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Description

Second state of Taylor's rare map of the Western Reserve, including the Fire Lands.

 

Toward the end of the Revolutionary War, Connecticut set aside land at the west end of the Western Reserve to compensate those who had suffered from British raids. This area became known as the Fire Lands. In 1786, Connecticut relinquished all claim to western lands to the fledgling U.S. Government, except for a 120-mile strip along the south shore of Lake Erie, which was being reserved as compensation for land lost to Pennsylvania in the Wyoming Valley of the Susquehanna River. This land became known as the Connecticut Western Reserve. Connecticut began trying to sell it to raise money for the state's school system. A group of investors purchased the Western Reserve and incorporated themselves as the Connecticut Land Company for $1,200,000. This group then organized the Connecticut Land Company and hired agents to sell the land to those persons wishing to migrate.

An initial party, led by Moses Cleaveland, reached the site of what is now Cleveland, Ohio, in 1796. Like the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains generally, the Western Reserve was little-known, but was becoming an important part of the westward movement of settlers in the years following American independence.

The map illustrates court houses, meeting houses, cottages, mills, light houses, villages, county lines, roads and townships. The text below the map includes a marvelous historical note about the Western Reserve, beginning with the grant of the lands by King Charles the II to the colony of Connecticut in 1662.

Streeter refers to the map as the finest product of an Ohio engraver and pioneer printer. Streeter's attribution of the map to Savery Pitt is incorrect. The reference almost undoubtedly refers to William Savery (Savory), who worked as an engraver in Pittsburgh from 1819 onward. Rumsey (3816) describes the third state of the map, which was corrected to March 1833. Streeter owned copies of the first and third editions, but not this apparently unrecorded second edition, which is dated August 1832.

The first edition of the map was published by William Sumner in 1826, based upon a manuscript map originally prepared by Horace Kingsbury in 1820 and revised in 1823. The MacLean collection includes an 1825 manuscript edition of this map. Subsequent editions were published by Allen Taylor (1832 and 1833), Taylor and Company of Pittsburgh (1837), Ebenezer Hutchinson of Windsor County, VT (1843) and Taylor and Company (1850).

The present example has been folded into cloth covers and has several minor fold breaks, but is generally a very nice example of this highly important early map of Ohio. Rumsey 3816 (3rd State); Streeter Sale 1364 (1st State); 1371 (3rd State).