Faith Works 7-8-06 (7-15 is part two, just below - keep scrolling!)
Jeff Gill

A Summer Puzzle

With the warm weather and outdoor activities, there are always folks who like a good crossword, sudoku, or word search in their comfy chair.
In that spirit, Faith Works offers a little quiz for y’all to mull over . . .
1) What is the oldest church building in Licking County?
2) What is the oldest church building still used for worship in these parts?
3) What is the oldest continuously worshiping congregation in the county?
4) Who was the first Christian missionary to this area, and under which denomination?
5) What was the first Christian observance in Licking County?
6) Where, and in what year was the first European child born in the county?
7) And what about the first wedding in the modern legal sense?
8)What is the earliest official cemetery in Licking County?
So, let’s give you some time to think about those questions. Not too many would know these down to the detail, but most would have a vague, general idea. If you’ll bear with me through the end of this week’s and next week’s column on the "Your Faith" page, I hope your general ideas will expand a bit.
Even if you don’t remember the specifics, but hey, it is the summertime. No test at the end, I promise.
OK, so here go the answers, with a few "tricks" I trust you’ll forgive. Errors of fact are the responsibility of the columnist, and are not the views of the management here at the Advocate!
1) What is the oldest church building in Licking County?
The correct answer, as best as I can confirm, is the Snider Muffler Shop on First Street, just south of Main Street in Newark.
Huh?
No, really; drive by sometime, a block before you reach "The Works," and look up past the Monroe Muffler banners. You’ll see a tower, and picked out in black against the cream paint over the aged brick is the year "1834," which is when Trinity Episcopal Church built the structure.
There are a number of other buildings which claim to be rebuilt on foundation stones going back farther, but I’m not aware of an older intact building made for worship . . . other than the Newark Earthworks, but we’ll leave their 2,000 year old purposes for other consideration. The lack of written records means Native faith and practice will get the standard qualifiers against their claims of "first European," et cetera.
2) You could kinda tell by the previous question that there was some kind of trick here. Not long after Trinity built the brick building now within Snider Muffler in 1834, the "Stone Pile" Church of Christ was built out on Brushy Run Road in southeastern Licking County, towards Flint Ridge. 1837 was when the work appears to begin, with worship regularly from 1838 forward. The congregation has ebbed and waned, but was given a new lease on life and a new roof by the Central Church of Christ (now Central Christian on Mt. Vernon Rd.) back 75 years ago, and there has been not only consistent worship but additions and improvements ever since.
Old Stone Church of Christ is still together on Sunday mornings in the 1837 building, and I’d have to say they have the oldest arrangement in the county.
If I am wrong about either 1) or 2), I would be absolutely delighted to hear about it!
3) What is the oldest continuously worshiping congregation in the county? Here’s where this exercise gets really tricky. First Presbyterian Church in Newark has a clear line right back to 1808, and is often called the "oldest," with the qualifier that First Presbyterian Church of Granville has met on their corner since 1805, but started as Congregational, switching under Rev. Jacob Little thirty some years later.
Licking Baptist Church in Union Township can trace their roots to 1803, and Welsh Hills Baptist to 1801 (sort of), but the congregations lapsed, sometimes more than once, over the last two centuries. Should this disqualify their claim the primacy? It certainly makes them non-continuous.
And White Chapel Methodist southeast of Heath on (yep) White Chapel Road could claim heritage to 1802 or 3, but their continuity is in some question as well.
Which brings us to: 4) Who was the first Christian missionary to this area, and under which denomination?
Actually, Chaplain David Jones, a Baptist preacher from Freehold, New Jersey, passed through and made notes just before the American Revolution, in 1773, and I’m having some fun looking for more details of his story.
But Parson Jones, who returned a number of times to visit Welsh Baptists who may well have come here on his recommendation, didn’t come with the intention to preach here. He came through largely by accident, heading back east with a guide who, um, wasn’t. Much of a guide, that is. More on Jones some other day. . .
We do know for a fact that brothers Asa and Levi Shinn, of a western Virginia settlement now called Shinnston WV, came as Methodist circuit riders to the Hog Run valley (aka White Chapel Road in Licking Township) specifically to preach the Gospel and save souls, starting a congregation if they could. By 1803, they were well known to the few earliest European settlers of all faiths in what was not yet Licking County.
5) through 8) comes next week!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; correct him (with verification!) at disciple@voyager.net.


