The Ohio Firelands

Before I relocated to North Carolina, I returned to Ohio after an absence of several decades, and ended up in a part of the state previously unexplored by me, despite having spent the first twenty-two years of my life in Ohio. One of the things I noticed was the constant reference to the Firelands. On nearly every corner in my newly adopted part of the state, there are schools, medical centers, churches, credit unions, a cattle company, grocery stores, retirement centers—all with the Firelands name. I asked people every chance I got what the Firelands was in reference to, but no one had a good explanation.

So, being the historian that I am, I decided to find out. What I didn’t expect was to find was the origin of the name had its roots in Connecticut, nor did I suspect the roots would go back as far as the Revolutionary War. 

New London, CT at the time of the Revolution was an excellent deep water harbor town. To avoid the increased taxes the British placed on all goods coming to the colonies, New London became a haven for smuggling. Its warehouses were brimming with equipment and supplies to fight the British. 

Connecticut was also a major source of manufacturing. Badly needed supplies and materials were shipped to the Continental Army, which inflamed the British, who burned most of the manufacturing plants to destroy this supply line. The raids got out of hand and much civilian property was lost or damaged.

Fort Griswold, on the other side of the Thames River from New London, in the town of Groton, was the site of action between an outmanned force of Confederates and the British. After a brief, fierce battle, the Americans laid down their weapons. Both New London and Groton were almost entirely destroyed.

After the war, these “fire-sufferers” petitioned the state for compensation for their losses. In 1792, the legislature agreed to pay 1,870 citizens by giving them land from the 500,000 acres set aside from the Connecticut Western Reserve. This represents a unique event in the history of America, since at no time before or since have civilian victims of a war been given payment for their sacrifice with land. The land had to be surveyed and divided into tracts, which took four years, from 1808 to 1812. Each tract was assigned a number and, depending on the amount of loss suffered by each resident, they were allowed to draw one or more numbers. 

By the time all the petitioners’ complaints were reviewed, the land surveyed and an equitable solution to distribution figured out, many of the original “sufferers” were either dead or too old to resettle in this rugged land. It took forty days of hard travel to get from Connecticut to the Ohio Firelands. Population and the formation of towns in northwest Ohio began in 1808. Towns in the Firelands district today are named after their Connecticut counterparts–Danbury, Fairfield, Greenwich, Groton, New Haven, New London, Norwalk and Ridgefield.