Notes from my Knapsack 4-30-2026
Jeff Gill
Revolutionary figures, pioneering personalities
___
For all sorts of reasons, the nationwide America 250 observance is focused on Revolutionary War history. 250 years ago was 1776, and it’s our nation’s formal “birthday” of July 4 of that year which gives us the cause for celebration; that leads us pretty directly into the conflict with Great Britain, which started with shots fired on Concord Bridge in April of 1775 and did not end until the Surrender at Yorktown on Oct. 19, 1781.
Ohio has some investment in the Revolutionary War, if much less than the original Thirteen Colonies. Towards the end of the hostilities in 1780, George Rogers Clark fought the Battle of Piqua against Black Hoof and a contingent of Shawnee and other Native American tribal warriors, just west of Springfield.
Not long before, between 1778 and 1779 Fort Laurens was built and then abandoned, northeast of us towards Canton; the losses there are still marked by a "Tomb of the Unknown Patriot of the American Revolution.” Non-combatant Native Americans died in even larger numbers by the Gnadenhutten massacre of 1782, around a hundred women and children and old men buried in a mound still memorialized in that village today.
But Licking County between 1775 and 1783, when the official peace was signed in Paris, has little or no recorded history. What we have are dozens of Revolutionary War veterans who brought history with them after 1799, as they came and settled this formerly Shawnee and Wyandot and Delaware land.
Of the some 7,000 Revolutionary War veterans buried in Ohio, over 140 have been tracked and recorded here in Licking County. Doug Stout with the Licking County Library has been diligent in this work for many years, and the Sons of the American Revolution along with the Daughters of the American Revolution have been hard at work in recent times to ensure good, readable memorials at or near our veterans’ last resting places. Some are in outlying and less well tended cemeteries, and no small number are in well known burying grounds, like the Old Colony in Granville, with a new monument just erected to list them all, or in Newark’s Veterans Park on Sixth Street.
The three Revolutionary War narratives I associate most with Granville are Patrick Cunningham, Jonathan Benjamin, and William Gavit. They arrived here in roughly that order, Cunningham and Benjamin before the 1805 settlement of the village, and Gavit with those first Granville Land Company pioneers.
I’ve written previously about all three, and there’s a book in each of them. Cunningham, born in Ireland in 1750, served with Pennsylvania troops and by 1800 had outlived two wives, raised children to adulthood, and was an unusual solo pioneer. Cunningham would soon move to fast growing Newark, married again, finally dying and buried outside of Hebron in 1832.
Benjamin would live to 1841, just six weeks shy of his 103rd birthday, outliving almost his entire family and laid to rest in the Old Colony Burying Ground by his grandchildren. A young soldier in the French and Indian War, losing close family in the ongoing battles on the Pennsylvania frontier with British allied Native American raiding parties, he went on to serve as a sergeant in the Pennsylvania troops during the Revolution. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, both Cunningham and Benjamin are likely to have encountered Rev. David Jones during the war at Valley Forge, who directed many after the conflict ended to the valleys around the Licking River.
William Gavit was a young sailor engaged in naval action against the British during the latter years of the Revolution, and so was one of the last living veterans of the Revolution in our area, dying in 1854 at the age of 87. He was captured twice by the Royal Navy, and escaped twice from the infamous prison ship “Jersey,” where thousands died in captivity.
That may have something to do with why this seafaring youth from Rhode Island moves inland after war’s end, comes twenty years later to Ohio, and never seems to miss the sea.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he likes to wander cemeteries for education and enjoyment. Tell him where you get your history at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
Jeff Gill
Revolutionary figures, pioneering personalities
___
For all sorts of reasons, the nationwide America 250 observance is focused on Revolutionary War history. 250 years ago was 1776, and it’s our nation’s formal “birthday” of July 4 of that year which gives us the cause for celebration; that leads us pretty directly into the conflict with Great Britain, which started with shots fired on Concord Bridge in April of 1775 and did not end until the Surrender at Yorktown on Oct. 19, 1781.
Ohio has some investment in the Revolutionary War, if much less than the original Thirteen Colonies. Towards the end of the hostilities in 1780, George Rogers Clark fought the Battle of Piqua against Black Hoof and a contingent of Shawnee and other Native American tribal warriors, just west of Springfield.
Not long before, between 1778 and 1779 Fort Laurens was built and then abandoned, northeast of us towards Canton; the losses there are still marked by a "Tomb of the Unknown Patriot of the American Revolution.” Non-combatant Native Americans died in even larger numbers by the Gnadenhutten massacre of 1782, around a hundred women and children and old men buried in a mound still memorialized in that village today.
But Licking County between 1775 and 1783, when the official peace was signed in Paris, has little or no recorded history. What we have are dozens of Revolutionary War veterans who brought history with them after 1799, as they came and settled this formerly Shawnee and Wyandot and Delaware land.
Of the some 7,000 Revolutionary War veterans buried in Ohio, over 140 have been tracked and recorded here in Licking County. Doug Stout with the Licking County Library has been diligent in this work for many years, and the Sons of the American Revolution along with the Daughters of the American Revolution have been hard at work in recent times to ensure good, readable memorials at or near our veterans’ last resting places. Some are in outlying and less well tended cemeteries, and no small number are in well known burying grounds, like the Old Colony in Granville, with a new monument just erected to list them all, or in Newark’s Veterans Park on Sixth Street.
The three Revolutionary War narratives I associate most with Granville are Patrick Cunningham, Jonathan Benjamin, and William Gavit. They arrived here in roughly that order, Cunningham and Benjamin before the 1805 settlement of the village, and Gavit with those first Granville Land Company pioneers.
I’ve written previously about all three, and there’s a book in each of them. Cunningham, born in Ireland in 1750, served with Pennsylvania troops and by 1800 had outlived two wives, raised children to adulthood, and was an unusual solo pioneer. Cunningham would soon move to fast growing Newark, married again, finally dying and buried outside of Hebron in 1832.
Benjamin would live to 1841, just six weeks shy of his 103rd birthday, outliving almost his entire family and laid to rest in the Old Colony Burying Ground by his grandchildren. A young soldier in the French and Indian War, losing close family in the ongoing battles on the Pennsylvania frontier with British allied Native American raiding parties, he went on to serve as a sergeant in the Pennsylvania troops during the Revolution. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, both Cunningham and Benjamin are likely to have encountered Rev. David Jones during the war at Valley Forge, who directed many after the conflict ended to the valleys around the Licking River.
William Gavit was a young sailor engaged in naval action against the British during the latter years of the Revolution, and so was one of the last living veterans of the Revolution in our area, dying in 1854 at the age of 87. He was captured twice by the Royal Navy, and escaped twice from the infamous prison ship “Jersey,” where thousands died in captivity.
That may have something to do with why this seafaring youth from Rhode Island moves inland after war’s end, comes twenty years later to Ohio, and never seems to miss the sea.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he likes to wander cemeteries for education and enjoyment. Tell him where you get your history at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
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