Connecticut Western Reserve

I’ve alluded a few times in the past to the Connecticut Western Reserve. I gave it one paragraph in my blog on Genealogical Tapestry of the History of Connecticut. And in the genealogy of my great*7 grandfather, James Pierpont, I noted that his grandson, Pierpont Edwards, was a 1/20^th owner of the Western Reserve and Pierpont Edward’s son, John Stark Edwards, went there to serve as the sales agent of his father’s lands and then became the first US Congressman from the Western Reserve to serve as a representative in the US Congress. But I had not done much detailed investigation into this chapter in Connecticut history.

 

Litchfield Historical Society Presentation

A few days ago, the Litchfield Historical Society had a meeting and released a video presentation entitled “To Certain Western Lands: Telling the Story of the Western Reserve.” This video gives an overview of the Connecticut Western Reserve and notes that “this little-known piece of Connecticut history will be the focus of a larger exhibition coming in 2023.” While the video is not good quality (the room was dark and the presenter did not have a microphone so it was very hard to hear), you could still see the slides he was using and get the gist of the story. One of the maps he used is shown here.

[Western Reserve Map]

 

This is screen shot of a map that is also available in the David Rumsey collection of maps here. The beauty of this map collection is that it a VERY high-quality image that you may interact with by zooming in on features, etc. (As a side note, David Rumsey is the brother of my sister’s former husband which is where I learned of this map collection.) This zoom feature on such detailed maps as this one let you really explore all the nuances of the Western Reserve which I will comment on below.

The presentation also included the history behind why Connecticut had title to these lands, etc. (I wish that I still lived in CT so I could take advantage of this great museum and what they make available to the public.) They also mentioned some of the things that a few individuals wrote about their investment and what a few other individuals who travelled there wrote about. Since I’m a genealogy “nut”, I looked up these individuals and, as expected, they are all cousins of mine:

·        Elijah Boardman (1760-1823), 1C7X via Daniel Boardman (1687-1744)

·        Ephraim Kirby (1757-1804), 4C5X via John Root (1576-1683)

·        Rev. Joseph Badger (1757-1846), 5C6X via Nathaniel Merrill (1571-1626)

·        Margaret Van Horn Dwight (1790-1834), 3C5X via James Pierpont (1659-1714)

 

Western Reserve Investors

In order to add some additional “people flavor” to this topic, I decided to investigate the investors who put up the money to purchase this land from the State of Connecticut (Elijah Boardman and Ephraim Kirby from above were two of them). I had two sources of this. The first were the writings on Charles Bronson (more on him below), and the second was a Wikipedia article on the Connecticut Land Company. I liked the information from Bronson because it listed the town in Connecticut where these men each came from, but in cross-checking the names and amounts I found that there were a few transcription errors, misspelled names, and incorrect amounts, so I’m glad that I had both sources. The list below is in the order from the Bronson writing, but the “#” column shows the deed order from the Wikipedia article.

Name	City	1,200,000	#	Relationship
Joseph Howland	Norwich	30,461	27	3C7X
Daniel Lathrop Coit	Norwich		27	3C7X
Elias Morgan	Hartford	51,402	26	3C7X
Daniel Lathrop Coit	Norwich		26	3C7X
Caleb Atwater	Wallingford	22,846	24	3C7X
Daniel Holbrook	Derby	8,750	7	2C6X
Joseph Williams	Norwich	15,231	30	4C6X
William C. Law	Cheshire	10,500	6	3C5X
William Judd	Farmington	16,250	4	4C6X
Elisha Hyde	Norwich	57,400	10	3C9X
Uriah Tracy	Norwich		10	4C8X
James Johnston	Salisbury	30,000	5	6C5X
Samuel Mather, Jr.	Lyme	18,461	35	5C7X
Ephraim Kirby	Litchfield	60,000	14	4C5X
Elijah Boardman	New Milford		14	1C7X
Uriel Holmes, Jr.	Litchfield		14	4C6X
Soloman Griswold	Windsor	10,000	19	4C7X
Oliver Phelps	Suffield	80,000	15	4C7X
Gideon Granger, Jr.	Suffield		15	6C5X
William Hart	Saybrook	30,462	34	3C7X
Henry Champion 2nd	Colchester	85,675	20	3C6X
Asher Miller	Middletown	34,000	28	3C8X
Robert C. Johnson	Stratford	60,000	1	4C6X
Ephraim Root	Hartford	42,000	13	7C4X
Nehemiah Hubbard	Middletown	19,039	32	5C7X
Soloman Cowles	Farmington	10,000	18	3C7X
Oliver Phelps	Suffield	168,185	16	4C7X
Asahel Hathaway	Suffield	12,000	33	4C7X
John Caldwell	Hartford	15,000	17	5C5X
Peleg Sanford	New Haven		17	4C5X
Timothy Burr	Hartford	15,231	23	4C5X
Luther Loomis	Suffield	44,318	11	5C6X
Ebenezer King, Jr.	Suffield		11	3C6X
William Lyman	Northampton, MA	24,730	31	3C7X
John Stoddard	Northampton, MA		31	4C8X
David King	Suffield		31	4C5X
Moses Cleaveland	Canterbury	32,600	2.3	4C6X
Samuel T. Lord	East Haddam	14,092	21	3C8X
Roger Newbury	Windsor	38,000	12	2C9X
Enoch Perkins	Hartford		12	4C6X
Jonathan Brace	Hartford		12	4C6X
Ephraim Starr	Goshen	17,415	29	3C7X
Sylvanus Griswold	Suffield	1,683	36	3C6X
Jazeb Stocking	Middletown	11,423	22	4C7X
Joshua Stow	Middletown		22	5C5X
Titus Street	New Haven	22,846	25	3C6X
James Bull	Hartford	30,000	9	4C7X
Aaron Olmstead	East Hartford		9	5C7X
John Wyles	East Hartford		9	5C4X
Pierpont Edwards	New Haven	60,000	8	1C7X

