserve would not have
existed if the English had known how far the oceans
were, or if one sentence in the charter
had been different, or if Connecticut had failed to
establish its claim, or if Congress had
refused to consent. He also felt the Reserve and
Hudson, in particular, were committed to
the proper values since they had supported the
church, the college, and the railroads
in amounts greater than Yale's gift to Yale. See
xx-xxiii.
Literature of the Western
Reserve 109
Bierce's neighbors scuffle and his
social inferiors do not always respect
their superiors.23
Bierce says some contemporaries thought
there were two cultures in
Ohio-one in the Reserve and one south of
it. Many believed along with
"Mr. Hostetter, Senator from Stark
[county], ... 'that you might as
well attempt to make a Dutch horse, and
a Yankee broad-horn work
together, as the inhabitants on the
opposite sides of that line to
amalgamate.' " They were wrong,
however, because "with the bones
and muscle of the German, united with
the refinement of Anglo-Saxon,
a population is coming up that will rank
with the best 'bone, muscle, and
mind of the country.' "24 Bierce felt
this new "breed" superior to any
particular immigrant culture. His very
perceptive comment, which is
partly the result of the location of
Summit near Pennsylvania in the
southeastern portion of the Reserve,
contradicts later commentators
who sought to emphasize ethnic purity
rather than celebrate ethnic
blends or accommodate the distinct
migratory waves which came from
the east.25
N.B. Northrop wrote a Pioneer History
of Medina County in 1861 so
that the reader would "take, read,
and contrast the many privileges
now enjoyed, compared with the many
privations of the first settlers
...." He noted with seeming
approval the changing ethnicity of the
county: "the first settlers of the
county were principally from Connect-
icut, though within the last twenty
years there has been a large
accession of industrious Germans."
Clearly, this development could
produce the same ethnic blend Bierce
found in Summit County and
would certainly compromise New England
homogeneity. Another,
matter-of-fact comment by Northrop
suggests the fluidity of the
religious climate. In Brunswick "it was general practice for all to
be
seen at one church when there failed to be preachers, on the same day
for each denomination. Disputations on
doctrinal points were few and
far between among the members of those
churches. The gospel was
preached and listened to, with due
attention. All were neighbors,
friends and brethren."26 While
the picture of total harmony is probably
23. Lucius Verus Bierce, Historical
Reminiscences of Summit County (Akron, 1854),
49. He called Alfred Kelley too strict a
taskmaster on the canal and repeats a poem about
how Kelley's coat would be singed over
the "brimstone fire" for his behavior. See 47.
24. Bierce, Historical Reminiscences,
77 (first quotation), 80 (second quotation).
25. For a similar celebration of the
frontier spirit and a strong dose of civic pride but
with little comment of superior New
England culture (although it may well be implicit),
see Proceedings in commemoration of
the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of
Tallmadge ... (Akron, Ohio, 1857).
26. N. B. Northrop, Pioneer History
of Medina County (Medina, Ohio, 1861), 4 (first
quotation), 7 (second quotation), 44
(third quotation).
110 OHIO HISTORY
exaggerated, the level of sharing
between the Methodists and Congre-
gationalists was impressive and western.
Another local resident, Albert Gallatin
Riddle, a successful lawyer
reared in Geauga County, fictionalized
his early life in Victorian
romances of the Western Reserve. He
published two relevant volumes
in the post-Civil War period: Bart
Ridgeley: A Story of Northern Ohio
(1873) and The Portrait (1874).
His Reserve was a mixture of east and
west he called "the
Yankee-doodle-dom of Ohio." It was "so much of
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont,
etc. translated into the broader
and freer West." In a revealing
passage in Bart Ridgeley he reverses
the decline of each succeeding generation
which Hawley lamented
forty years earlier. "The Yankee,
like a certain vegetable, heads best
when transplanted," he argued. The
first generation, "scarcely refract-
ed by the new atmosphere," often
turned "homesick eyes" toward
New England. This "hardy,"
"enterprising," "homogenous people
... constituted a practical and thorough
democracy." The second
generation, including Riddle, became
more western, a "little straighter
and less angular, and wider between the
eyes."27 It reaped the full
benefits of the prosperity and western
perspective which escaped the
first generation and created a new,
midwestern generation. For Riddle,
unlike those who followed him, it was
not the European migrations
which altered the cultural climate of the
Reserve so much as it was the
interaction with the west which made
each successive generation less
eastern. His emphasis on change within
the dominant culture comple-
ments the ethnic blends observed by
Bierce and Northrop.
This new perspective of change was not
the dominant view of the
region in the post-Civil War period,
however. A cultural perspective
emphasizing eastern elements and an
almost stagnant view of the
region was. It had one key component:
the Reserve was more like
traditional New England than New England
itself because its isolation
preserved its value system. Its most
influential statement appeared in
1873 as a speech delivered by native son
James A. Garfield which was
later published.28 He argued
that Reserve townships "preserved here
in the wilderness the characteristics of
New England, as it was when
they left at the beginning of the
century" because they were cut off
from changes which altered New England.
Unlike Riddle who saw the
27. Albert Gallatin Riddle, Bart
Ridgeley: A Story of Northern Ohio (Cleveland,
1873), 26 (all quotations).
28. James A. Garfield, Discovery and
Ownership of the Northwest Territory and
Settlement of the Western Reserve, Tract 20 of the Western Reserve and Northern Ohio
Historical Society (Cleveland, 1874,
reprinted 1881), 28 (quotation).
Literature of the Western
Reserve
111
second generation becoming
"westernized," Garfield felt early settlers
"planted the institutions and
opinions of Old Connecticut in their new
wilderness homes" and clung to the
triad of values "the Family, the
School, and the Church." In fact,
they "nourished and cherished
[these values] . . . with an energy and
devotion scarcely equaled in any
other quarter of the world."29
Garfield's influential comments capture
late nineteenth century understanding of
a diluted version of "Puritan
values." No particular family
context, no particular educational crite-
ria, and no specific sectarian context
qualify the remarks. Neverthe-
less, many later writers highlight this
heritage and these values.
At the same time as Garfield's remarks
were made some popular
works appeared which recorded pioneer
achievements as Bierce had
done. After the Civil War, the national
trend of producing county
histories reached the Reserve. The
volumes concentrate on institu-
tions, officeholders, and township
"firsts." They contain a subtle but
pervasive emphasis. Institutions
connected with the New England
heritage such as Congregational or
Presbyterian church groups are
discussed in detail while other more
western religious groups such as
Methodists and Baptists are not. This is
especially true in the eastern
and northern portions of the Reserve.30
Similarly, schools are detailed
because they echo traditional New
England educational values.
