Notes From My Knapsack -- Granville Sentinel

Jeff Gill

 

Twelve Years Old In Granville – 1841

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Jane knew that her mother didn't want her near any crowds, not after the last year.

 

Even adults here in Granville had been pulling pranks and doing tricks on each other, since the huge rallies for Tippecanoe and Old Kinderhook, Harrison and Van Buren, had so riled up all the Whigs and Democrats.

 

Horses lost their tails, and well-aged eggs flew when crowds pushed close, protecting the names of people who would never want to be seen clearly doing such mischief. It had gotten so bad, when the Whigs announced their nomination of the Hero of Tippecanoe for the presidency, that young women had to fear for getting jostled and bumped on the street, even if only by accident.

 

But last fall Jane had climbed out onto the roof of the buttery that extended from the house below her bedroom window, and swung down the branches of the maple tree out back, so she could walk up Bowery and down to a vantage point where she could see the Grand Illumination: all of Broadway and most of the streets adjoining were lit with candles in every window. Trundling along, pulled by cheering young men of the Literary and Theological Institution, were carts with broad sheets of parchment nailed to staves along the outer edges, and a row of oil lamps inside projecting profiles and puppets in sharp black outline onto the warm brown panels.

 

Every window was lit, except in a few houses known to support the Sage of Kinderhook, president for the last four years. Some of those houses lost panes to thrown hickory nuts, to the general disapproval of all but the most political in the village.

 

Now Mr. Harrison had been elected, had died after a month, and Mr. Tyler was sworn in, of whom it was now realized: he came from Virginia. The slavery question flared all the brighter, as both sides suspected the other of ill-dealing, and no one asked the slaves what they thought.

 

The Atwell house had never seen a slave, but people from the South would occasionally pass through with their African servants, exciting no little discussion. What had Jane sneaking out the back fence and down Pearl to Elm Street and over was a loud discussion in the Academy building, one you could hear blocks away.

 

Crossing the Lancaster Road, she saw the crowd of men in profile, like the illumination, inside against the windows, and a larger crowd outside, the boys clambering up on the sides of a sea of wagons nearby, trying to see in.

 

Then suddenly, there was a stir throughout the crowd, a silence within that spread without, and then dimly, from inside, a loud voice calling "There'll be no shackles here! Make way for Liberty."

 

In silhouette she saw a man being lifted up and passed over the heads of the crowd inside, a few hands reaching for him and being beaten back. Then the actual person, a black man, came feet first out the top of the door, and was gently set on the ground.

 

Mr. Hillyer she knew, and he pushed through the crowd at the door leading two horses; he leapt on one after helping the African fellow onto the other, and together they galloped up to the Broadway crossing, disappearing to the west beyond Sugar Loaf.

 

She was glad she had snuck out again, but marveled at what she had seen; heading home, it occurred to her that she couldn't, this time, ask her mother to explain it all.

 

 

(This is the fourth of a series of stories, each called "Twelve Years Old in Granville." Some will be based in fact, as with the slave John, who escaped after a habeas corpus hearing in the Old Academy Building in 1841; others will require a bit more creative guesswork and imagining. I hope you find them all informative and intriguing.)

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.