Licking County CVB
Visitor’s Guide 2011

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150 Years of Echoes and Remembrance – the Civil War and Licking County [1042 words]


Just as the American Civil War left its mark on the United States, you can find traces of that vast conflict all across the landscape of Licking County.

No battles between armies were fought on our soil, but there were many significant encounters that took place in our neck of the woods, leading to those distant battlefields.

Some of the key leaders grew up here, like Generals William Rosecrans and Charles Griffin, both of whom have Ohio Historical Markers in this county. Little Johnny Clem has a statue of his very own, growing up in Newark and at not-quite 10 years of age, ran off to begin a career as “the Drummer Boy of Chickamauga” – a historic journey that only ended in 1916 with his retirement as a Major General, the last Civil War soldier on active duty.

The Newark Earthworks’ Great Circle, just beyond the doors of the CVB’s visitor’s center off OH Route 79 in Heath, was Camp John Sherman in 1862. This 2,000 year old monumental enclosure was put to work as a training encampment for the 76th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, one of the state’s most decorated regiments on the Western Theater of the Civil War.

Standing in the Grand Gateway there, while looking across this immense creation by the hands of Native Americans so long ago, you can also recall that some 900 young men spent weeks learning the arts of war inside the Great Circle. They marched out, down to the railroad, and through Cincinnati onto riverboats, and on to the banks of the Mississippi – when their fighting ended three years later, more than half of them were casualties of war, and only some 350 of them returned to this spot after being mustered out at war’s end.

But it was also here in 1878 that one of the largest reunions of Civil War veterans was held, thousands crowding into the area to listen to Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, and William Tecumseh Sherman, reflecting on the sacrifices made and the work still to be done in making freedom a reality for all citizens.

A frightening but memorable moment came when the speaker’s platform collapsed, the dignitaries jumping clear of the wreckage as many were injured, and one man died. Gen. Sherman noted later that “one drunken carpenter” almost succeeded in killing him, where hundreds of thousands of Confederate sharpshooters had failed!

You can find an even quieter point of connection with those returned veterans in Newark’s Cedar Hill Cemetery, where the Grand Army of the Republic, or GAR section stands near one gate with a watchful cannon and row upon row of headstones.

Elsewhere on the grounds are the markers for many other veterans of the Civil War who survived the conflict, and whose stories continued on into the next century, but never forgot the years from 1861 to 1865. Corporal Leonidas Inscho is buried not far away, recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery in an action immediately preceding the battle of Antietam, pressing through a Confederate strongpoint on South Mountain, Maryland. He went on to be promoted into the officer corps, and served in the GAR after the war.

John Shellenberger also received the Medal of Honor as a corporal, and is buried in the Welsh Hills Cemetery near Granville. His peaceful grave is exemplary of many such markers found in almost every community of Licking County, where the full story of heroism and sacrifice takes a little effort on our part to stand near, and look, and learn.

Nearly 5,000 young men (and likely a few hardy, unsung women in the nursing corps) answered the call of duty from Licking County during the Civil War. This number was estimated at the time as over 80% of all able bodied men; when 37,000 was the total population of the county, of which barely 5,000 were in Newark itself. It was said at the Civil War’s close that soldiers of Licking County had served everywhere “from the Potomac to the Rio Grande.” At least 600 of those veterans died in service, and the vast majority of them are buried back here near their homes.

In many county seats across the Midwest, a tall central monument near the courthouse honors the local veterans of the Civil War. You won’t find one of those in Licking County. The returned soldiers and sailors, so active in civic affairs, let alone their GAR chapters, asked that they be honored not just with a piece of stone, no matter how grand, but in a way that served the public good. It was for that reason, and at their request, that the county erected, just off of Courthouse Square, the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Auditorium.

Don’t go looking for it now (it stood where the Licking County Foundations’ office building sits, behind a cheerful fountain plaza dotted with sculpture). After years of productive use, and a few fires and floods, the building had to be torn down. But on the front of the building were two statues, of a Civil War era soldier, and a sailor.