Emphasis is also placed on successful
confrontations with wilder-
ness beasts, Indians, and deprivation
which helped build the hardy
stock which founded the Reserve. These
experiences provide a source
of pride and celebration of the pioneer
generation then rapidly disap-
pearing from memory. The celebratory
tone left no place for disgrun-
tled migrants. Instead, the first
settlers were the vanguard of a superior
New England culture who came west to
secure the region for the North
in a time of increasing sectional
rivalries between North and South.
These histories were supplemented by
volumes of recollections of
the Reserve's earliest days such as Pioneers
of the Western Reserve
assembled by Harvey Rice. He thought
successful migrants were
29. Garfield, Discovery, 27
(first quotation), 32 (second and third quotations). In one
sense his formulation showed the west
had already influenced him since he could not
precisely define the unique set of
values he chose to celebrate. He felt the Reserve was
so virtuous there was "little of
that lawlessness which so often characterizes the people
of a new country." See 27.
30. See, for instance, History of
Geauga and Lake Counties (Philadelphia, 1878). In
particular, the section on Claridon
township discusses the Congregational Church in
detail but barely mentions the Methodist
group. See 167-74. See also Northrop, Pioneer
History of Medina County, 185-86. Irreligion and nondenominational evangelical
minis-
ters are rarely mentioned. Perhaps the
New England connections so many writers
emphasized were more important.
112 OHIO HISTORY
educated in Bible precepts and in
"Puritanic doctrines."31 His infor-
mants felt the old times were socially
and morally purer than the late
nineteenth century. Undoubtedly, Rice,
like many who followed him,
concentrated on daily life on the
frontier which had been lost by the
late nineteenth century.32 Rice
did note the generational shift first
suggested by Riddle. "Though born
of Puritanism, [the Western
Reserve] has already acquired a grasp of
thought and a liberality of
sentiment which gives her a character
peculiarly her own, and one
which neither disguises nor betrays her
parentage."33 We will discuss
a more precise definition of this thesis
which was written several years
later.34 Rice's work was
followed by a similar one which chronicled the
experiences of women in the Western
Reserve.35
Harriet Taylor Upton's three-volume
compendium, History of the
Western Reserve, echoed the belief that "even at this writing, a
large
part of the Western Reserve,
particularly the eastern section, is quite
as much like New England as Connecticut
itself."36 Upton sought to
prove the Reserve superior to other
areas in Ohio. For writers like
Upton and so many who followed there was
no need to examine
cultural diversity within the region.
Cultural heritage set the Reserve
apart from other frontier areas
convincingly.
By the late nineteenth century several
professional historians turned
their attention to the area. They agreed
it was a coherent region with a
distinct cultural identity. Historian
George Bancroft, known for his
nationalistic views, found the Western
Reserve a culturally important
area and a seedbed of nationalism. B.A.
Hinsdale in his The Old
Northwest (1888) was impressed by its "pure . . . New
England popu-
lation." He continued, "no
similar territory west of the Allegheny
Mountains has so impressed the brain
and conscience of the country."37
31. Harvey Rice, Pioneers of the
Western Reserve (Boston, 1883), 341. The valuable
information these volumes contain must
be used with caution since much time passed
between the events and the recorded
testimony.
32. Pankratz, "New
Englanders," 355.
33. Rice, Pioneers, 349.
34. See Alfred Mathews, Ohio and Her
Western Reserve (New York, 1902).
35. Gertrude VanRensselaer Wickham, ed.,
Memorial to the Pioneer Women of the
Western Reserve, 2 vols. (Cleveland, 1896-1897).
36. Harriet Taylor Upton, History of
the Western Reserve (Chicago, 1910), 1:11.
Puritans were not faultless, in her
view. Early New England ones had "bored the Quaker
tongue with red-hot poker [and while in
Ohio they] dearly [love] to roast the Demo-
crats." See 1:18.
37. B. A. Hinsdale, The old Northwest
with a View of the Thirteen Colonies as
constituted by the Royal Charters (New York, 1888), 388. He was referring, in part, to
the antislavery activities in the
antebellum period.
Literature of the Western
Reserve 113
He argued that "in externals, the
colonists, ... reproduced New
England in Northeastern Ohio."
His migrants were not committed to the
New England establishment,
however. Hinsdale, echoing the more
limited views of Kimball, thought
the conservative, oppressive political,
social, and religious environment
of Connecticut forced many to leave. On
the Reserve they soon "began
to feel the throbbing of a new life"
signalled by anti-slavery sentiment,
the rapid proliferation of dissenting
religious groups, and the flourishing
of schools both common and collegiate.
They did not keep all traditions
alive: "the plain people, while
throwing much of the New England
ballast overboard, and while crowding
their canvas, have held the
rudder so true as to avoid dangerous
extremes."38 Cultural continuity,
but only in the most general terms,
occurred on the Reserve, according
to Hinsdale and many writers who
followed. They correctly identify the
root culture of the Western Reserve but
they often dilute the definition
to the modern equivalent of mother,
home, and apple pie.
One of the most famous American
historians, Frederick Jackson
Turner, felt differently. He thought
that Moses Cleaveland's survey of
the region in 1796 "was the
beginning of the occupation of the Western
Reserve, a district about as large as
the parent state of Connecticut, a
New England colony in the Middle West,
which has maintained, even
to the present time [1901] the impress
of New England traits."39
Moreover, Turner argued that New England
because of its role in the
writing of the Northwest Ordinance and
in settling "Marietta and
Cleveland" successfully
"planted enduring centers of Puritan influ-
ence" in both places.40 Turner,
like Hinsdale, noted many migrants,
"come-outers" in politics and
religion, founded Bible and temperance
groups and Methodist and Presbyterian
societies and had an influence
"out of all relation to [New
England's] population."41 Although he
never researched how pervasive these
activities were, Turner felt the
Reserve so closely connected with the
East and so far away from the
Mississippi River Valley, the real
center of American culture, that it did
not display typical frontier
characteristics. So for Turner the Western
Reserve was not really western.
38. Hinsdale, Old Northwest, 390
(first quotation), 392 (second quotation). Italics
added.
39. Frederick Jackson Turner, The
Frontier in American History (New York, 1920),
133.
40. Ibid., 223.
41. Frederick Jackson Turner, Rise of
the New West, 1819-1829 (New York, 1906),
22 (first quotation), 27 (second
quotation).
114 OHIO HISTORY
Professional historians were not alone
in their attention to the region.
Beginning near the turn of the century,
popular writers produced
numerous accounts which relied on
information from county histories.
Typically, they mixed fact and story
into a somewhat fanciful history
which emphasized regional integrity and
Puritan heritage. They were
more beholden to Garfield than to
Hinsdale or even Turner as they
described the pure cultural values and
ethnic homogeneity which
contrasted with their increasingly
complex world. Their works seldom
reflected the complex, changing
environment of the Reserve.
