A Brief History of Cleveland, OH

Cleveland was named on July 22, 1796 when surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company laid out Connecticut's Western Reserve into townships and a capital city they named "Cleaveland" after their leader, General Moses Cleaveland. Cleaveland took over the plan for the modern downtown area, concentrating on the Public Square, before returning home, never to return to Ohio again. The first settler in Cleaveland was Lorenzo Carter, who built a cabin on the banks of the Cuyahoga River. The village of Cleaveland was incorporated on December 23, 1814, and the spelling of the name was changed to "Cleveland" when the "a" was dropped so the name could fit in a newspaper masthead.