Notes from my Knapsack 6-6-19

Notes from my Knapsack 6-6-19

Jeff Gill

 

Crops in the village

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Granville's recorded history, to me, begins with Jesse Munson clambering down out of a wagon and tasting the soil when asked what he thinks about the place.

 

This was the night before the legendary race of ox-drawn wagons across Clear Run into what's now the center of the village, and the chopping down of a tree with a sermon from the stump.

 

That was November 17, 1805, but it was a mile or so east, near where today's Cherry Valley Road runs into Newark-Granville Road. The so-called Nash cabin property was where John and Lilly Jones had attempted a homestead in 1802, and where she died giving birth to a child, sending John and the older children back towards the Ohio River. It was around that abandoned (twice over, it seems) cabin that the first group of "The Licking Company" pioneers made their last temporary camp, and where grandfather Jesse tasted the dirt and declared it fit for farming.

 

The Munson family bought that whole stretch of land, now mostly the Erinwood housing development. Just east of where the Munson farmhouse once stood (a major part of it now built into the Welsh Hills School complex, rolled east in a creative act of preservation years ago), the 1810 House stood in what's just a patch of woodland opposite Fackler's Garden Center on the historic intersection. Across the road under a shade tree was Licking County's first legal existence in 1808 as a county Common Pleas Court session.

 

But behind the Munson place and the 1810 lot was good farmland, as Jesse had declared, ranging from the Raccoon Creek bottomlands north to the edge of the Welsh Hills, a long ribbon of good soil and well-watered bluffs. It was ploughed and planted in the spring of 1806 by the Munsons, as much as they could turn, more each year.

 

Today, it's mostly homes, the Great Lawn before the Bryn Du Mansion, and a lone patch which just got plowed and planted. Which made me happy.

 

I'm a realist, and I know the piece of surviving farmland here in the village was eyed for a new elementary school at one point, a new intermediate school later, and most recently for a commercial development. The work went into the parcel enough to clear trees up the Welsh Hills slope above it, and the farmer wasn't given the lease to plant in 2018. But the plans hit snags, as development often does; now we see dramatic work on the downhill side of the road to Newark further east, up Ashley Hill. And the 1810 House parcel, adjoining and historically blending into the Jones-Munson parcel, will be built on at some point in the near future, I'm sure.

 

But it is the longest continuously farmed piece of land in the township that we can say that for certain of. Up in the Welsh settlement there may be a garden patch that's had seed planted for a year or two longer, but for actual regular farming, this is a special place. And it made me smile to drive by and see one more crop planted on that hallowed if not quite holy ground.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's interested in the landscape of this whole Land of Legend we call home. Tell him about a crop that caught your eye at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.