Firelands History Website

“Sufferers’ Land.”
The “Firelands.”

These evocative and descriptive phrases refer to a region in Northern Ohio set aside by the state of Connecticut for “Sufferers” who were burned out of their homes by the British in the Revolution. Part of the Western Reserve, it covers present-day Huron and Erie counties.

After the War of 1812, a flood of emigration erupted out of crowded New England, the result of a pent up desire for new land that had been held in check by the threat of Native Americans defending their homes and the spur of economic hardship engendered by the catastrophic “Year without Summer” of 1816. Most of these pioneers were bound for the Firelands.

Thus began one of the great migrations of American history; a flood of humanity that poured out of New England and settled lands stretching along the southern shores of the Great Lakes from upstate New York to Illinois and across the Mississippi River into Iowa.

These settlers greatly impacted the history of the United States. In the 1850’s, some of them entered Kansas and clashed with the leading edge of another great migration that had settled the South — a tragic foreshadowing of the Civil War. The grandchildren of the settlers of the Old Northwest formed the backbone of the Union Army of the West during that war and made possible the Republican majority that ruled the nation the remainder of the century.

This website presents histories of the Firelands and genealogies of families that settled there.

1. The Sufferers’ Land is a history of the settlement of the Firelands from the founding of the town of Norwalk in 1817 by Platt Benedict to the final Pioneers Reunion and founding of The Firelands Historical Society in 1857. This story may be read from the beginning starting at the Prologue, or by selecting any of the 53 episodes in the Index of Posts.

2. A genealogy of families who settled in the Firelands is also included on this website. These include the Benedict, Wickham, Preston, Taylor, Buckingham, Christian, DeForest, Deaver, Walker, Shaon, Smith, Bradford, Talcott, Farrar, French, Lovewell, Hassell, Converse, Blanchard, Wanton, Winthrop, Dudley, and Sutton families.

3. Little Doctor on the Black Horse is a memoir of Doctor David DeForest Benedict of Norwalk, Ohio, a Union Surgeon during the Civil War. It was written by his granddaughter Harriott Benedict Wickham, who included in the story excerpts of letters he wrote to his wife from the field and from Libby Prison, where he was a prisoner of war. An episode of the story is posted every Monday, with the most recent installment immediately below this post. See the Index of Posts to read the entire memoir.

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© 2009 by David W. Barton. All rights reserved