 

Of particular note is that ALL these men are relatives of mine because of my deep roots in Colonial Connecticut. They range from two first cousins to one seventh cousin (all several generations removed). To be honest, I did not expect to find this universal coverage from such a list of prestigious individuals.

 

Learnings from a Map

There are several interesting features of the map referenced above. First, you will note that the map is divided into a number of equal-sized squares. These are numbered in “ranges” from 1-24 across the bottom going east to west, and “towns” numbered from 1-13 going south to north. So, for example, you can find the town of Windham in town 4, range 6.

The ranges 1-19 were divided up among the investors in a random lottery system to ensure that coastal areas along Lake Eire and inland areas were evenly divided. The investors could then sell off parcels in their towns. This might happen many times before someone who purchased land actually settled on it. The towns in ranges 20-24 are labeled “Firelands” and were not part of the Connecticut Land Company area, but separate parcels that were given to those whose homes, etc. had been burned by the British during the Revolutionary War.

Finally, look closely at the names of each of the towns. Many of them are named after towns from Connecticut (New Haven, Greenwich, Fairfield, Norwich, Suffield, West Farmington, Windsor, North Bloomfield, Kent, Vernon, Hartford, Warren, Weathersfield, Bristol, Guilford, Norwalk, Colebrook, Southington, etc.) These were likely settled by individuals from that town as a reminder of the life they had left behind. Others were named for individuals who owned the land or who settled there (Russell, Pierpont, Bronson, Boardman, etc.)

One could spend a lot of time investigating each of these town names. Here are a few that caught my eye:

·        Russell – named after Gideon Russell (1760-1835), 4C8X via William Russell (1605-1661)

·        Pierpont – named after Pierpont Edwards (1750-1826) 1C7X via James Pierpont (1659-1714)

·        Bronson – named after Isaac Bronson (1805-1895), 4C4X via Isaac Bronson (1645-1719)

·        Tallmadge – named after Benjamin Tallmadge by David Bacon (1771-1817), 5C8X via Michael Bacon (1535-1615)

·        Colebrook – named by Samuel Phillips from Colebrook

·        Canfield – named after Judson Canfield (1759-1840), G6Uncle via Samuel Canfield (1726-1797)

·        New Haven – named by Caleb Palmer (1775-1854), 4C6X of DR via John Reynolds (1612-1664)

 

The Bronson Diaries

One of the interesting resources I ran across were the diaries of Charles Cook Bronson (1804-1886), 5C3X via John Bronson (1602-1680). He had been born in Waterbury, CT, but had moved to the Western Reserve where he lived in the town of Tallmadge (town 2 range 10). His hand-written diaries contained the history of Tallmadge and the Western Reserve. Between 1995 and 1997 these volumes, along with accompanying material such as oral presentations and obituaries, were transcribed by Tobi Battista of the Tallmadge Historical Society (using an electric typewriter) who organized them into five three-ring binders and created a table of contents for each volume. While hard-copies of these binders are available at the Akron-Summit County Public Library, they are also available as downloadable pdfs at the library website (see here). The pdf’s total 1093 pages as follows:

·        TOC, 17 pages

·        Vol 1, 97 pages, history and Tract 1-7

·        Vol 2, 100 pages, Tract 8-12

·        Vol 3, 114 pages, Misc.

