The Western Reserve and
The Frontier Thesis
By KENNETH V. LOTTICK*
IT IS GENERALLY
CONCEDED that Frederick Jackson
Turner's frontier thesis was predicated
upon a kind of geo-
graphical determinism--that, somehow,
in crossing the Ap-
palachian "barrier," old
habits of thought and older customs
and institutions suddenly withered away
in the purer air of
the new country.1 Whether this thesis
applied generally may
be debated; but it surely did not apply
in western New York
and in Connecticut's Western Reserve.
This Western Reserve was, for almost a
hundred years,
one of the unique sections of the
United States. The area,
comprising a dozen present-day counties
of northeastern
Ohio, still presents a curious
geographical entity. At about
the turn of the eighteenth century an
extension of Connecti-
cut's social, political, and
educational structure occurred
within this region. Modified only
slightly by the frontier, the
"Reserve" and the Lake Erie
section of New York state
became "more like New England than
New England itself."
Although it is partially obscured by
events of recent date,
even today the visitor may trace
Connecticut in the place
names, in the white-walled, pillared
town halls of the New
England system of local government, and
in the architecture
of the Congregational-Puritan churches.
What can be learned from the settlement
of Connecticut's
* Kenneth V. Lottick is an associate
professor of education at Montana State
University.
1 Frederick Jackson Turner, The
Frontier in American History (New York,
1920).
46
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Reserve--its agencies of culture
preservation, the church and
school; the continuing habits of
thought; and the general unity
which has characterized and, to a
degree, still stamps this
portion of northeastern Ohio as a place
apart?
Turner's wider concept looked to social
and psychological
influences to explain what he thought
was the transformation
of older ideas and institutions. In his
judgment it was axio-
matic that the wilderness altered men's
attitudes and charac-
ters; next, men "inevitably"
revised their institutions--appar-
ently a sort of reverse conditioning.
Thus the differentiation
and "Americanization" of
society took place because, suggests
Turner, European men, in the course of
westward migration,
took on qualities distinctly
"American." But let Turner him-
self speak:
American democracy was born of no
theorist's dream; it was
not carried in the Sarah Constant to
Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to
Plymouth. It came out of the American
forest, and it gained new
strength each time it touched a new
frontier. Not the constitution, but
free land and an abundance of natural
resources open to a fit people,
made the democratic type of society in
America.2
In three centuries of western migration
the metamorpho-
sis was accomplished. George Wilson
Pierson in a critical
essay on Turner neatly summarizes the
process: "Engulfed
in the onward rushing torrent, fur
traders, herders, and
pioneers, Middle and Far-Westerners,
changed: i.e., they be-
came individualistic, optimistic, and
democratic, courageous
and aggressive, energetic and
ambitious, rough and ready
and careless of niceties, nervous and
restless and adventurous,
volatile and changeful, practical and
materialistic; best of all,
idealistic."3
However, this improvement was not all
that the frontier
climate effected. There also was some
loss. Turner did admit,
2 Ibid.,
293.
3 George
Wilson Pierson, "The Frontier and American Institutions: A Criticism
of the Turner Theory," New England Quarterly, XV
(1942), 230. See also
George Wilson Pierson, "The
Frontier and Frontiersmen of Turner's Essays,"
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXIV (1940), 449-478.
THE WESTERN RESERVE 47
says Pierson, that "one of the
effects of our experience with
so vast and rich a continent was to
make men a little careless
and wasteful, a little materialistic
and anti-intellectual," and
Turner slightly deplored this.4
Included in the losses too, one finds
the fine arts, literature,
science, the social conventionalities,
and even the higher skills
in government. Indeed he wrote,
"Art, literature, refinement,
scientific administration, all had to
give way to this Titanic
labor"--the conquest of a
continent.5
Yet Turner asserted that "American
social development has
been continually beginning over again
on the frontier."6 The
West was a region whose conditions
resulted "from the appli-
cation of the older institutions and ideas
to the transforming
influence of free land. By this
application," he said, "a new
environment is suddenly entered,
freedom of opportunity is
opened, the cake of custom is broken,
and new activities, new
lines of growth, new institutions and
new ideals, are brought
into existence."7
Did these phenomenal developments, so
confidently detailed
by Frederick Jackson Turner, actually
occur in the Western
Reserve? While he judged such Yankee
settlements as more or
less apart from the
"conventional" pattern of American
growth, Turner still considered them
frontier communities.