The number of works about the Reserve
increased significantly,
inspired, no doubt, by the 1896
centennial of its founding. Ellen D.
Larned's two-part article, "New
Connecticut or Western Reserve,"
mixed documents and commentary on the
centennial celebration.
Inspired by Garfield's speech, she found
proof of the Reserve's New
England legacy in his career and that of
William Dean Howells.
"Whatever changes may have been
wrought in old Connecticut
[Larned said] she can still rejoice that
her western children carried with
them so much of her early character and
institutions." For her, the
Connecticut Missionary Society
counteracted "the demoralizing ten-
dencies incident to all new countries,
but helped impart that peculiar
Connecticut flavoring so characteristic
of the Reserve." She also
asserted that with little direct
discussion that "representatives of
Connecticut's standard old families were
found in every leading town,
carrying with them Connecticut ideas,
institutions, and modes of
living."42 Larned added
to the myth of the Reserve by implying that the
Missionary Society was able to hold the
region in tow and that every
township had its guardian family to
preserve the heritage in person.43
Several years later, William Mills
authored his Story of the Western
Reserve of Connecticut. Mills labeled the region the "Paradise of
Ohio"
and used his work to gather the leading
facts of the Western Reserve
and to testify "to [his] love
for" the area. Typically he characterized the
migrants as "the true descendants
of Puritan stock" who march "with
a Bible in one hand and a school book
in the other ..."44 He pointed to
42. Connecticut Quarterly, 11 (1896), 4:386-95; III (1897) 1:88-99. See 99
(first
quotation), 96 (second quotation). She
used records of the state of Connecticut, the
Connecticut Land Company, and the
Missionary Society of Connecticut. Unfortunately
she did not identify the families nor
their places in either community.
43. See also Robert Shackleton,
"The Western Reserve," New England Magazine,
14 (1896), 323-44 which includes many
tales of "daring and heroism" in the mold of other
celebratory writers.
44. William Mills, Story of the
Western Reserve of Connecticut (New York, 1900),
6 (first quotation), 9 (second
quotation), 107 (third quotation).
Literature of the Western
Reserve 115
the numerous Reserve townships named
after those in New England but
otherwise was content to celebrate his
homeland.
A stronger history appeared in 1902 with
the publication of Ohio and
Her Western Reserve by Alfred Mathews. He contrasted the heteroge-
neity of the rest of Ohio with the
homogenous Reserve, the "realization
of the essential ideals of a progressive
Puritanism."45 Taking Garfield's
views one step further, Mathews saw New
Connecticut as "the last
organized and distinct colony of
Puritanism" in the country since it
reproduced the old
"congregationalism, early education, Western Re-
serve College, imported the town
meeting, and named towns for those
in Connecticut."46 The
community kept its New England context for
two reasons. First, mirroring the then
popular germ theory of Anglo-
Saxon racial superiority over other
European immigrant groups then
flooding the country, the pioneers were
the "hardiest" of their "race."
Second, and curiously, the virgin soil
added "new force to old tenden-
cies" which presumably altered the
Puritan colony.47
In fact, reflecting the sentiments of
Riddle while unwittingly weak-
ening his position, Mathews found the
first native generation superior
to the colonizing one, the new better
than the old. For the colonizers
"Puritanism, Presbyterianism,
patriotism formed the triad of [their]
mental equipment." But, continued
Mathews, the Yankee traits
changed to "progressive
Puritanism" marked by "the courage to
assert conscience." The
"ancient congealing coldness of' Connecticut
Congregationalism was replaced by
"a revived secular religion as well
as a new political and social
Puritanism." This new Puritanism changes
traditional New England values despite
Mathews' view and easily
forms the base for a more complex and
vibrant Reserve.48
In any case, these changes produced
virulent anti-slavery sentiment
at Western Reserve College, at Oberlin,
and throughout the region. For
Mathews a hereditary line connected the
ideas of Thomas Hooker,
"Puritan preacher of
Connecticut," and the majority of Reserve
residents who realized the inequity of
slavery and made the Reserve a
state within a state from the time of
Free-Soil to the Civil War.49
The virgin soil added dynamism to
inherited New England values.
Darwinian selection produced impressive
specimens: "It takes nature a
long time to make a man of Benjamin
Franklin Wade's stature, and
45. Mathews, Ohio, viii.
46. No town meetings were held on the
Reserve. They would not have had the same
impact, in any case, for they were not
part of Ohio government as they had been in
Connecticut.
47. Mathews, Ohio, 170.
48. Mathews, Ohio, 171 (first
quotation), 9 (second quotation), 173 (third quotation).
49. Mathews, Ohio, 175, 178
(quotation).
116 OHIO HISTORY
evoluting protoplasm and mysterious mind
pass by many strange
meanderings to perform the
function." Mathews continued, "Massive,
rugged, a warrior born ... Wade had
strains of blood from two
poets-gentle Anne Dudley Bradstreet,
daughter of Governor Dudley,
born 1612 ... and austere, profoundly
puritanic Michael Wigglesworth"
author of "Day of Doom." This
impressive gene pool benefited from
work on the Erie Canal which instilled
"Western vigor" and radicalism.
This "vigor" was symbolized by
John Brown (who was raised in the
Reserve), "hero and fanatic."
A happier result was the "reflex tide"
which set in especially in education
when teachers from the Reserve
migrated to Connecticut bringing new
energy and confirming its cultural
achievements. Even in the late
nineteenth century, the Reserve coun-
tryside "still [had] the moral
contour and color of the mother State,"
and Cleveland was the "Boston of
the West" because of its conserva-
tive financial institutions and
commercial vigor. Mathews, who concen-
trated on the elite and on a few
institutions for his analysis, brought a
renewed vigor to the literature of the
Reserve.50
His work was followed by others both
popular and scholarly. Karl F.
Geiser's "New England and the
Western Reserve" included both
elements.51 Geiser agreed
with Mathews that "the social and political
institutions of the Western Reserve
developed from a combination of
... New England Puritanism transferring
or projecting ... its New
England qualities, yet hampered ... and
acted upon by forces springing
from a new soil and new
environments." He created a label readily
acceptable to many writers who preceded
him. Geiser thought, echoing
Mathews' "progressive
Puritans," Western Puritans developed on the
Reserve. To him the Western Reserve was
the last home of colonized
Puritanism, " a New England colony
... in no other place in the West
... has its social and religious flavor
permeated and dominated the
thought and life of so large a
community."52 But this domination was
not permanent; as Hinsdale believed,
there were differences.53 The
50. Mathews, Ohio, 181-82 (first
quotation), 187 (second quotation), 189 (third
quotation), 209 (fourth quotation).
