Cleveland celebrates 225th birthday

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - Thursday marks 225 years since Cleveland was founded.

The city’s birthday will be celebrated with a wreath laying ceremony. It’s happening at 11 a.m. in front of the Moses Cleaveland statue at Public Square.

According to a news release, City Council President Kevin Kelley will deliver remarks during the event. Kathleen H. Crowther, Cleveland Restoration Society President, will be honored with the Herrick Memorial Award.

The city of Cleveland shared its founding story in the release. Read it in full below.

The founding of Cleveland is quite a story. Arriving at the mouth of the Cuyahoga on July 22, 1796, General Moses Cleaveland believed that the location, “where river, lake, low banks, dense forests, and high bluffs provided both protection and shipping access, was the ideal location for the ‘capital city’ of the Connecticut Western Reserve.”

Cleaveland had served in the Revolutionary War in a Connecticut Continental Regiment. Resigning his commission in 1781, he practiced law. As one of the founders of the Connecticut Land Co., and one of 7 directors, Cleaveland was sent out in 1796 to survey and map the company’s holdings.

His surveyors plotted a town, naming it Cleaveland. In Oct. 1796, Cleaveland and most of his party returned to Connecticut, never returning to the Western Reserve.

It would take 40 more years for the city of Cleveland (the letter “a” was dropped in 1831) to become incorporated on March 5th, 1836. It was an exciting year; it nearly erupted into open warfare with neighboring Ohio City over a bridge connecting the two communities.

The Early Settlers Association of the Western Reserve is one of the oldest civic organizations in Cleveland. Some 140 years ago, its founding members were directly connected to the earliest settlers of the region, then known as the Connecticut Lands of the Western Reserve.