Pre Civil War

Back in 1796, when the Connecticut Western Reserve still had control over what is now Ohio, Moses Cleaveland and a group of his surveyors were sent to find the new capital city of the Connecticut Western Reserve.

After stumbling upon abandoned Native American sites, and realizing the opportunity the lake and the Cuyahoga River had for trading, they decided to place Cleveland where it currently is today.

One of the first tasks Moses Cleaveland took part in was pacing out a 9 ½ acre plot of land in the center of what would later be Cleveland, wanting to give it a commons area for livestock to graze and people to congregate, similar to the Public Squares in northeast Atlantic cities that he came from.

This 9 ½ acre square is the same plot of land we now call Public Square.

The surveying party decided to name the city after their leader, thus giving the city the name Cleaveland.

However, it was in 1831 that the city got its current name, when The Cleveland Advertiser couldn’t fit the title of their newspaper on the paper’s masthead.

They simply removed an “a”, and the name stuck.