98 Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.
STORY OF THE FIRELANDS.
The following interesting account of the
"Firelands" is taken from
the West Liberty Banner:
Unnumbered native Ohioans, not to speak
of hundreds of thousands
of residents of the state from foreign
lands and other states of the union,
must have wondered why a fertile and
productive tract in northern Ohio,
a district which in no way hints of the
ravages of fire, should be called
the "Firelands." Among all the
vicissitudes of Ohio's early history great
conflagrations were known for their
absence. No such terrible forest
fires swept this state as ravaged large
areas in Michigan and Wisconsin
seventy or eighty years later.
The fires to which the name refers raged
in Connecticut, not Ohio,
and they were the work of British or
Tory soldiers instead of the result
of accidents or natural causes. In 1781,
when the long struggle for inde-
pendence was nearly ended, Benedict
Arnold commanded an expedition
which ravaged the Connecticut coast of
Long Island Sound. He burned
New London and other towns and left
behind misery and destitution
as well as a greater hatred himself than
he had earned before the outrage
upon his native state.
This and other cruel and senseless
attacks upon Connecticut's towns
left so strong a feeling of sympathy and
injustice behind that in disposing
of Connecticut's rights in lands now
forming part of Ohio, 781 square
miles in the extreme western edge in the
Western Reserve were reserved
to reimburse those who had suffered by
the British raids. Five ranges
of townships running north and south
were included in this tract.
Sandusky Bay and Lake Erie extend so far
southward at this point
that the five ranges of townships
contained only about 500,000 acres of
land. The tract measured some
twenty-seven miles by thirty. The Con-
necticut sufferers from the torch of the
enemy lived chiefly in New Lon-
don, Norwalk and Fairfield, and it was
from these towns that many of
the settlers of the
"Firelands" came to build in the Ohio wilderness
settlements bearing the same names and
having like civic ideals and
character.
OHIO COLONIAL WAR SOCIETY.
On November 25, 1904, at the tenth
general court of the Society of
Colonial Wars in the State of Ohio, held
at the Queen City Club, Cin-
cinnati, the following officers were
elected:
Governor -Perin Langdon, Cincinnati.
Deputy Governor - Charles Theodore
Greve, Cincinnati.
Lieutenant Governor-Hiram Harper Peck, Cincinnati.