51. Karl F. Geiser, "New England
and the Western Reserve," Proceedings of the
Mississippi Valley Historical Association for the Year
1912-1913, 6 (1913), 62-78. This
volume included Solon J. Buck's,
"The New England Element in Illinois Politics before
1833" and Lois Kimball Mathews'
"The Mayflower Compact and its Descendants."
52. Geiser, "New England," 78
(quotation). He said "if what Ranke says is true in
principle, namely that no community ever
rose to important consequences in which the
religious motive was not dominant, it
may find its verification in the history of the
Western Reserve." See 78.
53. Settlement of the Reserve was
different, for unlike New England Puritans
migrants did not flee religious
persecution, Indians were not hostile, communal owner-
ship of land was unnecessary and
settlements were not generally made by church groups.
Literature of the Western
Reserve 117
strong western influences degraded
"the moral and religious elements
of Puritanism [and produced] . ..
freedom of thought [which] accompa-
nied freedom of action." Geiser was
convinced that the connection
between New England and the Reserve was
personal, not political, and
that the New England influence lasted
well after 1840 when less than
one-third of the residents were from New
England.54 His colony was
distinctly western, however. Again, the
view is sufficiently general so
that it accommodates both tradition and
change.
Alfred Mathews' emphasis on migratory
patterns was overshadowed
by a more comprehensive and scholarly
work, The Expansion of New
England by Lois K. Mathews. Lois Mathews, a follower of
Frederick
Jackson Turner, used county histories to
trace the migration from
eastern New England into northern New
England and then across
northern New York, Pennsylvania and on
to Ohio, Michigan, Indiana,
and Illinois. She emphasized the
radicalism of the first New Englanders.
Their descendants moved away from the
coast "for economic, reli-
gious, and political freedom" and
to escape the aging areas' tendency
"to grow conservative, and even to
crystallize . . ." The migrants were
not totally transformed because they
turned "as their fathers had done
to the civilization of their birthplace,
for precedents," but they read-
justed "because of new conditions
and new elements" and shaped
institutions "neither wholly new
nor entirely old." On the frontier,
religious independence which meant the
predominance of the Congre-
gational church in New England was
supplanted by six or more separate
sects in some towns. Eventually these
new communities became less
radical and more provincial just as New
England had become.55
Like Alfred Mathews, she thought Puritan
emigrants and Reserve
settlers shared a similar process:
"from the early days when the Rev.
Mr. Hooker and his congregation had made their way from Newtowne
to the Connecticut River, until the
time, two centuries later, when the
Rev. Mr. Shipherd took his colony to
plant a new town and college at
Oberlin, thousands of New Englanders
carried their ideals and their
traditions into the wilderness." In
a familiar litany of institutional
Geiser compares seventeenth century to
nineteenth century, ignoring the intervening
period which changed New England. See
68.
54. Geiser, "New England,"
70-71 (quotation), 78. He thought schools were a
product of "Puritan faith" and
the influence of Harvey Rice, a Yankee. See 76.
55. Lois K. Mathews, The Expansion of
New England (New York, 1962 edition,
originally published 1909), 4 (first and
second quotations), 4-5 (third and fourth
quotations), 6. Mathews perceptively
argued that as frontier areas age wealth reduces
individualism to self-complacency
"born of the pride concerning hardships overcome,-
the pride of the 'self-made man' . ..
this ... bred[s] the provincialism common to new
communities." See 7.
118 OHIO HISTORY
connections she saw that in each stage
the emigrants transplanted
schools, organized churches, and
encouraged political participation in
local affairs whether they were Puritans
emigrating to the shores of the
Connecticut River or nineteenth-century
New Englanders settling Ohio.
While "many a country in the
central and southern part of [Ohio] had
[a] heterogenous population . . . the
Western Reserve was almost pure
Connecticut stock, save in the
southeastern portion, where might be
found a mixture of elements ... "
including migrants from Pennsylva-
nia, and here and there a family from
Virginia, Maryland, or the
Carolinas.56
Mathews believed that by 1840 the New
England tradition had
"crystallized in the New
Connecticut ... [where its changes] had not
concealed the original type, nor
obscured the ideal which lay at the
foundations of all [schools, churches,
and local government]."57 So
Lois Mathews found the Reserve fit the
pattern of New England
settlement as it traversed the Old
Northwest. For her, as for Hinsdale,
the institutions were crucial. Their
transformation after they were
established was not.
Mathews' work was followed by a more
general volume of historic
boosterism, P.P. Cherry's The Western
Reserve and Early Ohio (1921).
Cherry repeated the litany of praise for
the region, asserting that it was
"the last organized stand of
Puritanism" that had a unique character
which saved the nation during the Civil
War.58
These works were replaced by impressive
volumes of popular history
especially by Walter, Havighurst and
Harlan Hatcher. Havighurst's
Wilderness for Sale: The Story of the
First Western Land Rush assessed
the impact of the frontier in vivid
prose: "The new country stretched a
man's stride and widened his
conceptions. So Irad Kelley sailed a sloop
the length of Lake Erie to keep goods on
the shelves of a pioneer store,
and Alfred Kelley pushed a canal from
Lake Erie to the Ohio River."
After a long list of early settlers and
their successful careers, Havighurst
concluded, much as Alfred Mathews had
before him: "No other inland
region in America has had so pure a New
England population as that of
the Western Reserve in its first half
century of settlement. Its towns,
with white spires above the village
green, looked like Connecticut, and
there were fifty New England names, from
Amherst to Windsor, on the
56. Mathews, Expansion, 174-75
(first quotation), 181 (second quotation). She did not
use census materials which would have
altered her statements. She found dairy farming
and agricultural societies were
transported directly from Connecticut to the Reserve.
57. Mathews, Expansion, 192.
58. P.P. Cherry, The Western Reserve
and Early Ohio (Akron, 1921), 65-67.
Literature of the Western
Reserve 119
map of the new counties." He
reflected another theme of the literature
when he cautioned the Reserve "was
not a new New England. The Ohio
country changed its Yankee settlers as
they changed the western land.
It relaxed their Calvinism and enlarged
their interests and undertakings:
it made Yankee farmers into Ohio
merchants, builders, politicians and
industrialists."59 Just
how this was done and what its effects were is not
described.
In another work published the same year,
The Heartland: Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Havighurst called Reserve settlements "permanent
colonies" of New England as
evidenced by the "white church spires
lifted above the village greens in
Jefferson, Chardon, Painesville,
Ravenna, Warren, Hudson, Ellsworth,
Cleveland and Wooster."60
These spires symbolized the overwhelming
influence of New England
on the Reserve.