For they had been settled, he
maintained, by "interior New
England people," frontiersmen
themselves.8 Thus, the Re-
serve, just like any other section,
should have been subject to
most of his catalyzing conditions.
What are the evidences of Reserve
ancestry? What of the
architecture, the geographical
divisions, the orientation of
towns, the routes of travel, the size
and distribution of towns
and farms, and the sharp
differentiation between the urban
and non-urban aspects of life?
4 Pierson, "Frontier and American
Institutions," 231-232; Turner, Frontier in
American History, 154, 254.
5 Turner, Frontier in American
History, 211.
6 Ibid., 2.
7 Ibid., 205.
8 Frederick Jackson Turner, The
Significance of Sections in American History
(New York, 1932), 10-11; Turner, Frontier
in American History, 70.
48
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
While the last must be interpreted in
terms of a few decades
ago, what of the homogeneity of the
region now? What of its
cultural and social advantages and how
has the older imprint
affected the modern industrialized
setting?
Many analogues and examples may be
cited which indicate
the colonists' belief in the necessity
for the establishment of
agencies of religion and education
almost upon arrival. These
institutions were not inventions; they
were transplanted bodily
from the banks of the Charles and the
Connecticut. For
example, the first settlers at
Marcellus, New York, were
citizens of Massachusetts, Connecticut,
and Vermont. View-
ing with anxiety the necessity of
providing for the religious
and intellectual needs of their
children, they organized a school
within their first two years in the new
country.9 At least one
historian maintains that this
self-sufficiency included demo-
cracy as well. "The first settlers
brought democracy unquali-
fied--the same democracy that made the
force of the whole
westward movement."10
The design of settlement in the Western
Reserve contribu-
ted to the development of compact
little islands of Yankee
culture. The division of the territory
into towns and the
colonizing of these on an individual
basis--together with the
names on the land, which, in
practically every case, refer back
to the earlier Connecticut or
Massachusetts site--indicate
clearly the paternity of the area.
The architecture of the Reserve, in
church, town hall, and
courthouse, speaks of the perpetuation
of an older era. The
chaste symmetry of the Congregational
Church at Tallmadge,
in Summit County, frequently has been
used to symbolize the
9 Lois Kimball Mathews Rosenberry, Migrations
from Connecticut Prior to 1800
(Hartford, Conn., 1934), 28-29.
10 E. P. Powell, "The First Village
Founded by New Englanders on Their Way
Westward," New England Magazine,
XXIII (1901), 659. See also E. P. Powell,
"New Englanders in New York," New
England Magazine, XXVIII (1903), 590-
592.
THE WESTERN RESERVE 49
Massachusetts heritage as a proper
substitute for a New
England "Thanksgiving
piece."11
The patterns in education, including
the prevalence of the
popular "academy," the
development of the early high school,
the spread of the teachers' institute
idea, the origins of the
state school association, and the
furthering of seminaries and
normal schools--each of these
contributed to the implementa-
tion of a belief in formal education as
a necessity for the
preservation of the social order. That
priority obtained in
many instances, and that the state of
Ohio followed, on
numerous occasions, where the Reserve
led, serves to confirm
the belief that these precedents, not
indigenous, as Turner
would have us think, were only
additional (sometimes dupli-
cate) steps in the long line of
educational achievements begun
in old New England.