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Faith Works 7-15-06
Jeff Gill

Finishing the Quiz

Last week, I threw you eight Licking County faith community trivia questions. You only got four answers, so before I provide the last four, here are the questions again:
5) What was the first Christian observance in Licking County?
6) Where, and in what year was the first European child born in the county?
7) And what about the first wedding in the modern legal sense?
8) What is the earliest official cemetery in Licking County?
Of course, there is room for interpretation on most of these questions (is the oldest church just one still used, on the original site, without interruption, etc.), and 5) certainly counts.
Levi and Asa Shinn held worship services in settler cabins around 1800 and 1801, and Chaplain Jones returned to the area and preached for Welsh Baptists as the Granville Company settlers arrived in 1805, but Christopher Gist beats them all on a technicality. He wrote in his journal that his party of explorers celebrated Christmas just north of the Great Buffalo Swamp in 1750, heading for the Scioto valley.
The first service held in a building built for the purpose was a near tie between Presbyterians of Newark and Granville in and after 1805, using log structures built for both worship and school purposes.
6) We think we know the answer to this one, but as birth records were sketchy even when the so-called literate pioneers came in, noting that we disqualify at least 12,000 years of birthin’ babies to Native Americans due to lack of written records.
At the north end of Granville’s Galway Drive, just above the intersection of Cherry Valley Road and Newark-Granville Road, Lily Jones had a baby in 1802; she also died shortly after, and her husband John buried her there on the homestead, moving away with child (whose name is not known) and abandoning the cabin. The Jones property, later the Munson farm, was where the last night’s campsite was established before arriving in newly surveyed Granville 201 years ago. She was moved to their (Old) Colony Burying Ground as one of the first laid to rest there (or re-laid) after 1805.
7) is totally a trick question: the infrequence of resident or itinerant clergy, or even judges riding circuit in early pioneer days meant that the first weddings were often long after the first children, if they bothered at all by that point. It isn’t that folks didn’t want to get married – weddings were about all the celebration anyone got between 1800 and 1820 in these parts – but they had to be practical.
I’ve never read about broom-jumping or other folk customs as was common in the upper Ohio or Monongahela valleys before 1812, but I have trouble believing there wasn’t some Licking County equivalent. Common law marriage was simple expediency in those days.
8) Cemeteries, on the other hand, required a certain amount of community consensus. You couldn’t just plant Auntie Esmerelda anywhere, although that would have happened early enough, usually leading to a crop of marble (or local limestone & sandstone) springing up around her for a family cemetery. Many of these still adorn bends in country roads and nearby hilltops today, but often frustratingly illegible and unrecorded elsewhere.
What we do know is that the early 1803 settlers in Newark began just west of Fourth Street with a cemetery, many of whom were relocated to Sixth Street by 1814, when the first recorded graves were noted there. Some, but by no means all, were moved northeast to Cedar Hill when the city of Newark founded their third cemetery in 1850.
The Old Colony Burying Ground of Granville is usually called the oldest, with records beginning in 1805, but three may have started earlier: the Beard-Green family plot on the scenic drive through now Dawes Arboretum (not the Dawes monument and graves in the north drive, but the southern cemetery with the historic marker) may have interments going back to 1803 or earlier, and likewise the White Chapel Cemetery just north and Licking Baptist Cemetery to the west (off Beaver Run Road) are likely to contain burials from that same year.
On west, and a bit south along Refugee Road is Luray Cemetery, with some very old but illegible inscriptions. Hebron and Fairmount Cemeteries are quite historic in their own ways, but date to after 1830 and the National Road.
Fairmount also contains what archaeologists call an Adena period mound, which is a burial type, dating to as far back as 500 BC, so you might just want to count the mound, not the more "modern" cemetery as the oldest! Native American practices meant that a family or association didn’t spread out, as our cemeteries do today, but with cremation and a new interment layer the usual method, they rose up, looking over the landscape with a perspective built on their ancestors.
Literally.
And I hope this little quiz helped you get some perspective on our faith traditions in Licking County.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; send him a tombstone inscription or two through disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 7-9-06 (see below for 7-16, a related column)
Jeff Gill

