A small company of Connecticut people under Moses Cleaveland founded Cleveland in 17 9 6 and Youngstown was begun a few years later, but that portion of the state made very slow progress until after the opening of the Ohio & Erie Canal in 1832.
In the Public Square is a soldiers' and sailors' monument consisting of a granite shaft rising from a memorial room to a height of 125 ft., and surmounted with a figure of Liberty; in the same park, also, is a bronze statue of Moses Cleaveland, the founder of the city.
A trading post was established at the mouth of the Cuyahoga river as early as 1786, but the place was not permanently settled until 1796, when it was laid out as a town by Moses Cleaveland (1754-1806), who was then acting as the agent of the Connecticut Land Company, which in the year before had purchased from the state of Connecticut a large portion of the Western Reserve.