The second writer, Harlan Hatcher, wrote
the only full-length
treatment of the region, The Western
Reserve: the Story of New
Connecticut. Hatcher, says the dust jacket, "writes of the
Western
reserve with admiration, pride, and
love." He writes with attention to
a good story as he traces the Reserve
from its foundation to the
mid-twentieth century. Many of his early
chapters capture the excite-
ment of the frontier because he uses
first-hand accounts extensively,
especially when he describes the
realities of surveying the Reserve,
and the hardships of the early years of
settlement.61
Hatcher's overall view suggests
Hinsdale: "No, Connecticut's West-
ern Reserve in Ohio is not a
reproduction of old Connecticut. It is too
original . . . but, like a gifted son of
a gifted father, it wears the stamp
of its progenitor without sacrificing
its singular personality." The
Reserve, in his opinion, as it was for
those who preceded him, stayed
"Connecticut and New England long
enough and exclusively enough
to establish a distinctive atmosphere
and style of living ... which was
able to maintain its basic pattern even
after the flood of immigration
swept over it." It easily
"contained the invasion" because "until the
middle of the [nineteenth] century the
growth of Reserve towns was
slow and imperceptible, and the pattern
of life in a rural atmosphere of
an agrarian economy was relatively
unchanged."62
59. Walter Havighurst, Wilderness For
Sale: The Story of the First Western Land
Rush (New York, 1956), 176, 178.
60. Walter Havighurst, The Heartland:
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois (New York, 1956), 153.
61. Harlan Hatcher, The Western
Reserve: the Story of New Connecticut (Indianap-
olis, 1949), 27-88.
62. Hatcher, Western Reserve, 16
(first three quotations), 189 (fourth quotation).
Hatcher seems to unconsciously compare
rural and urban, agrarian and industrial change
in this statement.
120 OHIO HISTORY
He shows change in the Reserve by
concentrating on the develop-
ment of canals, railroads, and
shipbuilding and their impact on business
and the cities. Hatcher finds pre-Civil
War rural communities of the
Reserve changed little as he moves from
town to town at mid-century.
Hudson and Oberlin exemplify the best
traditions of New England
intellectual and educational life in
Western Reserve and Oberlin colleg-
es, and the best agrarian traditions
exist in the dairy-farming area of
Burton and the wheat farming township of
Milan.63 Even thirty years
later, says Hatcher, the Reserve
retained its characteristics: "it was a
grain, fruit, sheep, and dairy region,
still markedly Connecticut in
appearance ...." There was
"just enough small industries [in the
county seat towns]-flour, lumber, and
woolen mills, ax and scythe
factories-to supply local demands ...
new roads, railroads, and lake
commerce linked ... to markets in the
East .... The Reserve as a
whole still held firm as a portion of
Connecticut set down in northeast-
ern Ohio."64
In contrast to rural areas, the cities
were transformed. Akron, a
canal town, "was in the Reserve,
but it was in no wise New
Connecticut" because it was on its
way to "becoming a cosmopolitan
industrial town." By 1850 Cleveland
contained contrasts: "it was so
rapidly filling with new people, a heavy
percentage of them European,
that the original New Englanders are
meeting at the Weddell House to
form themselves into the New England
Society ...."In other cities,
too, like Warren, Youngstown, even
Sandusky the "New Connecticut
bent and background and leadership ...
was overlaid with cosmopol-
itan industrialism that made it
increasingly obscure."65 After the Civil
War, Hatcher argues, iron, steel, and
oil changed much. Youngstown,
a quiet little New England village in
1846 with more church spires than
smokestacks, had twenty-five blast
furnaces by the early 1870s and
rapidly lost its "Connecticut
flavor." By the twentieth century, it was
"as remote from old Connecticut as
the mill section of Lowell,
Massachusetts ... one must leave
Youngstown and stand on the green
at Poland or Canfield to be reminded
that this home of Little Steel has
evolved on land that is technically
still a corner of the Western
Reserve." Cities fueled by
industries swept "onward until their power
and influence [were] felt in all the
villages for which they have become
an attracting center. Other and more
potent migrations have overrun
and supplanted that first mass migration
of old Connecticut peoples to
63. Hatcher, Western Reserve, 97-115,
151-88, 197-98, 154, 202.
64. Hatcher, Western Reserve, 229
(first quotation), 230 (second quotation).
65. Hatcher, Western Reserve, 201
(first quotation), 228 (second quotation), 230 (third
quotation).
Literature of the Western
Reserve
121
the new West."66 Hatcher
was impressed with the success and change
industry brought and was generally
content to suggest that rural life
changed little until the twentieth
century. He did not detail the
alterations in town life in
intellectual, economic, or social terms but
generally just contrasted it with urban
life.
Both Hatcher and Havighurst celebrated
the successes which the
Great Lakes region and Cleveland, in
particular, had in the growing
national industrial economy.
From the late 1920s on, popular
histories were supplemented by
scholarly essays using economic
geography which did not reach a wide
audience.67 Consequently, the
results did not influence generally ac-
cepted views of the Reserve. In 1943
John Garland suggested a new
concept in his essay "The Western
Reserve of Connecticut; Geography
of a Political Relic." Garland
thought the varied geography within the
Reserve altered community economic
patterns. The eastern portion,
part of the Allegheny Upland of pasture,
meadow, and woodlands of
"mediocre quality,"
specialized in dairying. The more fertile western
portion was part of the Great Plains,
and here corn and wheat
production predominated. Garland
contended that the eastern portion
grew slowly since its soil was
relatively poor whereas the western
section filled in quickly.68
Three other economic geographers wrote
essays on the Reserve.69
Their combined findings suggest
settlement and industry proceeded
66. Hatcher, Western Reserve, 229-70,
281 (first quotation), 289 (second quotation),
331 (third quotation).
67. Elbert J. Benton, a professional
scholar, wrote in the Dictionary of
American
History entry for "Western Reserve" that it
"became an extension of New England into
the West. Names of families, towns,
architecture, and social customs carried evidence of
this transfer of population from the
East and marked the Western Reserve apart from
other parts of the country until
industrialization and a new immigration blurred its
origins." Dictionary of
American History (revised edition, New
York, 1976), 7:274-75.
Unfortunately, Benton echoes Hinsdale
but does not explain his ideas.
68. John Garland, "The Western
Reserve of Connecticut; Geography of a Political
Relic," Economic Geography, 19
(1943), 310-19. Farms were 100 acres in west 70 to 80
east where there are more owner-operated
farms.
69. Two were doctoral dissertations from
the University of Chicago: Helen Mabel
Strong, "The Geography of
Cleveland," (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago,
1921) and James Swinton Mathews
"Expressions of Urbanism in the Sequent Occupance
of Northeastern Ohio" (Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Chicago, 1949). Also a 1950
paper by Milton George, entitled
"The Settlement of the Connecticut Western Reserve"
(copy at Western Reserve Historical
Society), exists. Mathews finds three stages:
pioneer period 1796-1825, canal era,
1825-1855, and initial rise of cities, 1855-1900.