To these illustrations may be added the
urge to higher
education exemplified in the founding
of Western Reserve
(1826) and Oberlin (1833) colleges;
demands for an im-
provement in the position of women,
especially in their edu-
cation; the development of a
"conservative" pattern in the
early secondary education of the
Reserve; an analogy be-
tween the general levels of education
in Connecticut and the
Reserve; and the relationship between
the arms of the aboli-
tionist controversy in Boston and in
the towns and colleges of
northeastern Ohio.
James A. Garfield (who, along with
William McKinley,
was a son of the Western Reserve
reaching the White House)
insisted that the Connecticut system of
town organization,
family, school, and church, was largely
responsible for the
development of the Reserve's unity and
uniformity. "In many
11 Rexford Newcomb, Architecture of the Old Northwest
Territory (Chicago,
1950), passim, but especially pp.
68-74 and Plates XXVIII, XXIX (Tallmadge
and Atwater churches), XIX, XXII, XXIII,
XXIV, XXVII, and XXX (repre-
sentative houses of the Federal period);
Life, XVII, No. 21 (November 20,
1944), 20.
50
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
instances," said Garfield, "a
township organization was com-
pleted and their minister chosen before
they left home. Thus
they planted the institutions and
opinions of old Connecticut
in their new wilderness homes ...
nourished them and cher-
ished them with an energy and devotion
scarcely equalled in
any other quarter of the world."12
One of the earliest examples is that of
David Hudson. It
had long been the Connecticut custom for a group of
neighbor-
ing families to purchase an entire
township, to migrate, and
to form a new community very much like
the old. This method
put on its feet from the beginning the
settlement which fol-
lowed. This type of colonization by old
friends and neighbors
gave solidarity to the new town, and
the tendency toward
possible discouragement and
homesickness was largely over-
come. Hudson determined to sponsor such
a venture in the
Connecticut Reserve.
It is reported that he had been led to
this decision by a
series of experiences of a religious
nature. Thus the proposed
colony was "to be guided by four
basic controlling ideals of
religion, morality, law observance, and
education."13
Together with Hudson's own family, six
other families
from Goshen, Connecticut, set forth
early in 1800 and arrived
at their township on June 6. The town
was named Hudson and
it was the first to be settled in what
was to become Portage
County, Ohio.
Although David Hudson was not himself a
college man, he
made it his business just two years
after settlement to provide
reading materials for his community. A
manuscript preserved
by the Hudson Library and Historical
Society notes that
when Esq. Hudson was in New England in
the summer of this year,
he made a purchase of books to the value
of one hundred dollars for
a circulating library. They were sold in
shares and almost every family
in Hudson, Aurora, and Mantua procured
one or more shares. This
12 James A. Garfield, The North-west Territory and the Western Reserve (Old
South Leaflets, II, No. 42, Boston, 1893), 20.
13 Frederick Clayton Waite, Western Reserve University: The
Hudson Era
(Cleveland, 1943), 15-16.
THE WESTERN RESERVE 51
library was judiciously selected by
Pres. Daggett [sic; perhaps Dwight
is meant] and some other literary
gentlemen of New Haven and was
very useful in forming the morals and
enlightening the minds of many
of the youth in these settlements.14
No account exists to confirm just what
books were selected
for Hudson's village in 1802, but when
Deacon Elizur Wright
arrived from Connecticut in 1810, he
brought (the manu-
script goes on)
a relic of our family library, dear to
me by a number of golden recol-
lections of childhood. Imagine a dusty
shelf with . . . the family
Bible . . . [and] next to it, Stoddard's Safety of Appearing in
the
Righteousness of Christ, Athen's
[sic] Alarm, Wright's treatise on
being born again, Shepard's Sound
Believer, Coleman's Incomprehen-
sibileness of God, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. These, dearer than
gold, formed the religious library of
the family in olden times.15
A latter-day commentator speaks of the
fruitfulness of
these early bibliothecal interests:
"Fortunately, throughout
its history Hudson (the later seat of
Western Reserve Col-
lege) has had citizens who have seen to
it that they, as well
as others, had the means of
understanding their democracy:
Hudson has always had books."16
Thus it is hard to find the withering
away of the old insti-
tutions--as postulated so cheerfully by
Turner--in the towns
and villages of the Connecticut Reserve
and the loss of cul-
ture, refinement, and skills in
government which he pre-
sumed followed close upon the
"re-invigorating" of men's
character by the very air of the
frontier.
