Midwestern Mushroom

THE WESTERN RESERVE (365 pp.)--Har-lan Hafcher--Bobbs-Merrlll ($4).

The Earl of Warwick's fat parcel of New World land known as Connecticut turned out to be fatter than anyone suspected back in 1630. The Earl's Crown charter spoke with magnificent vagueness of a strip 40 leagues wide extending "throughout all the main lands . . . from the western [Atlantic] ocean to the South Seas [the Pacific]. A century and a half later, with a sound respect for geography and the realities of U.S. politics, Connecticut bowed to congressional insistence and ceded her western claims, with one exception. The exception was the Western Reserve, a 120-mile strip bordering Lake Erie.

A band of farsighted Nutmeggers had plans for that territory. For $1,200,000 they bought title to these 3,000,000-plus acres of Ohio land from the state.* Then, in 1796, they sent a survey party, led by burly, action-loving General Moses Cleaveland, into the wilderness to inspect the prize.

Plagued by dysentery and mosquitoes, Cleaveland's men followed the paths their axmen hacked through the oak and hemlock. When food gave out, they broiled rattlesnakes, washed the meat down with rum. At the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, the leader paced off a ten-acre town square in the New England tradition, and set some of his men to work building log-cabin shelters. Result: Cleveland, Ohio--lacking an "a" because the party's mapmaker left it out.

Running a fast eye over the Western Reserve's 150-year history, Author Hatcher traces its mushrooming from a scattering of lonely, mud-bogged farms and white, New England-style towns into today's mill-studded industrial area. There is a sharp parallel between Cleaveland's early settlers and the impoverished mid-igth Century immigrants from Europe who also got a new hold on life in Ohio.

The Western Reserve often bogs down with guidebook-like recitations about individual towns. But it perks up nicely when it dips into yellowing newspapers and diaries for authentic glimpses of life in the Ohio manner.

* Connecticut turned the $1,200,000 into a special fund that still helps the state's schools, and invested some of the money in Ohio mortgages. Last week, by act of the Connecticut legislature, a single remaining acre southwest of Toledo was handed back to Ohio.

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