The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-12-23
Centenary of CIeveIand's
 Incorporation As Village

Just. one hundred years ago today a charter was granted incorporating
 the village of Cleveland, and the little
 frontier community in the Ohio wild
 erness entered upon that career of prosperity and progress which has
 made it the metropolis, not only of Ohio, but of all that vast section be-
 tween the Atlantic seaboard and Chi
 cago, and the sixth largest city of North America. A century ago Cleve- land was considered a. very backward and unpromising place by the citi- zens of such fIourishing towns as Gin cinnati, Marietta, Dayton, Conneaut, Chfllicothe, Steubenville and Zanes- vile. Cincinnati, t.the Paris of America and the Queen City of the Vest long held it's own against its ambitious rival for metropolitan hon.
 ors, but CleEeland's many industries at last gained for it the preeminence, and the Queen City, is now left far in the rear-7in population, at least <
 Cleveland was founded in 1796 by a colony of pioneers from Connecti-
 cut, led by Gen. Moses Cleveland. He was a, native of Canterbury, Conn, a. graduate of Yale, and, as commander
 of a. company of sappers and miners
 diStin guished himself in the revo1u-
 ton. Later he became a, lawyer and
 a member of the Connecticut legis1a-
 =
 company was formed to develop the lands in the western Reserve of the
 State of Connecticut. Gen. C1eaveland
 as agent for the company, led a party
 of about fifty settlers to this wild region, which was then unsettled ex-
 cept for a small colony planted a few months before at Conneaut, the Pdy-
 mouth of the Reserve.'' Gen. Cleave-
 land chose a site for a town at the
 mouth of the Cuyahoga river, on Lake
 Erie and surveyed the land into town lots He also made the first map of the city which now bears his name minus the a.''5, He did not remain but returned to Connecticut, and died in his native village in 1906. C1eve- land celebrated the centenary of it's founding in 1896, on which occasion its most disting guished citizen, John D. Rockefeller, presented $600,000 for park purposes to the municipality in which he had laid the foundation of l his vast fortune.
 For many years after it's incorpora-
 ton Cleveland gave but slight prom ise of it's future supremacy among the towns of Ohio. The completion
 of the Ohio and Lake Erie canal,
 from Portsmouth on the Ohio to Cleveland. a distance of 307 miles, and the subsequent era of railway build- ing gave Cleveland its first consider able forward impetus Soon after the opening of the $5,00o,000 "ditch''
 Cleveland began<to put on city. airs, and in 1886 it was chartered as city.
 In the early sos Cleveland gained df-
 rect rail connections with Columbus,
 Pittsburgh, Toledo and other points. l Numerous important industries be gan to center at Cleveland, owing to 1 it's excellent land and water trans portation facilities, and since then every decade has witnessed a great i growth. Tn 1880 it had a population of 16O, ,146; in 1890, 261. .546. and in 1900 its population. had increased to l S81,76s. In the next decade C1eve- l lands growth was marvellous, as the
 nose-counters in 1910 found 56O,633 human beings inside CIeveland's cor 1 porate limits. Now the sixth city oi 1 the United States. Cleveland Is still dissatisfied with its standing among l American municipalities, and is am bilious to become the fourth. Balti- more, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and other
 cities have already been forced to ''eat IC1eveIand's dust,'' and the ambitious Ohio city now entertains similar de- signs on Boston and St. Louis.