There are, however, two opposing points
of view which, in
all fairness, should be mentioned at
this stage of this discus-
sion. The first of these suggests that
the coming of indus-
trialization and urbanization--a circumstance which
was to
make itself felt within the Western
Reserve directly following
the Civil War--was unsettling to the continuation of
the old
14 J. F. Waring, Books and Reading in
Hudson, 1800-1954, A History of the
Hudson Library and Historical Society (Hudson, Ohio, 1954), quoted on p. 5.
15 Ibid., 6.
16 Ibid., 5.
52 THE OHIO HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
tradition; that huge shifts in the
composition of the popula-
tion, effected in the closing years of
the Reserve's first century
and the beginning of the next, resulted
in a weakening in the
allegiance to the older habits of
thought. The other approach
maintains that the Connecticut pattern had been so
stamped
into the warp and woof of the culture
of the Reserve that--
irrespective of political or
administrative change, or of the
constituency and its concentration--the
reflective tendencies,
the attitude toward government and
public education, and the
geometrical precision in the planning
and building arts would
long remain as a living testament to
its New England parent-
age.
Both judgments can be justified. The
Western Reserve
became, metaphorically speaking, the
last stand of Puritanism.
Nor have one hundred and fifty years of
Ohio history been
completely able to wipe away the trace
of its distinctive civil-
ization. The Connecticut Puritans
(calling themselves Con-
gregationalists), who emigrated to the
Reserve in the first
quarter of the last century, carried
with them the means for
the preservation of a culture so
characteristic that even its
vestige becomes significant today.
Following Garfield's conception of the
colonizing genius
of these people, we have called the
lares and penates of the
emigrants the "Connecticut
tripod." Their faith rested upon
three bases: first, the family and the
church, which gave them
both tribal strength and inner peace;
next, their system of
local government--the reverse of the
religious shield--and
the agency of their class democracy,
the town meeting; third,
their schools, for they easily realized
that their culture could
not subsist unless allowed to feed and
replenish itself. They
carried these three with them in their
covered wagons or
Lake Erie packets to their new homes in
the Connecticut
Reserve.
That industrialism and a vast
population have come to the
Reserve is not significant here. We are
concerned only with
the handing down of a heritage and its
persistence in the three
million acres that once was "New
Connecticut." A recent
THE WESTERN RESERVE 53
comment shows a simple way to identify
the motherland:
"The patterns of Ohio towns betray
their origin .... And
whatever the changes incident to the
economics through which
the regions have passed, the
persistence of the orientation
and pattern is striking."17
Lois K. Mathews speaks of the more
intangible quality of
this "Connecticut Spirit":
"Wherever the trek led to the fron-
tier, thither the emigrant from Connecticut, sometimes
alone,
but more often with his wife and
children, plodded to a new
home.... Thus, was the Connecticut
tradition woven into
the fabric of the nation."18
Robert Shackleton gives a panorama of
the Reserve of
sixty years ago, when the physical
resemblances to the old
New England had scarcely been touched
by the trolley and the
motor car. He found a village (Hudson)
that reminded him
of "that most charming of New
England towns, Concord."
Western Reserve College became
"Yale." He saw the Reserve
a virtual New Connecticut, in mode and
manner, as well as
in shape and dimension.
In Austinburg, in Ashtabula County,
Shackleton found
"a quiet, peaceful, sleepy, little
town, where modern homes
mingle with those which are antique,
and where there is an
atmosphere as of history and age."
