Notes from my Knapsack 4-20-23

Notes from my Knapsack 4-20-23
Jeff Gill

Reconsidering the past in a complex present
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Of all the characters in Licking County history who are important to me, though we've never met, Warren K. Moorehead is near the top of the list.

I've had the honor and pleasure of actually impersonating Chaplain David Jones and William Gavit in marking bicentennial events for the state of Ohio and Centenary United Methodist Church in Granville, but Moorehead is someone whose life I've gotten to inhabit in a variety of less dramatic ways. Born in 1866, died in 1939, he's a living presence for me in this area. His mother died when he was very young; her father Joseph Warren King was a benefactor of Shepardson College, building King Hall in 1891 which was recently renovated for its continued service to now Denison University.

Warren King Moorehead started at Denison in 1886 but never completed a degree; he spent too much time exploring the countryside and engaging in "antiquarian activities" — the term archaeology had barely come into usage at this time. The dropout later received an honorary doctorate from Denison in 1930, by which time he was called "the dean of American archaeology."

My primary point of access to the more everyday fellow has been his voluminous collection of papers resident in the Ohio History Connection (OHC) archives, including diaries. Moorehead, especially the younger Warren, was writing very much for a future audience. It can be bracing to turn a yellowed sheet of paper and continue a sentence as he writes in 1901 about "some future reader of these pages" and how he hopes they will understand his circumstances. That plea has stuck with me.

One challenge for anyone involved in contemporary archaeology looking back at him is that he was a pioneer, but as a pathbreaker, he broke quite a bit along the way. His methods, especially in his early years, were atrocious; his ethics about collecting and selling artifacts were not at all what would be tolerated today. I've defended him in other settings with the point, easily established in the archives, that his boards and supervisors as he served as the first curator for the then Ohio Archaeological & Historical Society (OAHS), and first professor of archaeology for The Ohio State University, told him to sell the duplicate artifacts he found to fund his budgets. The 1890s were a "wild west" in many ways, in Ohio as well as beyond the Mississippi.

What I find compelling about Moorehead's story, though, is how he learned and grew. He was a plunderer and pillager in his digging, by any standards then or now, but he was also a preservationist. His work is a primary reason Fort Ancient became our first state park in 1891, and he was a key figure in the beginning of the work of the OAHS, now OHC, as it opened its first museum in what's now Orton Hall on the OSU campus. His methods improved over the years.

His approach to Native American antiquities and human remains was, frankly, horrible in his youth; he also was present at Wounded Knee in 1890, just 26 years old, and in the years after witnessing that slaughter he became such an advocate of Native American rights & justice he was forced off a federal panel defending tribal sovereignty in 1933, a 67 year old threat to entrenched interests.

Warren K. Moorehead learned & grew; a hundred years later, so can we.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's also a long-time volunteer for the OHC around Licking County. Tell him how you've learned and grown in understanding the past at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 4-14-23

Faith Works 4-14-23
Jeff Gill

When I Died, and After
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Thirty years ago, I died. Not quite, but near enough.

I was heading back to the church I was serving from the campus, and crossing 21st St. was hit by someone running a red light, screened from my sight by a stopped car in the nearer lane.

The driver got out of their equally wrecked car holding onto the dashboard cigarette lighter, which told me all I needed to know about how it had happened.

It was what they call a t-bone, with the other car hitting me square on the front right tire. The officers and ambulance crew responding told me that mitigated the effects of the accident: a half-second earlier, hitting the corners, both might well have flipped up and over, while a half-second later might have bent my car in half to the breaking point around the other's engine block, which could have driven on through and into my lap.

Neither happened: the other car hit my tire and axle square, and the vehicles bounced a bit, mine rolling into the grass on through, the other slewing sideways into the now completely blocked intersection.

I had, on impact, surged forward behind my seat belt into the roof where it met the windshield, cutting my forehead but my skull didn't quite impact anything, something it took a while for the paramedics to feel certain of as they swabbed my blood out of my face. But it was just a small cut; the seat belt, indeed, saved my life, no question of it.

The other driver had to have had their seat belt on, but as I mentioned, got out with the round dashboard lighter in hand, also relatively unscathed. They also walked over to where I had literally crawled out of my car and shouted at me standing overhead "you hit my car! you hit my car!"

Then that other driver walked up to the officer who had shown up in mere moments and asked "can I get into my car (which was in the middle of the intersection) and get my cigarettes?" He said "no" and walked over to me.

Still shouting "he hit my car, it was his fault" the officer knelt next to me, and asked if I was alright. I said, tentatively, "no, not really, but I don't think anything is broken." He leaned over, and said "there's no way you hit them, sheet metal doesn't lie." Then he went back and started directing traffic as the ambulance pulled up.

I've remembered that ever since. "Sheet metal doesn't lie." People do, but there are facts and evidence and stories more reliable than the ones we tell ourselves. I did not die, not in the impact, and not after. My whole body ached for a few days, but that was it.

Back at home, I watched the tragedy in Waco play out in a semi-daze, both the unreality of the scene and story in Texas, and also my own situation. What had just happened to me? I nearly died, and in seconds someone was standing over me screaming patent falsehoods for the world to hear. I was upset about the latter immediately; it had taken a few hours for me to internalize the former, more significant event.

Archbishop Cranmer's words in the Book of Common Prayer for a burial service are quite relevant to many occasions: "In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord."

We do not live to die, but death is part of life, and remembering that can give our living a sense of proportion and purpose. I think about that every time I drive through that intersection…very cautiously.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he always wears his seat belt, and you should, too. Tell him how you've learned lessons at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.