4th, 1796. From that point the work was immediately begun, one party running the line of its eastern boundary southward and another going northward. The mouth of the Cuyahoga was laid out, and honored with the name of the leader of the expedition-General Moses Cleaveland.

But the arrival at Conneaut Creek is worthy of mention. General Cleaveland made of this the following record: "On this creek (Conneaut), in New Connecticut land, July 4, 1796, under General Moses Cleaveland, the surveyors and men sent out by the Connecticut Land Company to survey and settle the Connecticut Reserve, were the first English people who took possession of it."

He further says: We gave three cheers and christened the place Fort Independence, and after many difficulties, perplexities, and hardships were surmounted, and we were on the good and promised land, felt that a just tribute of respect to the day ought to be paid. There were in all, including women and children, fifty in number. The men under Captain Tinker ranged themselves on the beach and fired a federal salute of fifteen rounds, and then the sixteenth, in honor of New Connecticut; drank several toasts, closed with three cheers, drank several pails of grog, supped and retired in good order."

Notice in this record the claim to first English occupation, and the loyalty that would not let them forget in the wilderness the birthday of the Republic, and that quaint but honest declaration, that "after several pails of grog, they supped and retired in good order."

The arrival of this party on the shore of Lake Erie, and contemporaneous events, mark an important epoch in the history of the new nation.

During the two and a half centuries previous to this time. the continent had been penetrated by Spanish and French explorers from different points on the Atlantic coast. In the south Ponce de Leon and De Soto had sought gold and the "Fountain of Perpetual Youth," and in the north French missionaries and

explorers had ascended through the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes to the far northwest. But the object was discovery, with a view to military occupation and religious propagandism. One hundred and seventeen years before the event at Conneaut Creek (in 1679), a solitary sail had passed that spot, but it bore no intending settler. It carried cannon. It was La Salle seeking the pathway to China across the continent, and to plant the arms and the faith of France in the valley and at the mouth of the Mississippi. This he accomplished in the following year.

There had been a long and doubtful struggle between the French and the English for supremacy in the new world, but long before this it had ended in favor of the English. This and the final subjection of the Indian tribes prepared the way for the new nation of the new world. The issue of the Revolutionary war afterwards settled the further question of infinite importance, that the control of this continent by the Englishspeaking race was to be administered under the highest conditions for success-free institutions.

With the close of the Revolutionary war came rapidly on the settlement of many questions preliminary to the growth and expansion of the national life westward.

Several of the seaboard States had claims, through royal grants, to extensive territory west of the existing State boundaries. The extinguishment or adjustment of these claims, often conflicting, was among the first duties of the new Federal Government. A few years saw this mainly accomplished.

The claims of Connecticut to land in the new northwest territory, however, were measureably defined, at least on three sides. The royal charter in 1662 gave to her a strip of land, bounded on the east by Naragansett river, on the north by Massachusetts, and on the south by Long Island Sound, and extending westward between the parallels 41° and 42° 2′′ north latitude to the mythical "South Sea."

That portion of the charter lying immediately west she could not obtain, it having been previously granted to New York and

in possession. The "South Sea" she could never find, and that portion of her charter lying between it and the Reserve, we suppose, she rather reluctantly abandoned. In 1786 Connecticut. relinquished to the United States all claims to territory outside of a line one hundred and twenty miles west of the boundary line of Pennsylvania and parallel with it. In 1792 she granted five hundred thousand acres (the Fire Lands) from the western side of this Reserve to citizens whose property had been burned in the war. The remainder of her lands she sold in 1795 to the Connecticut Land Company for twelve hundred thousand dollars.

This, I believe, was the final transaction which brought the entire domain of the new northwest territory under the jurisdiction of the United States. But I must not detain you with even these brief allusions to the events and influences which prepared the way for the Western Reserve of to-day. Here she is in her glory and strength, a beautiful creation. Your lifework, my friends, has been done upon it, and I know that now, at last, with the whitened hair and the trembling step, there has also come into your hearts the joy and the pride of successful achievement. The Reserve that we see might well have been predicted from the happy confluence of so many favoring elements in its origin and progress.

The location central, and at the foot of the Great Lakes, was a guarantee of future commercial influence. The climate was good, the soil was fertile and the country well watered, while the heavy forest with which it was covered, evoked and challenged, as no prairie land bright with flowers could ever do, those sturdy qualities of manhood that are essential to the building of a state. These high material advantages have been pushed to their highest utility, it is needless to say, in the hands of a sober, industrious, intelligent and God-fearing people, and so they have been made tributary to the highest objects of social and political organization. Naturally, the first endeavor was to utilize to the fullest extent the water commu

nications by the lakes. Then came the construction of canals, connecting the Ohio river and the Pennsylvania canal system with Cleveland harbor. Cleveland was now asserting herself as the metropolis of Northern Ohio. But about 1850 commenced that marvelous advance which followed the construction of railroads upon the Reserve. The track of commerce between the East and the West and the Southwest lay across the Reserve, and within ten years several roads reached ont to the interior from this harbor. But railroad construction, with ship building, assumed vastly increased importance when the iron ores of Lake Superior were brought to the coal deposits of the Reserve.

This lighted the fires around our harbors and throughout our valleys, and the Reserve has rapidly become the seat of immense and varied manufacturing industries.

But, my friends, what shall we say of the social, political and religious characteristics of the Reserve, underlying all this material progress? They are, thank God, what might have been expected from the early seed.

The school-house at the cross-roads, and in the city the academy and college, and the church and the home where faith in God and the qualities of a true manhood are nourished and vitalized, these are the grand insignia of the inheritance we have received, venerable and beloved friends, from you.

The exercises of the day were now closed by singing to the tune of "Old Hundred" the "Early Settlers' Hymn,” in which the audience joined with the Quartette Club, followed with the Doxology.

COMMUNICATIONS.

EARLY CIVIL AND COUNTY ORGANIZATIONS, SOUTH SHORE OF LAKE ERIE.

HON. HARVEY RICE, PRES. EARLY SETTLERS' ASSOCIATION: It has occurred to me that the members of your Association would be interested in a review of the successive civil jurisdictions which have attached to the soil of this county.

While the French occupied the south shore of Lake Erie there was not the semblance of courts or magistrates for the trial of civil or criminal issues. This occupation ended in 1760, but it is an open historical question when it began. La Salle was in the Ohio country from 1669 to 1671 or 1672, though he established no posts, and the records of his occupation are lost. There are, on the Western Reserve, quite a number of ancient ax marks upon trees, over which the growth of woody layers corresponds to those dates, and which appear to me to have been made by parties of his expedition. The French had posts at Erie, Pa., on the Cuyahoga, on Sandusky bay, on the Maumee and Great Miami rivers as early as 1749 and 1752; and probably earier at some points in Ohio and Pennsylvania. In 1748 the English colonists from Pennsylvania had a trading post at Sandusky bay, from which they were driven by the French.

Pennsylvania had, however, no civil authority west of her boundary, which is described as being five degrees of longitude west from the Delaware river. The Colony of Virginia had claims, under various charters and descriptions, to a part of Pennsylvania, and all the territory to the west and northwest as far as a supposed ocean called the South Sea. Immediately