Notes for: Moses Cleaveland

Gen. Moses Cleaveland was a lawyer, politician, soldier and surveyor from Connecticut who founded the city of Cleveland, Ohio, while surveying the Western Reserve in 1796. He studied law at Yale University, graduating in 1777. That same year, with the American Revolutionary War in progress, he was commissioned as an ensign in the 2nd Connecticut Regiment of the Continental Army. In 1779 he was promoted to captain of a company of "sappers and miners" (combat engineers) in the newly formed Corps of Engineers. He resigned from the army on June 7, 1781 and started a legal practice in Canterbury.

There are several theories as to how the place once called Cleaveland became known as Cleveland. The most popular is that the printer of a new newspaper in 1830 found the name too long to fit the masthead, so omitted the "a" from the first syllable to shorten the name to the Cleveland Advertiser. The spelling was promptly adopted by the public.