It had a "distinctively
New England appearance," even
advertising its "Pyncheon
Home."19 Jefferson, the
county seat, was more than the abode
of abolitionists Wade and Giddings. It
had been the home of
William Dean Howells. Once asked the
secret of his ability to
portray New England country life with
such feeling and
finesse, Howells replied that this was
easy, since his youth had
been spent in a "New England"
village.20
Another New Englander in the last
century, R. L. Hartt,
pictures the Reserve as it was then--and as it still
is, in part
17 Alfred J. Wright, "Ohio
Town Patterns," Geographical Review, XXVII
(1937), 615.
18 Rosenberry, Migrations from Connecticut Prior to 1800, 36.
19 Robert Shackleton, "The Western Reserve," New England
Magazine, XIV
(1896), 334-338.
20 Ibid., 342.
54
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
--with a noble nostalgia: "Were I
to drop, like Cyrano, from
the moon, and to land, unlike Cyrano,
in Painesville, Ohio,
I should immediately inquire for the
Boston and Albany sta-
tion. There are the same drooping elms,
the same pilastered
houses, the same Common, the same noble
churches, as in
lovely Massachusetts." Continuing
in this same appreciative
vein, he says: "Here . . . is the
Puritan regimen of Massa-
chusetts and Connecticut condensed and
exaggerated. In what
other part of the country, save in
antique New England,
could you have brewed such strenuous
leaven?"21
That these rural settings already were
changing as the
industrial era progressed in New
England as well as in the
Reserve is perhaps the secret of
Shackleton's and Hartt's
homesickness. However, in the Reserve
the rate of change
was less abrupt. The first thirty years
had set the pattern.
In these three decades the Connecticut
spirit and form had
settled itself on the land. Indeed, the
land was largely taken
by 1830. More inhabitants might come to
live on them, but
the farms already were parceled out.
Most were under
thorough cultivation. Lithographs of
the period show the
symmetrical arrangement of roads,
farms, and dwellings.
An ordered existence had come
quickly--hardly the pragmatic
ebb and flow predicated by Frederick
Jackson Turner. And
this pattern of life was to continue,
relatively undiminished,
for at least a century.
Up to the Civil War, after the first
flush of settlement, the
population increase had come gradually.
The greatest increase
did not appear until the East had
already been industrialized.
It was then that the ore from Minnesota
and the coal from
Pennsylvania, commingling in
Youngstown, Conneaut, and
Cleveland, brought thousands of South
and East Central
European wage earners. The coming of
the automobile and
the tire industry proved to be another
spur to urbanization.
The effects of these industries,
located chiefly in Cleveland,
21 Rollin Lynde Hartt, "The Ohioans," Atlantic
Monthly, LXXXIV (1899),
682.
THE WESTERN RESERVE 55
Warren, and Akron, accelerated changes
in the more rural
counties and offered some attack on
their early serenity.
In many of the non-urban sections,
however, life still fol-
lowed much of the early pattern and
revolved around church,
school, and town hall. These--usually
the first buildings con-
structed in a town--universally were
frame, painted white
or whitewashed. The school, together
with the town hall
and the Congregational or Methodist
Church dominated the
village square or township green.
Even in the exempted villages and the
smaller county seats
change had not become especially
marked. The high school
might be of the older brick, academy
type; the Congregational
Church was beginning to face
competition (there were the
Roman Catholics as well as the
Methodists, together with
representatives of the more evangelical
denominations now);
the town hall might be replaced by a
municipal building or,
in the county center, by a red brick,
many-gabled, square
courthouse. Public buildings faced a
park; business houses
surrounded the square; the differences
from place to place
were slight, both in orientation and
development. One might
as well be standing in New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
or
Connecticut of an earlier day as in
northeastern Ohio. The
same planning was self-evident, down
to, almost invariably,
the bandstand in the park. In every
available spot there was
grass, well-trimmed and edged by bricks
or stones, and annual
flowers banked the courthouse, village
hall, or township build-
ing. The dwelling houses most
frequently were white and
neat, and there were a few
"mansions" in each locality, each
with a history familiar to all
townspeople and perhaps some-
times a legend concerning this or that
favored family. These
showplaces usually represented the
homes of the pioneer clans
or, when of later vintage, those who
were connected in some
way with the political or economic life
of their community.22
Thus, in the Reserve, one looks to the
ancestry of the ma-
22 See L. H. Evarts, Combination
Atlas Map of Portage County, Ohio (Chi-
cago, 1874), passim. See also
Harriet Taylor Upton, History of the Western Re-
serve (Chicago, 1910), passim.
