Notes from my Knapsack 1-18-18

Notes from my Knapsack 1-18-18

Jeff Gill

 

Statues on a bridge

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Just before the new bridge in downtown Newark was finished, I was heading back to Granville down Mt. Vernon Road, south towards the city and ready to veer right towards home.

 

The deck had been laid down, and the pillars were now built up; it was earlier in the fall, and a mist was coming up with sunset.

 

Those pillars were striking, arrayed five on each side of the now wider and more pedestrian friendly passage from Newark's heart to the north side, above the Ohio Rt. 16 expressway beneath.

 

I've not been there, but from evocative pictures I've seen I was reminded, in a funny way, of the Charles Bridge in Prague, capital of the Czech Republic, across the Vltava River. It's on my own personal bucket list to see and walk across, not the least because of the grand statuary that lines the sides of this historic 15^th century structure.

 

The Charles Bridge has 30 statues, most from around the year 1700 and memorializing figures who are today mostly unknown, even to Europeans. But for our bridge at the center, so to speak, of Licking County, if we didn't have the lightposts that are now there, how would I complete that initial eventide imaginary vision? With ten pillars just right for figures in bronze, who would belong there?

 

Here's my list – it will never be so, but I enjoyed thinking about what historical personages from Licking County's legendary past I'd immortalize. Your list may vary, and that's fine! Tell me by email who your ten might be. Mine, in rough chronological order:

 

1. Mary Harris , the "Whitewoman" of Coshocton fame aka "Wakatomica," but likely the first European to see these creeks and valleys. Born at the end of the 1600s, kidnapped in the Deerfield raid of 1704, and matriarch of a Native American family when 2. Christopher Gist came through in 1750, the first to leave a written record specifically mentioning landmarks in Licking County. 3. Rev. David Jones, whose missionary tour of the Ohio Country in 1773 was in part to get him away from angry British Loyalists; he wrote of his passage through our region (Jones' narrative was in Thomas Jefferson's library at Monticello), and commended many of our first settlers to come here in 1802 and 1803, returning to preach in 1807 for local Baptists and others.

 

4. Jonathan Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, passed through our area again and again in the first decades of the 1800s, likely slept in what's now the basement tavern of the Buxton Inn, and is buried in Fort Wayne, Indiana even though the bulk of his career was spent between Granville and Newark up to the Mansfield area and back again.

 

5. Fr. Jean-Baptiste Lamy, missionary priest was active in Licking & Knox Counties in the tumultuous 1840s, and was tapped for his good work here to become Bishop of New Mexico, himself already in bronze in the heart of Santa Fe. Ohio claims eight presidents to tie us with Virginia, but actually we can lay claim to a ninth, 6. Edward Roye, born along Mt. Vernon Road just north of this bridge we're discussing. He was seventh president of Liberia, but hey, he became a president after starting out here!

 

Can I tell you my other four honorees next time? Thank you!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; give him your list of ten persons worth making into statues for our land of legend at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.