History: 

Range 10, Township 9 (a small portion of the Western Reserve's three million acres) eventually became the City of Wickliffe, Ohio. Moses Cleaveland, an investor and Director of the Connecticut Land Company, was appointed general agent to personally conduct the surveying of the Western Reserve. His entourage of 51 included surveyors, a physician, an astronomer, a commissary, a boatman, cook, Indian traders, axmen, chainmen, rodmen and two couples who would manage the company store in Conneaut and Cleveland.

The party left Connecticut and journeyed 68 days before sighting the northwest border of Pennsylvania on July 4, 1796. After pitching their tents in Conneaut, they fired a Federal Salute of fifteen rounds plus one, in honor of New Connecticut. Their celebration, with toasts and good cheer, emptied two pails of grog.

Following the establishment of the eastern border of the Western Reserve Territory, the group divided into four and began the westward ordeal of hacking out townships into five-mile squares. The survey was not completed that year because a surveyor mistook the Chagrin River for the Cuyahoga River. This wasted many days of exploring before they finally located the Cuyahoga and completed mapping out the townships east of the river. Range 10, Township 9 was surveyed between August and September 1796.

For its first 100 years, Wickliffe was a precinct in Willoughby Township. In 1916, a petition was filed requesting that Wickliffe be permitted to incorporate as a village. When the election was held on March 27, 1916, a majority of those voting approved the resolution (119 were for incorporation). The Incorporation of the Village of Wickliffe was recorded in Painesville on April 10, 1916. Harry C. Coulby, whose estate was destined to become Wickliffe's City Hall, became the first Mayor. First Council members were Harry Carr, Ben Provo, J. Winn Fuller, Merton A. Kellog, George Tyte, and Grant Donaldson. William Means was Treasurer, and Roy Rush was Clerk.

Wickliffe's first administration building was the old Village Hall located on Euclid Avenue. Through the years, village officials shared these accommodations with the fire and police department organized in 1916. Early residents and wealthy Clevelanders who had established large estates here, wished to retain the country atmosphere, so industrialization was discouraged. Most of the residents of Italian ancestry arrived during the 1900's from Campobasso, Italy. They worked as gardeners on the large estates or on the railroads.