Notes from my Knapsack 8-3-23

Notes from my Knapsack 8-3-23
Jeff Gill

250 years ago, across our landscape
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There's work going on towards the year 2026.

I don't know about you, but that still looks odd to me. 2026 has a science fictiony sound to it, right up there with the year 2525, but here we are.

2026 is not just three years from now, it's 250 years after the Declaration of Independence. The words drafted by Thomas Jefferson, edited by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, further amended and then adopted by the Second Continental Congress, brought our nation into being 250 years before 2026, in 1776.

Some of us recall vividly the many and various celebrations we had in 1976, the Bicentennial. In Newark, Ohio, we have a strong reminder of the Centennial of American Independence, any time we drive around Courthouse Square, and see the huge 1876 on each face of the building.

By way of preparation, though, for our America 250-Ohio events, or the "semiquincentennial" if you like the technical terminology, I thought it worth lifting up that our 250th anniversary commemorations begin in 2023, at least for Licking County.

While we have good solid data to show Native Americans have lived here in these valleys and hills for some 12,000 years (Burning Tree mastodon, Munson Springs, etc.), recorded history as in written records begins about 250 years ago for Licking County. We were peeled off of Fairfield County in 1808, true, but the earliest written accounts of these creeks and rivers and trails come to us indirectly by way of Christopher Gist in 1751, some 272 years ago. Gist passes quickly through here, and in his journal it's unclear where he's camped for a night, and which path he took from Coshocton to Lancaster, broadly speaking.

But in 1773, which is 250 years ago, Rev. David Jones rode through, on Feb. 10th & 11th, spending the night near to the heart of today's Licking County, possibly in the vicinity of the Ohio State Newark campus.

Of great interest in his publication, which was famous enough once published to be in Thomas Jefferson's library at Monticello, is the small detail that when Rev. Jones and his party came to a "middle ground" village along "Salt Lick Creek" where both European Americans and Native people lived in a trading post village, the female chief of a Shawnee band arranged that "her negro quarter was evacuated this night, which had a fire in the middle without any chimney." An asterisk at this point notes "This woman has several negroes who were taken from Virginia in time of last war, and now esteemed as her property," the "last war" being the French & Indian War of the 1750s.

After praising the chief and her hospitality, Jones goes on to note "The country here appeared calculated for health, fertile and beautiful." Then he leaves Licking County as we know it, on the way to Coshocton.

250 years ago, women were in leadership, and people of color lived here; in fact, the language of 1773 suggests they were "esteemed" as slaves, but not necessarily treated as such. It was a complicated place, Licking County was.

Which is why we turn to history, 250 years later. We learn things about our present in that light.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he is constantly surprised by history. Tell him where you've seen today differently because of yesterday at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.