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    Olmsted Falls
    Olmsted Falls
    Olmsted Falls
    Ebook171 pages1 hour

    Olmsted Falls

    By John D. Cimperman

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    Settled in the early 1800s, Olmsted Falls was originally known as Kingston Township before being named Olmsted Falls, after Aaron Olmstead, first purchaser of the land from the Connecticut Land Company. It merged with the Village of Westview in 1971, and the City of Olmsted Falls was established in 1972. In 1989, longtime resident and realtor Clint Williams bought many buildings in the town center and restored and redeveloped them into an area known as Grand Pacific Junction, after the Grand Pacific Hotel, once the social center of the community. It is celebrated as one of the most authentic and revitalized town center historic districts in Ohio. Many of the buildings have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateOct 31, 2007
    ISBN9781439634899
    Olmsted Falls
    Author

    John D. Cimperman

    Olmsted Falls resident John D. Cimperman has received numerous national and local awards for his work in historic preservation. He served as the director of the Cleveland Landmarks Commission for 18 years, as trustee of the Ohio Historical Society, as a member of the Ohio Site Preservation Advisory Board, as president of the Ohio Association of Preservation Commissions, as trustee of the National Alliance of Historic Preservation Commissions, as president of the Early Settlers Association of the Western Reserve, and as a trustee of the Cleveland Restoration Society.

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      Book preview

      Olmsted Falls - John D. Cimperman

      book.

      INTRODUCTION

      The story of Olmsted Falls begins with the story of Connecticut’s Western Reserve. It is a history that is an important part of the early history of the United States. It all began in 1662, when King Charles II of England granted Connecticut all lands bounded by the colony from sea to sea. It was said that Charles had a greater knowledge of liqueur than geography. The king did not know how much land he was giving, and Connecticut did not know what it was getting. Remember this was before the Lewis and Clark age of discovery. When our new government was formed, Connecticut relinquished all of its western lands to the federal government, except for the land that it called the Western Reserve, or New Connecticut. The Northwest Territory was established in 1787, and the claims of the colonies had to be settled. Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia had claims granted by English kings. All gave up their claims to the new government except for Connecticut, which retained its Western Reserve. Connecticut set aside about 500,000 acres of the reserve for the benefit of citizens who had suffered losses by fire during the Revolution; it called the land the Fire Lands. During the Revolution, British troops would burn the property of people suspected of supporting the American cause. The Fire Lands would be today’s Erie and Huron Counties.

      Let us step back even further in time to the prehistoric period. Following the departure of the glaciers, the first humans to enter the region did so as early as 12,000 to 10,000 B.C. They were small hunting groups following the mastodon and mammoth. Many migrating hunting tribes entered the region. One of those tribes, the Erie, gained control of the southern shore of the lake from Sandusky Bay to today’s Buffalo. At the time of the discovery of the Eries by the French Jesuit missionaries, the Cuyahoga River, the Rocky River, and the Portage Lakes seemed to be an important region for the Eries. The area was rich in wildlife, fish, and berries for the picking, and the soil was rich for growing. Unfortunately for the Eries, their control of the region was not to last; the Iroquois became their bitter enemies. The Iroquois, who lived in what is today Quebec, Ontario, and New York State, joined with other tribes to form the Six Nations. In the middle of the 17th century, the Iroquois with their allies defeated the Eries and took control of what is today northeast Ohio. Moses Cleaveland was chosen by the Connecticut Land Company to lead a surveying party to meet with the Native Americans and negotiate the sale of the western lands. He served under George Washington as a general during the Revolutionary War and rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Connecticut Militia. It was the Six Nations of the Iroquois that General Cleaveland met with to negotiate the sale of the western lands. A Mohawk chief named Joseph Brant served as a spokesman for his people. He was a Christian missionary of the Anglican Church and a British military officer. Brant was born in 1742 on the banks of the

      Ohio River and given the Native American name Thayendanegea. The name Thayendanegea means he who places two bets. He did not place two bets but stayed loyal to the crown and was rewarded for his loyalty. After the war, he received a land grant of 675,000 acres in Canada for Mohawk losses during the Revolutionary War. Brant died on August 24, 1807, in Canada and Moses Cleaveland at his home in Connecticut in 1806. Both men lived long enough that they may have been informed of the second sale of the lands of the Western Reserve at the Treaty of Fort Industry in 1805, when the Native American tribes west of the Cuyahoga River sold the western lands of the reserve to the Connecticut Land Company.

      If there is anything you remember from this book, I hope it is the courage and determination of those early settlers to make their life meaningful. I read the following on a flyer, so I do not know who to attribute it to, but I believe it is profound and best identifies all those who came to America and the Western Reserve in those early days when this land was a wilderness. The flyer read, I dare you to sacrifice a life pre-determined with guided direction and ease for a path of unknown challenges and choice—bestowed the freedom to fail and grow—thus experiencing the gift of life. I do not know how it could be said in any better way.

      One

      THE MOVE WESTWARD

      Congress ratified the Declaration of Independence by the 13 colonies on July 4, 1776. This was the first step to develop the United States as it is known today. Then came the Revolutionary War. That war continued for seven years until 1783, when a peace treaty was signed. But that did not end the conflict. It was thought that Britain had relinquished all of Ohio to the United States. That was not the case; British activity did not conclude until after the War of 1812 and Oliver Hazard Perry’s victory in the Battle of Lake Erie. That battle essentially established the northern boundary of the United States. After Perry’s victory, Gen. William Henry Harrison pursued the fleeing British and Native Americans into Canada and fought the Battle of Thames on October 5, 1813. In December 1814, at what was called the Treaty of Ghent, it was established that the Great Lakes, not the Ohio River, would be the northern boundary between the United States and Canada.

      A trip to Put-in-Bay, the Perry Monument, and the new education center tells the story of that momentous time in American history. One may want to start a tour of history at the Western Reserve Historical Society located in Cleveland’s renowned arts and culture center called University Circle. The mission of the society is to collect, preserve, and present the history of all the people of the Western Reserve.

      Dedication of the $2.5 million education center at Put-in-Bay was

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