American Union Lodge No. 1 - Onondaga and Oswego Masonic ...

He was approached by the directors of the company in May 1796 and asked to
lead the survey of the tract and the location of purchases. He was also
responsible for the negotiations with the Indians living on the land. In June 1796,
he set out from Schenectady, NY. His party included fifty people including six
surveyors, a physician, a chaplain, a boatman, thirty-seven employees, a few
emigrants and two women who accompanied their husbands. Some journeyed by
land with the horses and cattle, while the main body went in boats up the
Mohawk, down the Oswego, along the shore of Lake Ontario, and up Niagara
River, carrying their boats over the long portage of seven miles at the falls.
At Buffalo a delegation of Mohawk and Seneca Indians opposed their entrance
into the Western Reserve, claiming it as their territory, but waived their rights on
the receipt of goods valued at $1,200. The expedition then coasted along the
shore of Lake Eire, and landed, on July 4, 1796, at the mouth of Conneaut Creek,
which they named Port Independence. The Indians were propitiated with gifts of
beads and whiskey, and allowed the surveys to proceed. General Cleaveland,
with a surveying party, coasted along the shore and on July 22, 1796, landed at
the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. He ascended the bank, and, beholding a
beautiful plain covered with a luxuriant forest-growth, divined that the spot where
he stood, with the river on the west and Lake Erie on the north, was a favorable
site for a city.
He accordingly had it surveyed into town lots, and the employees named the place Cleaveland, in honor of their chief. There were
but four settlers the first year, and, on account of the insalubrity of the locality, the growth was at first slow, reaching 150 inhabitants
only in 1820. Moses Cleaveland went home to Connecticut after the 1796 expedition and never returned to Ohio or the city that
bears his name. Today, a statue of him stands on Public Square in Cleveland.
The place called "Cleaveland" eventually became known as "Cleveland". One explanation as to why the spelling changed is that, in
1830, when the first newspaper, the Cleveland Advertiser, was established, the editor discovered that the head-line was too long for
the form, and accordingly left out the letter "a" in the first syllable of "Cleaveland", which spelling was at once adopted by the public.
An alternative explanation is that Cleaveland's surveying party misspelled the name of the future town on their original map.
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Captain William Coit
Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, Volume 7, by Connecticut Historical Society
http://books.google.com/books?id=XvhlpZm7-
n0C&pg=PA1&dq=%22william+coit%22+%22connecticut%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0IwAT_aJHMHL0QGlwt2bAg&ved=0CDEQ6AEwA
A#v=onepage&q=%22william%20coit%22%20%22connecticut%22&f=false
ORDERLY BOOK
At Siege of Boston
of
CAPT. WILLIAM COIT
OF NEW LONDON
April 23 to August 7, 7775
WITH SKETCH OF CAPT. COIT
CAPTAIN WILLIAM COIT
By P. H. WOODWARD
John Coit (e), the emigrant ancestor of most of the Coit family in America, is found in 1638 at Salem, Mass., whence he moved to
Gloucester in 1644. He made one of the party that accompanied Rev. John Blinman from that seaport to New London, and to whom
the townsmen granted lands Oct. 19, 1650. He was a ship carpenter. The business descended to his son Joseph, who, with his
brother-in-law, Hugh Mould, built many "ships " ranging from twenty to one hundred tons. Daniel Coit, father of Capt. William, was
town clerk of New London from 1736 till his death in 1773, at the age of seventy-five, with the exception of a single year. He
married, second, Mehitable Hooker of Farmington, the mother of the subject of this sketch.
Capt. Wm. Coit was born in New London Nov. 26, 1742; graduated at Yale College in the class of 1761; studied law, and was
admitted to the bar, his certificate bearing the signature of Gov. Saltonstall. He was a selectman in 1771, and • in December, 1774,
was added to the local committee of correspondence raised the previous June. Early in 1775 he organized and drilled a military
company at New London, contributing generously from his own resources toward its equipment.
News of the fight at Lexington reached New London the night of April 20. A few hours later, Capt. Coit with a part of his command
was on the road, hurrying to the scene of action. The first leaf of the orderly book bears the legend "Campt at Cambridge, April 23d
A. D. 1775." It is probable that the detachment consisted of about twenty men and rode on horseback. Like hundreds of others from
Eastern Connecticut, they started under a sudden, tumultuous impulse. After a short stay, finding that hostilities were not likely to be
renewed by Gen. Gage in the near future, many of the minute-men, including the detachment from New London, returned home to
put their affairs in order for the serious work of war.
NOTE.— The writer is indebted to Miss M. E. S. Coit, granddaughter of Capt. Wm. Coit, for many facts contained in this sketch.
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