Concentrating on economic change, he
traces the rise of specific industries in each town
and does not describe any specific
impact on the population or culture.
122 OHIO HISTORY
along transportation lines and were not
haphazard. Unfortunately, no
other writers used this geographical
perspective.70
Since 1940 the literature of the Western
Reserve includes scholarly
essays on the early history of the
Reserve and scholarly case studies
which concentrate on a small political
unit or highlight an individual or
group. While much has been learned about
the region, no synthesis has
developed. Among the essays is "The
Western Reserve as a Section in
American History" by Harry Forrest
Lupold. He used the Reserve as
a case study of Frederick Jackson
Turner's ideas. Turner, according to
Lupold, argued that the combination of
land and people created
different societies in different areas.
Lupold thought the Reserve was
unique-more like New England than New
England itself. Echoing a
Turnerian phrase, Lupold said cheap land
provided a safety valve
which took pressure off New England, and
concluded that "the
individualism of Turner was balanced by
the community sense of
responsibility and neighborliness."71
Eric Cardinal's "New England and
the Western Reserve in the
Nineteenth Century: Some
Suggestions" agreed the Reserve was New
England in miniature but offered some
refinements. Cardinal thought,
like Garfield, that the region
maintained its "pervasive atmosphere of
New England throughout the nineteenth
and into the twentieth [cen-
tury]." Furthermore, the
"built environment" of town and country
scapes characterized by the regular
five-mile square gridwork was a
tangible reminder of New England
influence. He found the Connecticut
connection evidenced by a commitment to
public education and the
decision by the trustees of the
Missionary Society of Connecticut to
make the Reserve the chief recipient of
its activities.72 In his view,
70. A recent, general work by D. H.
Meinig argues the Reserve was part of a
geographical region from Lake Champlain
to the Cuyahoga River and included western
New York and northern Pennsylvania, and
made up a "northern landscape of glaciated
terrain" with "a strong
imprint of New England colonization." Meinig finds there were no
"simple extensions of seaboard
societies." There was a strong Yankee imprint but there
were other peoples as well, and the
great Hudson trafficway worked against sustained
connections with New England." D.H.
Meinig, The Shaping of America; a geographical
perspective on 500 Years of History,
Volume I Atlantic America, 1492-1800 (New
York,
1986), 357 (first and second
quotations), 448 (third and fourth quotations).
71. Harry Forrest Lupold, "The
Western Reserve as a Section in American History,"
Great Lakes Review, 7 (1981), 26, 32-33 (quotation), 34. This premise of
regional
complexity is not developed. Lupold
found the sectional cohesiveness established
churches and schools and, in his terms,
balanced the "nationalism, democracy, and
individualism" with "an equal
talent for community organization and discipline."
72. Eric Cardinal, "New England and
the Western Reserve in the Nineteenth Century:
Some Suggestions," Western
Reserve Studies, I (Painesville, Ohio, 1986), 18 (first
quotation), 18, 14-15. He does not
comment on how successful the missionaries were and
for how long.
Literature of the Western
Reserve 123
community developed quickly on the
Reserve, since many settlers were
relatives or came from the same town and
"they almost immediately
developed a sense of community . . .
[because] portions of existing New
England communities were grafted as
complete or semi-complete social
organizations upon lands previously
unbounded...." Cardinal argued
that the random pattern of land
acquisition "created more than hard-
ship: it created too an atmosphere in
which cultural continuity, stability,
even insularity, would be
fostered."73 Cardinal also concluded that for
a portion of the Reserve Garfield was
wrong. Ethnic heterogeneity in
areas like Cleveland and the lakeshore
communities by the 1860s and
'70s altered the homogeneity of the
early years, and, echoing Hatcher,
he said that the industrial growth in
Akron, Youngstown, and Cleveland
contrasted sharply with the rural
agrarian townships. So while he added
some refinements, the basic elements
remain.
The latest published work which
describes the area, Ohio's Western
Reserve A Regional Reader edited by Harry F. Lupold and Gladys
Haddad, includes several introductory
essays. As one might expect,
Lupold and Haddad acknowledge the New
England heritage but feel,
along with many others, that "New
Connecticut did not become an
exact reproduction of the old"
since European migrants to Reserve
cities complicated the cultural blend.74
They also find in their reader,
which traces the economic and political
changes from the eighteenth
century to 1920, that religion which
accompanied the migrants was
altered in the Reserve.
Scholarly case studies have offered the
most promising new ideas
about the region. Frederick Clayton
Waite's Western Reserve Univer-
sity: the Hudson Era typifies some aspects of these limited monographs.
His detailed history of the college
celebrated the New England cultural
heritage exemplified in its early
years. Waite corrected some mistaken
ideas including the belief that
"the Western Reserve was entirely settled
directly from Connecticut ..."75 He
admitted, however, that most "did
come from that state or from areas
earlier colonized by that state."
Another monograph shows how the Reserve
lost much of its New
73. Cardinal, "New England and the
Western Reserve," 15 (first quotation),
17 (second quotation). Cardinal does not
indicate what proportion of migrants came to
the area under these conditions. His
view of random land acquisition disagrees with
George's analysis of settlement
patterns.
74. Harry F. Lupold and Gladys Haddad,
eds., Ohio's Western Reserve A Regional
Reader, (Kent, Ohio, 1988), 9.
75. Frederick Clayton Waite, Western
Reserve University: the Hudson Era (Cleve-
land, 1943), 14.
124 OHIO HISTORY
England architectural heritage. The
work, Elizabeth G. Hitchcock's
Jonathan Goldsmith: Pioneer Master
Builder of the Western Reserve
(1980), traces Goldsmith's elegant
houses which were significantly
altered after the 1860s as the
antiquated architecture of the migrant
generation was integrated into national
trends.76
Kenneth V. Lottick traced education, a
key element in the New
England traditions brought to the
Reserve from Connecticut. Lottick
believed, along with Turner, that the
Reserve "did not follow [the]
frontier thesis." Lottick echoed
earlier writers by asserting that a
"way of life" bolstered by the
"Connecticut tripod" of church, school,
and town was "lifted from its
Atlantic mooring and deposited in a new
setting."77 The Reserve,
"more like New England than New England
itself," continued to be defined,
even in the twentieth century, by the
cultural and architectural heritage of
New England.78
Lottick developed his views of the
region's contribution to primary,
secondary, and collegiate education in New
England Transplanted; A
Study of the Development of
Educational and Other Cultural Agencies
in the Connecticut Western Reserve in
their National and Philosophical
Setting. He pointed out that numerous colleges, a state
educational
organization, and the first high school
program all came to Ohio from
New England by way of the Reserve. He
offered a convincing comment
on the different role of education in
the Reserve: "education, the
instrument of class control in New
England, became an agency of
cultural preservation in the
West."79 The many public schools and New
England-style academies in the region
were impressive even though he
probably overestimated their prevalence
and impact.
