I have some vague memory of learning about the American westward expansion after the Revolution, but at that point I didn't realize that I had any connection to it, being from San Diego (I guess I'm California-centric). That was before I got into genealogy.
Although I don't appear to have any direct ancestors who went from Connecticut to the areas claimed by Connecticut, I do have many collateral relatives who did (mostly branches of upstate New Yorkers originally from Connecticut), and I also have New Englanders (Tibbetts folks in Maine) who came to the southern Ohio area (Dearborn County, Indiana in Indiana's Gore) after the traumatizing 1816 cold snap (the year known as "1800 and froze to death").***
I have found learning anything about early Ohio is key to understanding much of later American westward expansion, and why my ancestors and relatives were where they were when.
Peggy Clemens Lauritzen covers the history of the northern development in Ohio previously claimed by Connecticut, in "The Firelands, The Connecticut Western Reserve, and the Ohio Territory":
The northeastern lands of Ohio are aptly named “The Firelands”, and “The Western Reserve”. How did they come to be called that? And, what connection do they have to the northeastern states? “Ohio fever” brought a lot of settlers to the state following the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. A section of Ohio named “The Western Reserve” will be of particular interest to those having ties to Connecticut.
Runs 1 hour 17 minutes.
Free to non-subscribers through July 26, 2017.
***The Tibbetts lived in (then) Hancock County, Maine, in an area actually called "Ohio" (renamed Corinth in 1811).
© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.
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