William Gavit -- 468 word version

William Gavit is justly remembered as one of the founding settlers of the village of Granville, riding one of the first three wagons into the central square in November of 1805, part of the advance party that led the group from Granville, Massachusetts, where the summer before he signed onto the association for the Licking Land Company.

He was not a member of the Congregationalist church that was so central to much of the early organization of the colony, but paradoxically that made him an ideal neutral party, tapped to help divide lots and allocate them in December of 1805, to lay out where the major roads would go in 1806, and to select where church and school lots would go in 1807. In the coming years he would serve as postmaster, state senator, and justice of the peace, elected to the last office so often he was known to the end of his 88 years as “Chief Justice Gavit.”

A freethinker, he was entrusted with trying to find a religious answer for a resident with a drinking problem, and taking the inebriated Capt. Butler to a Methodist revivial, found himself converted; with his wife Sarah and their twelve children (ten living to adulthood), they helped found in 1810 what is now known as Centenary United Methodist Church.

Obviously, this man was a recognized leader from the very outset among a group of strongwilled pioneering men and women; the scene with a hard drinking sea captain gives a hint of where these qualities came from. Late in life, two years after his wife Sarah had died, with two sons in the Methodist ministry, Gavit recorded his career in the American Revolution for an application for pension, a document which one historian noted “reads like a romance of the sea.”

It was as a fatherless fifteen year old that Gavit joined a privateering vessel that sailed to make war on the larger and more experienced British fleet, sailing out of New London, CT not far from his birthplace of Westerly, RI. He served on sloops and schooners, fighting brigs and warships of the Royal Navy; capturing and burning a number of British ships in the waters off Long Island, he was captured, exchanged, and captured again, imprisoned in the notorious “prison ships” opposite Manhattan, where a monument still stands to the over 10,000 deaths in captivity of American prisoners: over twice the total deaths in battle for the entire Revolution.

Gavit, at seventeen, led one of the few recorded escapes from the “Jersey” prison hulk . . . and signed up again to sail through the end of the war. In 1785 he married Sarah, and in 1788 he moved to Granville, Massachusetts, having had enough of the sea, but with a career in leadership still bright before him.

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William Gavit -- 548 word version

William Gavit made an application for pension to the United States government in 1844 from his home in Granville, based on his service in the American Revolution, which a later DAR archivist said “reads like a romance of the sea.”

Born in Westerly, Rhode Island, his father died when he was young, and at fifteen was given permission to join a privateer, a “private armed ship” out of New London, Connecticut where his mother had moved on her remarriage.

A youthful sailor on the 16 gun brig “Favorite,” accompanying the brig “Fair American,” they successfully took one British ship, but were rapidly surprised by the “Medea,” a frigate of 36 guns. Gavit and the other crew were put in irons below deck, and carried off to Wallabout Bay, the site (now the Brooklyn Navy Yard) of Great Britain’s notorious prison ships, including the deadly disease infested “Jersey,” where all accounts agree that more than 8,000 American prisoners died in confinement, twice as many deaths as in all land battles of the Revolution combined.

A prisoner exchange simply meant that Gavit soon joined the sloop “Randolph,” and later joined a relative’s schooner, the “Degrasse,” helping capture and burn British vessels around Long Island; the crew was victorious in a number of engagements until once again captured by the Royal Navy and returned to the “Jersey.” Knowing the dangers in staying in confinement, he wasted no time in organizing five of his fellows and making one of the few known escapes from the prison hulks.

This seventeen year old was one of only two who made their way back to New London, yet Gavit signed up with the brig “Martin” and helped carry the battle to the enemy through the end of the war. Having seen enough of the sea by then, Gavit married Sarah Babcock of Groton, CT two years later; in 1788 they moved to Granville, MA. They had twelve children, of which two died young, not long after the family made up one of the first wagons rolling into Granville, OH on November 12, 1805.

William Gavit signed the original Licking Land Company agreement, was one of three asked to divide up the lots in December, laid out the original roads the next year, founded the first Methodist “class meeting” in Granville in 1810, helped to start the village school system, was postmaster, state senator, and called “Chief Justice Gavit” until his death in 1854 at 88, for being so often voted by his fellow citizens justice of the peace.

[Intriguingly, one of the two sons who died young, laid to rest in the Old Colony Burying Ground where William and Sarah long after were interred, had the middle name of “Denison.” The Denison family, whose son William made the pledge that saved Granville College in 1853, came from exactly midway between Westerly, RI & New London, CT, where William S. was born before their move west – were they related in some way? Could the respect Gavit had among his fellows have extended directly to the elderly farmer a day’s ride east, whose name is still on the college?]

Oh, and that application to the government for a pension? It was denied, “to the shame and discredit of an American Congress,” in the words of the archivist.