·        Vol 4, 133 pages, Tract 12 cont-16

·        Vol 5, 75 pages, Misc.

·        Vol 6, 99 pages, Obits and Misc.

·        Vol 7, 120 pages, Misc.

·        Vol 8, 131 pages, Misc.

·        Vol 9, 133 pages, Misc.

·        Vol 10, 74 pages, Misc.

Note that the order of volumes 3 and 4 are reversed and that the contents of volume 4 should come after volume 2. The first several pages of volume 1 give a history of the Western Reserve. The rest of volume 1, all of volume 2, and all of volume 4 give the names of all the individuals who lived in each tract of Tallmadge, histories of the families and where they came from, and obituaries of those individuals. The remaining volumes are a collection of genealogies, stories, obituaries, etc. that Charles collected.

Because of the sheer magnitude of this collection of material, I have only begun to scratch the surface of what is contained in it. But one thing I did make a pass at looking for (the PDFs are searchable, not just images), was any references to my hometown, Wolcott, CT, and individuals who may have moved from there to the Western Reserve, i.e., to Tallmadge. Here are the references I found (volume and page number indicated):

·        1.62 – Anson Upson, 1825

·        2.54 – Quintus Flaminius Atkins, 1802

·        4.46 – Cynthia [Clark] Preston

·        4.51 – History of Gillett family (Alexander first in W, then in Torrington)

·        4.52 – Nathan Gillett married Lucy Harrison of W, first 2 children b. in W

·        7.7 – explanation of division of Mattatuck into W

·        9.110 – repeat of 7.7 (note that 9.110 and 9.111 are reversed), this is the story of how C. C. Bronson related the story in 7.7 to a reunion many years later.

·        10.72 – Polly Upson (repeat of 1.62)

The material in 7.7 is particularly interesting in that is gives a historical accounting of the Bronson family, beginning with John Bronson who was the original immigrant with that name. In this accounting, Charles Bronson gives the story of how one of his relatives (3^rd cousin, once removed), Dr. Henry Bronson, investigated the history of Waterbury (where both Henry and Charles had been born). (Note that although one generation apart, the two cousins were the same age and lived relatively close to one another – one in Waterbury, one in Middlebury. So, Charles would have been quite aware, and may have even participated in Henry’s research.)

In 1858, Dr. Henry Bronson published a book, “The History of Waterbury, Connecticut” which included how the deed for the land was acquired from the Tunxis Indians in 1674. This land was described (page 10) as “a certain tract of land at Mattatuck, lying on both sides of the Naugatuck River, ten miles in length from north to south, and six miles in breadth from east to west, butting east on Farmington bounds, south on Pegasset, (Derby,), west on Pegasset, Pomperaug, (Woodbury,) and Potatuck, (Southbury,), and north on the wilderness.” To this description, Charles added in his diary, “This tract of country now is divided into the following towns and parts of towns viz; Plymouth and Watertown in Litchfield County. Naugatuck, Wolcott, one half of Prospect, two thirds of Middlebury, the City and Town of Waterbury.”

When Joseph Anderson wrote his three-volume set, “The Town and City of Waterbury, Connecticut, from the Aboriginal Period to the Year Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Five” in 1896, he acknowledged the work of Henry Bronson and goes into even greater detail.

 

Some Final Thoughts

The Western Reserves of Connecticut have very deep roots in what we now call the State of Connecticut. Not only in the names of the various towns and the individuals who first populated that part of what is now Ohio. But also in things like the architecture that they used. When doing the research into some of the various towns listed above, I was checking out the websites of these towns to see how they acknowledged their historical roots. Since Charles Bronson was writing about Tallmadge, that was one of the towns I looked at. Their website history includes the following:

Tallmadge was founded in 1807 by the Reverend David Bacon as part of the Connecticut Western Reserve. It was Bacon who laid out the picturesque Tallmadge Circle based on the New England design of the day. Today, the Circle is still the central focal point of this community of over 17,500 people. The city blends early American heritage with its present day mid-western hospitality.

 Included on that webpage was a picture of the main church in town which is on that Circle. I immediately thought, “I’ve seen that church before!” It looked just like the church in the center of Litchfield, the original home of many of the Tallmadge family. Look at the two pictures below:

[Litchfield church] [Tallmadge church]

 

Makes you feel right at home!