Notes From My Knapsack 10-7-10

Jeff Gill

 

Twelve Years Old In Granville – 1809

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His father's funeral was a solemn affair, with mother and two sisters weeping nearby. The Rose brothers offered to dig the grave for the Averys, which was a blessing, but the nine year old son insisted on helping.

 

He was a strong boy, big for his age, and he'd have to be mature beyond his years to figure out how to support the four of them now.

 

That all began in 1806, and now at twelve he and his father's axe had been contracted to clear a parcel of land out on the edge of the village, one tree at a time.

 

Mother feared that he had gotten the job out of pity, and Alfred wryly asked what difference that made if he could do the work and got the pay from it?

 

The landowner had stopped him on Broadway and asked if he would do it, "could he" not really being the question after two winters' worth of firewood chopping since father's death. The pay would see them through another winter, and a bit more besides which could go towards buying some goods from the East, to sell here in the wilds of the Northwest as it still was, statehood or no.

 

They'd met out east of town to organize this area as a county last year, holding the first court sessions under a tree. It still stood, but many trees had fallen to build Licking County in the last year, and Alfred was ready to do his part.

 

He'd been ready to do his part to help father, as well as mother and his sisters, when he was just eight and they'd all left Granville, Massachusetts to come here alongside Raccoon Creek. They were more from the Connecticut side of the border, with many well-to-do family members still in that state, but father felt that his chances for success were greater out on the frontier, than in the more crowded bucket full of frogs back in New England. Father felt that out here, a man might stand out, without being overshadowed by any other man standing nearby.

 

Father had fought bravely in the Revolution under General Wayne, helping carry the day during the night attack on Stony Point, the battle that saved West Point (no thanks to Benedict Arnold). He had survived much, but his sudden death not a year after they came to Ohio left all his dreams of security and wealth in the hands of his son, along with an axe.

 

Walking out beyond the edge of the village, Alfred came to where two rough-cut stakes were placed along the road, a ragged bit of calico fluttering on the ends. Between these stakes, and a hundred and fifty paces straight back from the road, he was to cut down, segment, split, and quarter every tree, piling the cords where the owner's wagon could trundle by and pick them up on the way back into town from Newark.

 

Could he do it? Alfred Avery thought so. He spat on his hands, took up a firm grip on his axe (his father's axe), and walked up to the first tree. Then he swung.

 

(This is the first of a series of stories, each called "Twelve Years Old in Granville." Some will be based in fact, as in the earliest days of Alfred Avery, builder of the Avery-Downer House in 1842, and 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.