|
All of the territory in this part of Summit County had once been occupied by Native American tribes including the Miamis, the Pottawatomies, the Delawares, the Shawnese, the Ottawas, the Senecas and a Mingo settlement on the Cuyahoga River in Boston Township. The Indians who were found in Richfield were mostly Wyandottes and Ottawas however. Before any white settler had come here, an Indian named Nicksaw was killed as he was pursued by a party from Deerfield in Portage County, Ohio. He was buried in the northwestern part of Richfield Township.
It is said that "Mad Anthony Wayne", who negotiated the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, built a road at the extreme northern edge of the township for a supply route to Pittsburgh. This road, now called Columbia Road in the eastern part and Boston Road in the western part, was found grown over and abandoned when the first white settlers came. Friendly Indians told of the soldiers who had travelled the road, and articles of military equipment found along the forgotten route confirmed the story.
In 1786 all lands were to be ceded to the government, but the state of Connecticut, who had held a charter to this land, "reserved" northern Ohio for its citizens whose property had been damaged by the British during the Revolutionary War and thus, the Western Reserve came into being. However, Connecticut did not wish to retain the land but sell it and use the money to also establish its public schools.
Therefore in 1795, a group of 36 real estate prospectors began a company they called,"The Connecticut Land Company" and bought the whole reserve for over a million dollars. Richfield Township was then sold to six individual men: Col. Benjamin Tallmadge, Capt. John Smith, John Wilcox, Uriel Holmes, Edwards and Green. Later Heman Oviatt of Hudson bought a quarter of the township from Col. Tallmadge for $1.25 an acre and his brother, Nathaniel Oviatt, was also a very early settler here. These daring pioneers from Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York began to penetrate this unknown wilderness, bringing their families and all their equipment for building a home and all the necessities for sustaining life until crops could be raised and harvested. It was a perilous and tedious journey, fraught with danger and hardships. Many families were three or four months on the way from Connecticut by ox team, a trip now made in a few hours. Pioneers had pushed in from the East to Hudson and established there an outpost several years before the first settler came to Richfield. This was some years before Akron was settled and Cleveland was a village of only a few homes.
|
 |
 |
