a compendium of facts about Ohio history
by Dan Chabek
Cleaveland's Cleveland
The general was born at Canterbury, Conn., in 1754. He was the second son of Colonel Aaron Cleaveland and his wife Thankful.
Their surname, of Saxon origin, was derived from the physical features of an estate in Yorkshire, England, that the family owned since before the Norman Conquest.
The land was marked by deep crevices called "clefts" or "cleves" by the Saxons. It was variously written as Cleffland, Cliffland, Cleiveland, Cleveland and Cleaveland.
The general preferred Cleaveland, and this was the original way our city's name was spelled.
While there are numerous accounts of how the appellation became changed, there is one story that occurs most frequently. It claims that an early newspaper, the Cleaveland Advertiser, was not quite large enough to accommodate the name in an identifying banner headline on Page One. Thus, the editor dropped the first "a" and the readers subsequently accepted the new spelling.
Moses Cleaveland
Pageant of America Vol.
2 The Lure of the Frontier, Stanley Thomas Williams, Yale University Press
(1928)
General Moses Cleaveland statue on Public Square in downtown Cleveland, Ohio
Teaching Cleveland: a bicentennial education project
Moses Cleaveland article from the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History