56
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
jority settlers, the educational urge
of the Congregational and
Presbyterian churches, the class
democracy of old New Eng-
land, rather than to the influence of the frontier--at
least
as Turner envisaged the frontier.
Rexford Newcomb sug-
gests that architectural design offers
another clue to the den-
sity of settlement by the original
migrating group in a given
region. This paternity and its volume
is revealed for the
Western Reserve by the general
incidence of the "Colonial"
and Federal types of residence
found--particularly in the
older sections.23
Indeed, in many ways, among them ideas
of religion, edu-
cational patterns, town planning, local
self-government, and
architecture, the Reserve culture
became more "Puritan" than
the motherland. Evidence of this
persistence is offered in the
reminiscences of Lucien Price, a
student in the Reserve dur-
ing the pre-industrial era. Speaking of
life at Hudson and
education at Western Reserve Academy,
Price recalls:
An oddly romantic little world it was.
"More like New England
than New England itself," travelers
from the East used to tell us.
We boys supposed this remark twaddle. It
was not. That transplanted
academic village amid the rolling
richness of Middle-Western wood-
land and farming country was what New
England had been half a
century before and would have remained
but for the invention of
machinery and the importation of
Southern European mill hands.24
A significant aspect of the
organization for settlement and
the results obtained from it is the
nature of the society con-
templated by the founders. The social
order envisioned by
the pioneers was one not too dissimilar
from that of Puritan
days. Although resting on a somewhat
more "democratic"
base and, with the additional drive of
the new American na-
tionalism of the later eighteenth and
early nineteenth cen-
turies, this social order was planned
to offer what good Con-
23 Newcomb, Architecture of the
Old Northwest, 68-70.
24 Lucien Price, Hardscrabble Hellas:
An Ohio Academe (Hudson, Ohio,
1930), 17.
THE WESTERN RESERVE 57
gregationalists considered the best
possible integration of the
various aspects and activities of life.25
It strove to mold its people in a
common system of philos-
ophy and values, and so to achieve a
society in which the gov-
ernmental, the social and economic, and
the religious compo-
nents were interrelated to the degree
that neither the common
interest nor individual advantage was
to be sublimated. This
was to be secured through the
development of a core of com-
mon understanding, produced through the
activity of church
and school, frequently by the two
working in harmony to-
gether. Individual enterprise was not
scorned; indeed, one
of the hallmarks of the successful man
was his ingenuity and
self-sufficiency. Yet success, too, was
predicated upon the
observance of the Puritan values:
sobriety, rectitude, and
thrift.26
Obviously such a design--even the
conception of such an
integrated society--represents a far
cry from the dictates of
the rough and ready, materialistic, and
transforming frontier
as viewed by Frederick Jackson Turner.
25 See Kenneth V. Lottick, "Culture Transplantation in the
Connecticut Re-
serve," Historical and
Philosophical Society of Ohio, Bulletin, XVII (1959), 154-
166, for a review of the culture complex
of the Western Reserve colonists.
26 For various summations of the
qualities of the New England emigrants, see
Waite, Western Reserve University,
passim; Waring, Books and Reading in
Hudson, 5-8; "David Bacon," in the Dictionary of
American Biography; Henry
Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio (Columbus,
1890), II, 230-233; W. W.
Boynton, The Early History of Lorain
County (Western Reserve Historical So-
ciety, Tract No. 83, Cleveland,
1876), 355-356, 364-366; Shackleton, "The West-
ern Reserve," 331-332; Emilius O.
Randall, "Talmadge Township," Ohio Ar-
chaeological and Historical
Quarterly, XVII (1908), 275-306;
Powell, "New
Englanders in New York," 591-592.