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The Early Years
 About one million years ago when the climate began to cool, ice sheets formed. The Illinois and Wisconsin glaciers, often a mile thick, covered the Huron County area carrying rocks from Canada and the Adirondacks, limestone and other foreign materials which they mixed and crushed as the ice sheets moved southward and then retreated. The scouring action of the glaciers rounded the hills and filled in the valleys with rich composite soil or till. The till in Wakeman is 15 to 40 feet deep. When the Wisconsin glacier receded it left a new land behind. It had created some of the most productive land in the country, which greatly influenced the settlement and economic development of this area.
It is believed that human beings first appeared in this area about 10,000 years ago. Mounds found in Huron County are thought to belong to Erie or Whittlesey Culture Indians. In 1654, tribes of Ohio Indians who had been living here for six hundred years were exterminated or dispersed by the Iroquois Confederacy. It was about 1750, just before the white man entered Ohio, that the Wyandots, Ottawas, Delawares, Senecas, and Chippewas returned to Ohio territory. Despite various claims of Europeans to Ohio land, these Indians regarded it as theirs.
The French claimed this area by right of exploration. The English claimed it by right of charter. Kind James I issued a charter for a Connecticut colony in 1662. Its western boundary was the Pacific Ocean. When the English won the land as a result of the French and Indian war, Ohio territory was open for settlement. But British land policy failed to keep peace with the Indians. For a while the Ohio Territory was part of Quebec.
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With the American victory in the Revolution, Washington negotiated several treaties between the United States Government and separate Indian tribes. The treaties failed. Washington, seeing how explosive the situation was, had Anthony Wayne training an army in Ohio territory while he negotiated with the Indians. Problems with the Indians intensified until the war of 1812.
Meanwhile, there were other claims to Ohio Territory. New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Virginia finally ceded their claims when Maryland refused to sign the Articles of Confederation, forming a new nation, unless all western lands were given to the United States and the new states formed in the west would be admitted on equal terms with the original thirteen states.
Connecticut reserved a region 120 miles west of Pennsylvania
which became the Western Reserve. In 1792 one half million acres at the
western end of the Reserve was granted to citizens of Connecticut whoes
property had been burned or destroyed by the British in the Revolution.
Few of the original "sufferers" settled on the Firelands because it was
many years before the land was ready. In 1805 the Indians ceded their
title to the land. The survey began in 1806. Huron County was authorized
in 1809 but not organized until 1815 because the War of 1812 intervened.
In 1816 Burton Canfield, Bennett French, Joel Crane, Waite Downs and others in Southebury, Connecticut formed a company bought from Jesup Wakeman, Isaac Bronson and Ebenezer Jesup, Jr. forty eight hundred acres at two dollars an acre. Included was the nearly 16,500 acres of Wakeman Township. They agreed to furnish one settler a year for each of the thirty sections. Actually the land was occupied long before the thirty years was up.
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The oldest frame house in the township was built by Justin Sherman in 1828. It is now the home of Betsy and Bob Murdock and is owned by Canfield Farms, Inc. Canfield Farms is operated by C. C. Canfield IV and Robert Murdock. Betsy Canfield Murdock and C. C. Canfield IV represent the sixth generation of Canfields in Wakeman.
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