In addition to Lottick's overview of a
key element of culture in the
Reserve, several unpublished doctoral
dissertations detailed individual
towns within the Reserve.80 "Range
Ten, Township Four: A Social
76. Elizabeth G. Hitchcock's Jonathan
Goldsmith: Pioneer Master Builder of the
Western Reserve (Cleveland, 1980).
77. Kenneth V. Lottick, "Cultural
Transplantation in the Connecticut Reserve,"
Historical and Philosophical Society
of Ohio Bulletin, 17 (1959), 155 (all
quotations).
78. Kenneth V. Lottick, "The
Western Reserve and the Frontier Thesis," Ohio
Historical Quarterly, 70 (1961), 56. He is quoting Lucien Price, Hardscrabble
Hellas: An
Ohio Academe (Hudson, Ohio, 1930), 17.
79. Kenneth V. Lottick, New England
Transplanted; a study of the development of
Educational and Other Cultural
Agencies in the Connecticut Western Reserve in their
National and Philosophical Setting (Dallas, 1964), 14, 92 (quotation). Lottick relies on
Hinsdale, Benton, and Hatcher for
background. He supports his thesis of cultural
transplantation but does not follow the
adaptation which takes place as the century
proceeds.
80. Terrance Furin, "Berea, Ohio:
Change in a Covenanted Community" (Ph.D.
Literature of the Western
Reserve 125
History of Hudson, Ohio,
1799-1840," by Michael McMannis, used
quantitative methods to analyze social
change in this Reserve town.
McMannis discovered the homogeneity of
Hudson was rather quickly
destroyed by social evolution. He
implicitly attacked the notion that
the Reserve was "more New England
than New England itself." The
town, founded by David Hudson to
"establish a lawful community of
free men ... dedicated to God and ...
inhabited by an educated clergy
and laity," remained intact for
twenty-five years. In this period,
according to McMannis, "the joint
Congregational/Presbyterian eccle-
siastical organization [which] was
probably the only important social
organization to function in
Hudson," and its members benefited from
their early arrival and large land
purchases. However, the surface
"homogeneity was always more
apparent than real." Rival groups,
latent until the completion of the Ohio
Canal and the creation of
Western Reserve College in the late
1820s, emerged. They formed a
rival political party, established two
other sectarian churches, profited
from a split in the old church over
temperance and abolition which
further divided the community, and,
finally, replaced the pioneer
leaders as they died in the 1830s,
ending the dominance of the
Congregationalists. McMannis did not
find Turner's ideal egalitarian
frontier society in Hudson, but one that
"was reasonably open and
fluid." He discovered that two
important economic shifts occurred in
the 1830s as the canal attracted more
cattle producers and as surplus
capital moved from land speculation to
commerce and manufacturing.81
Hudson by 1840 was not a re-creation of
New England society in Ohio
despite its attractive, New England town
center which has dominated
the perspectives of so many writers of
the Reserve. It was a new Ohio
society made up of Riddle's second
generation.
A study of one township in Geauga County
has shown the complex-
ity which existed below the surface of
the seemingly unchanging
agricultural hinterland of the Reserve.
This author's "Land and
Community in Rural Nineteenth Century
America: Claridon Town-
ship, 1810-1870" finds that two
distinct waves of migration, the first
from Connecticut and the second from
Massachusetts and New York,
brought different New Englanders to
Claridon.82 They settled in two
dissertation, Case Western University,
1974). He briefly discusses the founding of Berea
as a Methodist community in 1836 which
failed a year later. The work concentrates on
the twentieth century and does not
explore the significance of the town to the Reserve.
81. Michael McMannis, "Range Ten,
Township four: A Social History of Hudson,
Ohio, 1799-1840" (Ph.D.
dissertation, Case Western University, 1976), 48 (first quota-
tion), 49, 141 (second quotation), 142
(third quotation), 155 (fourth quotation), 61.
82. Robert Wheeler, "Land and
Community in Rural Nineteenth Century America:
Claridon Township, 1810-1870," Ohio
History, 97
(summer-autumn 1988), 101-21.
126 OHIO HISTORY
separate parts of the township, belonged
to different churches, had
somewhat different economic interests
and rarely socialized or inter-
married. In the end they formed two
communities-not one homoge-
nous recreation of New England.
Another recent dissertation,
"Social Entrepreneurs: Economic En-
terprisers and Social Reformers on
Ohio's Western Reserve, 1795-
1845," by Marc Harris, analyzed
leaders of some of the region's
important institutions. Harris thought
the Reserve had a distinct
identity because it formed a
conservative political voting block and
because it did not emphasize
individualism. Like McMannis and
Wheeler, Harris found complexity and
evolution rather than homoge-
neity in the region.
Harris thought the Reserve resembled
upstate New York culturally
and politically because both drew their
population from New England
even though they developed separate
identities. As proof he offered the
familiar town and village pattern of
buildings grouped around a
common, similar religious institutions,
and similar voluntary associa-
tions such as temperance and
anti-slavery. To the list he added
economic distinctive New England
industries of cheese, potash and
pearl ash, and maple sugar production.83
Harris found that an important group of
early leaders of Reserve
institutions were constantly attempting
to draw the Reserve into eastern
economic and cultural spheres. Their network
originated in Connecti-
cut, was transported to upstate New
York, and finally, moved onto the
Reserve. There they formed a coherent
"network of family, social, and
business relationships that was
primarily based in the counties and
extended over the entire
[Reserve]." They did not try to perpetuate a
"self-contained region of isolated
communities of the kind limned by
many earlier historians."84 Economically,
they sought eastern capital to
promote trade and upgrade
transportation. Even educational endeavors
were encouraged to both preserve the
eastern heritage and to keep up
with eastern changes.85 Complexity
and economic evolution are both
important to the changing Reserve, in
Harris' view.
83. Marc Harris. "Social
Entrepreneurs: Economic Enterpriser and Social Reformers
on Ohio's Western Reserve,
1795-1845" (Ph. D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University,
1983), 24, 33, 69-70.
84. Harris, "Social
Entrepreneurs," 329 (first quotation), 333 (second quotation).
Harris sees migratory waves: after the
War of 1812 because of the end of the Indian
threat, and during the late 20s and
early 30s because of the opening of the Erie and Ohio
canals. His evidence shows an earlier
one which brought many of the most powerful
people to the Reserve. See 52-53.
