Faith Works 7-3-2026

Faith Works 7-3-2026
Jeff Gill

A patriot lost, and found
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Tomorrow is the day we’ve all been anticipating. July the Fourth, in this semi-quincentennial year, looking back from our America 250 celebrations to the 1776 origin of these United States.

Today, there is an event in Granville, two blocks away from the festive street fair, at the historic Old Colony Burying Ground. It’s called "Meet the Patriots."  The Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) have worked, with Tom Hankinson recruiting eleven members of local SAR chapters to re-enact some of the 23 Revolutionary veterans buried in that place. Five of them will "come to life,” along with their wives who are themselves members of three Daughters of the American Revolution chapters.

If you’re reading this Saturday morning, you have time: the event takes place from 2:00 to 4:30 p.m., with other activities and patriotic trinkets for children. They even have a rain date to Sunday, July 5 if necessary.

As they were planning, a question came up that got passed along to me. It was an inquiry about a Revolutionary War soldier, then a pioneer to Granville shortly after 1805, who died in 1844 and is one of the 23 being honored. His name was Stephen Mead.  As it was said to me: “The pickins are really scant for Stephen Mead!”

The Granville Historical Society could confirm that his wife was Dorothy Sacket, they married in Rutland, Vermont in 1780, and they had eight children, seemingly all there (which would fit the years and age of both). Beyond that, nothing.  His headstone in the Old Colony Burying Ground is of later government issue, with the military's scant details; he would have had a previous marker, but Charles Webster Bryant’s records didn't have any text for him, indicating that his stone must already have been missing by 1885.

Mead is, in a small scale, a big mystery. Bushnell’s history of Granville, rich with detail from the perspective of 1889, notes his widow’s death, but not Stephen’s. In the book, 1849 notes a number of Meads are among the score or more who head to California in search of gold that year, and at the end of the entry Bushnell lists the death of "Mrs. Dorothy S. Mead, June 23d, aged eighty-eight.”

The entry for 1844 doesn’t mention him at all. The necrology for that year states "There were twenty-five deaths this year; among them…” then goes on to describe five individuals, a minister and the “President of Granville College” as it was then. The absence of a Stephen Mead isn't problematic given the twenty unnamed, but it hints that his public profile was minimal. But his wife five years later is mentioned on her passing!

As I said to Lyn Boone, “History is such a keyhole into the vast courtyards of the past…” There is a Henry Mead who marries into the Munson family, so central to our founding narratives of 1805, and Augustine Munson married Polly Mead, but to connect them to Stephen is, so far, impossible.

What is intriguing to me is how much of a cipher he is, other than his Revolutionary War service. He comes to Granville early on, and there are other Mead family members who give us hints of connection, but no detail beyond the one key fact: he served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War. Without that service, we might not remember him at all, and he could have been another of the empty plots where we know there is a burial, but nothing more.

That general lack of information actually says something, though. It makes me think he was a farmer; the village tradesmen get most of the mentions in the historical record, since they leave more of a mark as clock makers and grocers and blacksmiths.

We may yet learn more about Stephen Mead. That doesn’t need to stop us from remembering him, and being thankful for the service he gave, that helped get us to where we are today, at America 250.

We salute you, Stephen: rest in peace.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he loves a good historical mystery. Tell him what you’ve learned this July at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 6-26-2026

Faith Works 6-26-2026
Jeff Gill

It’s new to you, this country is
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If I tried to get you to buy a washing machine that was fifty years old, or a car that was a hundred, you’d assume we’re talking about antiques, and you’d be curious about the value.

When I explain my offer was for a working Whirlpool, or a running Duesenberg for everyday use, you would be puzzled. Worse yet, a dress or suit that’s two hundred years old? That should be in a museum, maybe, but not to wear.

Let me offer you the United States of America. It will turn two hundred and fifty years old at the end of next week, and I’d say it’s in running condition. Engine knock? Needs some body work, a little polishing here and there, missing a taillight? Perhaps. But it’s a going proposition.

You would not be the first owner. In truth, Thomas Jefferson or Richard Henry Lee or George Washington could claim that honor; John Hancock,  Samuel Huntington, or Thomas McKean would have had their name on the title (we have a township named for McKean in this county, you know).

As a vehicle of governance, the United States of America is well used, but as the sales folk like to say, “It’s new to you!” The service record is known, and previous mechanics and operators have not always kept up the maintenance as we wish, and in fact it’s coming with some liens on the title, money still owed by previous owners. Encumbered is a word you can use here, I suppose. Getting behind the wheel of the U.S.A. at 250 carries a certain measure of risk, but what’s the alternative? Walk? Ride a bike? There’s no other transportation heading where we’re going.

In my personal faith, I follow a person and example and practices with roots going back 2,000 years; my particular religious tradition looks to 1801 as a key turning point, a kind of birth (there’s 1804 and 1809 which you could call the origin story, I teach a class on this in fact), and we have a 225th birthday celebration down in Kentucky in August. In religion, age is a kind of endorsement, and few think it odd I attend a church that’s got that kind of mileage, or that I preach for a congregation over a century from its origin.

America 250 has evoked some interesting pushback, though. History is a contested thing, and as a historian, I’d first say thus it always has been. Is the battle over who controls our national historical narrative particularly contentious right now? I’m not sure. What I am certain of is that we have good reason to read and reflect and ruminate on our two centuries and a half right now, and I’m happy to be part of all that in this semi-quincentennial year.

We have a particular reason to celebrate this Fourth of July. As I only dimly realized during the Bicentennial summer of 1976, our national experiment in democracy and popular sovereignty is unique among the nations. Other countries have picked up the challenge first laid down by Jefferson and the Second Continental Congress, but nations like Italy or Germany or even France? They are much younger than we are. You could look it up. By 1848 they were still sorting things out; in 1914 and 1939 it was still being tested.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

56 words we’re behind the wheel of, moving forward in them for 250 years. They are a vessel, a vehicle, for human self-understanding, in which we also reflect on how our Creator is working within us as we roll along.

I’ll take it!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s enjoying this year immensely. Tell him what you’ve gotten out of America 250 at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.