The History of Columbia Township
In 1786, after the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War,
the State of Connecticut ceded to the new federal government of
the United State those western lands which had been part of its
original royal charter, retaining only a portion in present northeastern
Ohio. Called the Western Reserve, Connecticut withheld this land
as an incentive to their men who signed up to fight the British
during the war. The reserve, stretching a120 miles west from the
Pennsylvania line, was bounded on the north by Lake Erie and on
the south by the forty-first parallel.
In the spring of 1807, a group of men from Waterbury, Connecticut
pooled their funds and formed the Waterbury Land Company in order
to participate in a complicated lottery to purchase an entire
township in the Western Reserve. On April 4, 1807, they drew,
by lot, the future "Columbia Township" southwest of
Cleveland.
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