HARTFORD, Conn. (WFSB) – If you’ve ever driven through Northeast Ohio and noticed towns called Fairfield, Norwalk, New Haven or New London, that’s not a coincidence. It turns out Connecticut once owned that land, and the story of how it got there and why it let it go is more interesting than you might expect.
In 1662, a royal charter from the King of England gave Connecticut claim to land stretching across the country. Connecticut held onto most of it until 1786, when it gave the majority back, except for one stretch along Lake Erie in what is now Northeast Ohio. That area was known as “New Connecticut,” or the Western Reserve.
“The border of Connecticut, New Connecticut, is from the western border of Pennsylvania, bounded to the north by Lake Erie, and then down to the 41st parallel on the south,” said Matt Warshauer, a history professor at Central Connecticut State University. “So it’s a 120-mile-wide swath of land. That’s about 3.3 million acres.”…