Notes from my Knapsack 8-8-24

Notes from my Knapsack 8-8-24

Jeff Gill

An awkward phrase, a hidden history

___


During the Fourth of July Street Fair (and hurrah to Granville Kiwanis for another wonderful week of community fun) I took a break from the heat and sat on the side porch of the Granville Historical Society, thinking about wording.

I recently shared some of my research around Patrick Cunningham, a shadowy figure if in bold strokes found in Granville's and Licking County's earliest written history.

He has generally been relegated to a secondary, if poignant role around the Jones family as pioneer settlers here who . . . okay, and this is where wording gets awkward. They are called "the first White family" in Granville Township, and while John and Lillie Jones came here in 1801 with two daughters and a son, their fourth child, named for Lillie's father Jonathan Benjamin Jones, was born Oct. 1, 1802 and is called the "first White child born" in the area as well.

Sadly, Lillie dies just a few weeks later, and with Patrick Cunningham's help, John buries his wife and takes the four children back to the Marietta area, where later he would remarry and live out his life, most of the children growing up to move to Illinois. Neighbor Cunningham is notable as I've already explained for re-locating Lillie's remains not once but twice in deference to her family's wishes.

The third burial site, in Granville's Old Colony Burying Ground, makes her the earliest death but not the first burial there, given her circuitous route from Newark-Granville Road to downtown old Newark and back to Granville after those settlers came in 1805. And the marker on her third grave is in fact the second one there; we don't know what rude monument was placed at her first burial site, and there's a chance the older Granville marker was placed on her brief resting place in Newark, then traveled with her remains to her current location. Whatever the earlier story, sometime after coming to Granville, in the very late 1800s, her marker was stolen. The granite tombstone today was placed in 1935, but using the recorded inscription from the older monument . . . which turned up later, and is now on the side porch of the village museum.

You can dimly trace along the bottom those words, uncomfortable to read today: "This is the 1st White family that ever inhabited Granville Tp." There's an overtone to that choice of words which makes today's reader uneasy.

Yet there's two pieces of information I would pull out of that uncomfortable phrase. There is a certain seeking after pre-eminence in that "1st" (as the older stone has it, "First" in the 1935 replacement), but in saying "1st White" family or birth, there's an implicit acknowledgement that there were people, families, and births here before 1801. It was unambiguously understood that Native Americans, "Red Men" in the racist term of the times, had been here, built, thrived, loved, and died. Until 1830 settler accounts would talk of "Indian visitors" passing through on a regular basis. So the monumentalists knew there were previous inhabitants, hence the queasy precision of "1st White family."

And that second qualifier: if they were the first "family," that makes me wonder. In fact, re-reading the earliest accounts, you can get the impression that 50 year old widower Patrick Cunningham in his solitary cabin was here . . . first. Had built up the slope, a little closer to the spring, and was present to welcome the Jones family, perhaps helping them to build their cabin about 20 rods, or 110 yards further south at the foot of the hill.

I wonder.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's finding Patrick Cunningham a fascinating if elusive quarry. Tell him what keeps you looking for more information at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.