Visions of the Western Reserve

Public and Private Documents of Northeastern Ohio, 1750–1860

Edited by Robert A. Wheeler

This collection of primary source documents traces the evolution of Ohio’s Western Reserve from the early days of exploration to the eve of the Civil War. The documents, which come from the archives of the Western Reserve Historical Society, encompass a range of voices belonging to the men, women, and children who explored, visited, or lived in northeastern Ohio before the Civil War.

The documents range from an Indian captivity narrative to narratives of exploration to records left by a missionary to a young girl’s remarkable record of growing up on the “frontier” to accounts by immigrants of life in a new world. The collection begins with Benjamin Franklin’s 1755 statement about the importance of the land we know as Ohio and ends in 1860 with African American John Malvin’s comments on race and history in Ohio. Robert A. Wheeler provides a general introduction to the volume as a whole, plus introductions to each of the four chronological sections. In addition, he presents historical and biographical information for each document included in the collection.

This is a wonderful history of the Ohio’s formative years, but it is also a first-rate American history of the movement westward in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War.

Robert A. Wheeler is a member of the history department and the director if the University Center for Teaching and Learning at Cleveland State University and coauthor of Cleveland: A Concise History, 1796–1996.