85. Harris, "Social
Entrepreneurs," 333-34. Harris thinks leaders supported certain
cultural institutions so they could
control the culture of the region. Possibly, the elite did
Literature of the Western
Reserve 127
The most recent scholarly study, by John
Pankratz, concentrates on
"New Englanders, the written word,
and the errand into Ohio, 1788-
1830." Pankratz finds that the
literate culture which came to the
Reserve (and to Marietta as well)
defined a great deal of regional
culture, especially religious and
historical. He finds three kinds of
townships: those like Hudson, Tallmadge,
Burton, and Painesville made
up almost totally of Connecticut
migrants; those, including many near
the Pennsylvania border, which began
with many other cultures and
sects; and pluralistic ones like Euclid
where different "manners, habits,
education, & customs" made people
"unwilling to give up anything to
which they had been used to in former
life." By 1830, he thinks, much
of the religious life in the region was
lived outside religious institutions
because the Congregational and
Presbyterian churches refused to
become flexible enough to accommodate
western cultural diversity.86
Consequently, between 1814 and 1830 the
Reserve was "part mission
frontier, part settled pastorates."
Connecticut residents who thought
that by planting enough of the right
people in the wilderness and giving
them the right books New Connecticut
could become as steady as Old
Connecticut were wrong. The political
climate which was supposed to
be better in Ohio was more virulent
because more was at stake.
Moreover, those propelled by religious
differences found for the reli-
gious too few churches and for the
"freethinkers, meddlesome mission-
aries too frequent." Personal
change of the kind hinted at by Riddle was
evident in letters like the one which
said "I am very glad you are losing
some of that Yankee reserve (or prudence
perhaps it is called) which
seals up the lips on every subject
pertaining to self . ."87 He concludes,
correctly, that there was no clear sense
of Puritan influence for it was
reduced to general concepts like steady
habits and regular worship. The
real threat to this homogeneity was not
from European immigration but
from a "southern element, called
the Pennsylvania or Virginia type of
society, [which helped] to produce some
marked social and religious
features, wholly unlike the New England
character" and which con-
firmed a fear that New England had not
been transplanted.88
so to stem the flow of cultural change.
For instance, Western Reserve College which had
its roots in an academy movement in the
first decade of the nineteenth century was not
created until 1826 when the older
generation was about to decline in influence.
86. Randolph Stone, diary, 27 June 1822,
WRHS, in Pankratz, "New Englanders,"
130-31 (first quotation), 159.
87. Pankratz, "New
Englanders," 141 (first quotation), 187, 263 (second quotation).
Caroline Edwards to Elias Loomis, 11
March 1840, Loomis Family Papers, Yale
University Library, cited in Pankratz,
"New Englanders," 310 (third quotation).
88. Pankratz, "New
Englanders," 374. He was citing William Sloane Kennedy, Plan
of Union; or, A History of the
Presbyterian and Congregational Churches of the Western
Reserve, with Biographical Sketches
of the Early Missionaries, (Hudson,
Ohio, 1856), 7.
128 OHIO HISTORY
The literature of the Western Reserve
has consistently concluded the
area was a distinct region even though
recent scholarly works qualified
earlier views. Early in the history of
white settlement, commentators
noticed certain unique cultural
attributes of its people which were to
dominate writers' conceptions of the
region. They found the Reserve
unique in frontier annals because it
successfully preserved its New
England heritage longer than most areas
of the east. For many writers
of the nineteenth and early twentieth
century the urban industrial might
of the region was not as significant as
was the cultural purity of the
early migrants and the stamp they
successfully placed on the region.
Though inherently conservative, the
Reserve was a region which was
supportive of freedom and individualism
like no other place in Ohio
and like few in the country.
These writers viewed the Reserve through
their own perspective
which recalled a time when social and
economic relationships were
simpler, more personal. The vast changes
which American society had
undergone after 1870 evoked nostalgia
for the culturally homogenous
Yankee past. One of the results of this
perspective was that few
historical works concentrated on change.
Most accentuated continuity.
Later writers, like Hatcher, searched
for the roots of subsequent
economic successes in the Great Lakes
region, the Western Reserve,
and Cleveland in particular. Since 1949
no general history on the
Reserve has appeared. Instead, the
trends of the profession moved
scholars away from regional topics to
more local, community studies. In
the 1980s historians began to analyze in
depth the variety of the region.
As further studies of the Western
Reserve appear, it is likely they
will produce a new synthesis whose
outlines are already apparent.
They will likely find the New England
heritage melded into a new
midwestern culture created from a
combination of cultural roots,
nineteenth-century economic and social trends, and the emergence of
a series of generations born and
nurtured in Ohio. Class diversity,
religious heterogeneity, economic
specialization, and political region-
alism conspired to place on the New
England-like landscape of the
Western Reserve a midwestern culture.
ROBERT A. WHEELER
The Literature of the Western Reserve
The northeastern portion of Ohio, known
variously as New Connect-
icut, as the Western Reserve of
Connecticut or simply as the Western
Reserve, has been viewed as a unique
area by observers from the
eighteenth century to the present. The
region's distinctiveness stems
from its homogenous founding population
of transplanted New En-
glanders whose firm hold determined its
culture. Writers often agreed
these migrants implanted a set of values
including the importance of
education, the strength of
congregational Protestantism, and the reli-
ance on township government which gave
the Western Reserve a
distinctive character which belied its
location in the West. Interesting-
ly, the New England emphasis, typical of
many writers, only gradually
emerged in the nineteenth century and
was not without its qualifiers
and detractors.
This essay will trace the literature
written about the Reserve from
the early nineteenth century writers who
described, embellished, and
maligned the region to suit their own
purposes to the mid-century
residents who preserved the pioneer past
in county histories. After the
Civil War, their successors emphasized
the Puritan origins of the
Reserve and thought it "more New
England than New England itself."
Popular historians beginning with the
centennial of the region in 1896
celebrated it as a modern repository of
twentieth-century puritanism
and an important area which spawned
industrial growth while main-
taining a connection with the past.
Finally, in the late twentieth century
scholars have created a more complex and
intense, although limited,
portrait of the Reserve.
The first writers described the
landscape and evaluated its usefulness
for settlement. Some were impressed by
its flora and fauna. James
Smith, a Pennsylvania colonial captured
in 1755 by Indians, visited the
Cuyahoga Valley and wintered in the
eastern Reserve along the
Mahoning in 1756. He thought the
Cuyahoga was "a very gentle river,
... Deer here were tolerably plenty,
large and fat." The flood plains
Robert A. Wheeler is Associate Professor
of History and First College, The Cleveland
State University.
(614) 297-2300