When Our Children Come Home

Along with camps and sports clinics and county fairs, kids are packing up in some households for college. Classes may not begin for weeks, but freshmen days on campus or early orientation or even "fall" sports get going in just the next few weeks.
These can be bittersweet days, all the more as most young people who travel away for higher education tend to stay away, returning for visits but very rarely moving home to work and live.
The Lovely Wife and I lived in West Virginia for six years, and were struck by how much political campaigning was focused on "bring our children home." Lines like "vote for me and we’ll keep our kids and grandkids here," or "my opponent has turned a blind eye to thousands of our young people moving out of state" were standard fare. No one was against this, it was more a question of who could make the better case for how their plans and policies would allow everyone’s descendents to stay near the home place, and not the other guy.
Meanwhile, the more this was the rhetoric, the reality just increased that college grads left the state, in ever larger numbers.
Then we moved back into Ohio, and what do you know: we’ve started hearing candidates slide references into ads like "and I’ll help keep our children working and living in Ohio."
Surely this is a fine idea that no one can argue with, but my fear is that as in West Virginia, and with so many other political footballs, we’ll hear the most ranting and raving about the stuff elected officials can’t do anything about, and little discussion of what they can affect.
Ohio has started competing with West Virginia in the rate of college graduates who move out of state, and by some measures we’re beating them in this category (keep in mind that they’ve already seen huge losses in years past, so we’re just catching up). Central Ohio is doing better than most of the rest of the Buckeye State, but population losses in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron, and Dayton, along with rural Ohio, more than overwhelm our local vitality.
How realistic is the "keep our kids here" logic? Scott Russell Sanders, who spoke to freshmen at Denison last fall, spoke eloquently about the easy assumptions we have around the links between mobility and education and professional advancement. He encouraged students to think about finding a place to live and putting down roots there, even if it meant a certain loss of potential prestige, status, advancement, or even (gasp) income.
Sketching the social costs of rootlessness and vagrant culture, tracing them through non-sustainable practices and cultural amnesia, Sanders made (and makes) a strong case for why your life is better with roots. Meanwhile, American society does, in fact, presuppose that a person or a couple will move many times, across multiple states, until they reach some level of economic stability where they will then buy a vacation home in yet another locale.
For myself, I feel wistful about the place I still think of as home, and faintly envious of high school classmates who still live and work where we were students together. They take their kids to the camps we attended, picnic in the parks I explored as a kid, and go to church where we grew up.
And there’s a different sense of the same jealousy for those around me now who are marching in the same parade with their kids that they marched in as children, or are running events they watched their parents manage years ago.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; send your thoughts about community to disciple@voyager.net.

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Notes From My Knapsack 7-16-06
Jeff Gill

Send the Candidates To School

Last week I talked about two categories of people I know, those back in my hometown (in another state) who take their kids to the same camps we attended, picnic in the parks I explored as a kid, and go to church where we all grew up; I do envy them bit.
And there’s a different sense of the same jealousy for those around me now who are marching in the same parade with their kids that they marched in as children, or are running events they watched their parents manage years ago.
But there are actually very few people for me to feel that way about. I know maybe a half-dozen people who left either spot for college and ended back home to raise their families. Two back in my hometown are actually able to be there in large part because they don’t have any kids, and are free to do what they want, which for them happens to be back in northwest Indiana.
Licking County is a great place to raise a family, but the professional options for supporting a household can be limited.
Wait, you say, aren’t there lots of interesting, challenging, and even well paid jobs in central Ohio? Exactly: in Franklin, Delaware, and other surrounding counties. Beyond hourly wage jobs, many local residents are pursuing opportunities down the road (roads like the new 16/161). This means a family that stays in Licking, but whose wage-earners are spending ten and more hours per week in their car, time they don’t spend as youth group leaders or tutors or board members in Licking County.
Last I heard, out-of-county workplace directed giving to our United Way was pushing past 25%. That’s good news of a sort, but an indication of problems to come, as the landscape of volunteerism and local involvement shifts seismically.
Many local civic leaders are asking "what can be done to increase the number and type of jobs here in Licking County?" This isn’t an anti-bedroom community issue, so much as a very real concern about balance and wholeness in how to be a sustainable bedroom community.
And our children are still likely to advance themselves by moving away, for schooling and for after. Easy answers aren’t going to be real solutions from anyone running for office, but everyone can share the goal of creating a state where more people want to live, and can.
Development is getting to be dirty word in Licking County. We still have to make decisions on things like whether to support our growing schools with property or income taxes, zoning and stormwater management, the question isn’t yes or no, but good or bad.
Maybe even "good or bad" is a less useful distinction than productive and sustainable versus short term and short sighted. Education out of state is getting more attractive, and picking up your bachelor’s degree out of state greatly magnifies the likelihood you’ll not return.
Even recipients of Ohio higher ed degrees are moving away, but that’s not a reason to cut state post-secondary budgets. We need the economic energy of research and technology that comes from colleges and universities, because that’s where new jobs are born. We also want to lure capital for investment in Ohio businesses, and those dollars tend to follow campuses and the educated work force found around them.
6,000 plus students (a bit over 2,000 each) are pursuing post-high education in Licking County, at OSU-N, COTC, and Denison. Around 12,000 kids are in high school right now ‘round here, watching to see where their future is heading. I hope the campaigning going into this fall has some clear proposals for what candidates intend for our most vital economic infrastructure.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; send your community news bulletins to disciple@voyager.net.