Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814

The Firelands: Land Speculation and the War of 1812

— 303 — TheFirelands:LandSpeculationandtheWarof1812 R . D o u g l a s H u r t After the War for American Independence , the Ohio Country lured men and women like the sirens of Greek mythology . Many were small-scale farmers who crossed the Ohio River as early as 1785, squatted on government land and hoped for the best, either to make their claims good through lawful purchase or to bide their time until the owners and the law required them to move. Some were large-scale speculators who had the political connections or the capital necessary to purchase considerable acreage from the government , such as the Ohio Company of Associates, or Nathaniel Massie or Duncan McArthur who acquired great tracts in payment for surveying lands. During the sixty years of intermittent conflict that began with the French and Indian War, both British and American officials designed policies of war and diplomacy to gain access to Indian lands for the purposes of empire and settlement. In either case, farmers and speculators took their chances, much could be gained—independence, security, wealth—but much could be lost—money, power, lives. The risks were great for both settlers and speculators, especially in the Firelands of the Western Reserve, where isolation and the War of 1812 posed special problems for those who caught the nearly contagious desire for land known as Ohio fever. R . D o u g l a s H u r t — 304 — The Firelands, or Fire Suffers Lands, comprised a twenty-five-mile wide, halfmillion -acre strip of land at the western end of the reserve. Essentially a reserve within the Western Reserve, this area had been set aside by the Connecticut legislature on 10 May 1792, to compensate residents of nine towns for their property losses to British attacks during the American Revolution. In May 1796, the Connecticut legislature incorporated the sufferers under the name of “The Proprietors of the Half Million Acres of Land Lying South of Lake Erie.” Today, Erie and Huron and a portion of Ottawa and Ashland counties comprise the Firelands, and the towns of Vermillion, Huron, Sandusky, Milan, Norwalk, Berlin Heights, and New London, along with Cedar Point amusement park, are familiar to those who travel along the southern shore of Lake Erie or who vacation or live in Ohio.1 The settlement and development of the Firelands, however, proceeded slowly for many reasons. During the late eighteenth century, for example, the Western Reserve and its far reaches remained little known, in part, because it laid far to the north of the Ohio River, which served as the main transportation route by water to the western country. Settlers who came down the Ohio bought lands along the major rivers, such as the Muskingum, Scioto, and Miami, which linked them to the market economy tied to Pittsburgh and New Orleans. In contrast, an ice-bound Lake Erie blocked eastern traders during the winter, while the Appalachians hindered the development of an efficient road system to link the reserve to eastern markets. Moreover, goods could not be easily transported north from the Ohio River, and a major road did not link Columbus with the Firelands until 1834. As a result, until completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, settlers in the Firelands and Western Reserve did not have efficient and affordable access to market. Consequently, agricultural production for a market economy lagged behind farming practices south of the reserve. Most important, however , the danger of warfare with the Indians and British along the Lake Erie shore and the propensity of Yankee speculators to overprice their lands slowed the settlement and development of the Firelands until after the War of 1812.2 Indeed, from the creation of the Western Reserve and the Firelands during the late eighteenth century, the threat of war and stubborn speculators slowed settlement more so than anywhere else in Ohio. At first, the Connecticut Land Company proved particularly incapable of administering and dispersing its 120-mile, threemillion -acre strip of land that extended west from the Pennsylvania border. Many potential settlers were hesitant to buy land in the Reserve because its system of government remained uncertain. The Connecticut Land Company had purchased The Fi re l a n d s: L a n d S p e c u l a ti on a n d the War of 1812 — 305 — the “juridical and territorial right” to the Reserve and the area...