chyard to Rev. Anthony Stoddard,
to which General Sherman had contributed. We heard of no one of
our name in Woodbury, but when General Sherman saw an old sign,
"Sherman's Tannery," he said that he believed he had at last found
some tangible evidence of the residence of our fathers in Woodbury;
that Sherman had been a good honest tanner no doubt, and that was
the most that could be said of any one.

As I have said, my grandfather, Taylor Sherman, and his wife,
Elizabeth Stoddard, moved from Woodbury to Norwalk, where he
practiced his profession as a lawyer. He attained a good position
as such, and for many years he was a Judge of Probate. He became
early associated with the proprietors of the half million acres of
land lying in the western part of the Western Reserve in Ohio,
called "Sufferers' Land."

In the period immediately before and after the adoption of the
constitution several of the states laid claim to western lands,
founded upon grants by James I, the chief of which were the claims
of Virginia to the region north and west of the Ohio River, and
the claim of Connecticut to all the land lying west of Pennsylvania
to the South Seas and north of the 41st parallel of latitude.
These claims were finally compromised by Congress granting to
Virginia all the land lying between the Scioto and the Miami Rivers
in Ohio, and to Connecticut the land in Ohio north of the 41st
parallel, extending westward of Pennsylvania one hundred and twenty
miles.

During the Revolutionary War the coasts of Connecticut had been
subjected to several raids by the British and Tories, and several
towns, including Norwalk, Greenwich, Fairfield, Danbury, New Haven
and New London, had been burned. Indemnity had been proposed, but
the state was in no condition to pay such losses.

In the year 1800, the State of Connecticut granted to her citizens,
who were sufferers by fire during the Revolutionary War, a half
million acres of land, lying within the State of Ohio, which was
to be taken off the west part of what was called the "Western
Connecticut Reserve," now embraced in the counties of Huron and
Erie. By an act of the legislature of the State of Ohio, passed
in 1803, the sufferers were incorporated under the name of "The
proprietors of the half million acres of land, lying south of Lake
Erie, called 'Sufferers' Land.'" The affairs of this company, by
that act, were to be managed by a Board of Directors which, among
other things, wa