When the building’s façade came down, a cry went up, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars stepped forward. If you head up Union Street from the Great Circle Visitors Center, and turn east on Forry Avenue, just a little ways on to your right is today’s VFW post. In their front yard is an eternal flame, and flanking it, now joined by a World War I doughboy, are those two statues, but now at ground level where you can almost look them eye to eye.

The sailor, attentive perhaps to Admiral Farragut in the rigging at Mobile Bay; the soldier, his cartridge box and canteen slung beneath his knapsack and blanket roll, all three looking out at the passing traffic as if to ask “Will you remember?”

In this 150th anniversary year, the Licking County Convention and Visitors Bureau is proud to partner with local museums and many county historical societies in supporting
www.escapetolickingcounty.com/civilwar
Here you can find listings of programs and speakers and activities throughout 2011 and beyond, including a Civil War encampment at the Great Circle where so many of these stories come together.

In Licking County, we remember!


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Celebrate the Davis–Shai House’s 150 years! [457 words]


150 years ago, Jackson Davis built a beautiful rural farmhouse along the Ohio & Erie Canal.

This Gothic Revival brick home was long a landmark for first canal boats, then for horse drawn carts along the towpath up from the Licking Summit reservoir (now Buckeye Lake), then for cars zipping through the 20th century, back from the drive-in theater south of Heath.

By 1995, the house was hemmed in by multiple lanes of traffic and increased demand for retail along Route 79. It looked as if another historic gem would be lost in the dustbin of history.

What happened instead was a remarkable public private partnership, where the Shai family and the City of Heath worked together to preserve and relocate this wonderful building. One bright spring morning in 1996 it began heading due west of its former site, over a mile away to a new home at 301 Central Parkway.

Re-established on literally a more solid foundation, the Davis-Shai House became a meeting place and activity hub for the Heath community that had long looked for a shared center point. Volunteers began to plan events, to raise funds for further enhancement and renewal of the building, so soon their Victorian Christmas Open Houses, Valentine’s Day teas, and other history-themed luncheons led to the formation of the Heath Community Arts Council, which manages the facility and co-ordinates fundraising.

Their most recent success was made both necessary and possible by the amazing growth of interest in their programs: a major expansion just concluded, dedicated in 2010 with an elevator, new meeting rooms, and a tripling of both their kitchen and banqueting space.

The Fairview Room can seat up to 140, and along with additional smaller rooms and fully accessible restrooms, the possibilities are nearly endless. Modern amenities, up to and including the latest communications technology, warmly co-exists with a classic structure that honors local history and heritage.

Heath’s official “historic landmark” structure, so congenial within, has also been beautified without by an unprecedented public effort – most of the landscaping recently installed came about as the result of a special grant, earned through an internet campaign where local residents showed their support of the Davis-Shai House in sufficient numbers to earn an additional $250,000. This internet campaign finished out the dreams of the council members in a way that was beyond their imagining just a few years ago – let alone what Jackson Davis might have imagined in 1861!

At their website www.davisshaihouse.com the Heath Community Arts Council maintains a schedule of upcoming events and programs, both daytime and evening activities, planned for both children and senior groups – see the schedule for details. They also welcome community groups or businesses interested in using the facility for their meetings, by arrangement.


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A Vineyard In the Countryside [525 words]


You wind along the township road, curving back and forth with a rhythm that can only be explained by a history that begins long before automobiles and engines were the rule.

Another wooded bend, and a bright flag bearing a glass of wine flutters next to a vast stone, carved to reassure you that, yes, you’ve found “The Winery at Otter Creek.”

Crunching off the asphalt, you enter the surrounding woods, and the track arches up to cross on wooden beams a watercourse you can only assume is Otter Creek itself (and it is).

Over the stream, and on to a fork where the hillside between the two roads is lined, row by row up above you, with vines curling and straining as if to catch the best of the sunlight coming down. You’re barely minutes away from almost any spot in Licking County or Columbus, but you can already feel yourself slowing down, and your thoughts going to Tuscany or Provence or some sunny hillside you’ve always imagined: but you’re right here in Licking County.

Jeff Chrisman, one of the four owners and vintners here**, has a family tie to the land; his grandmother grew up here. As he talks about the journey back to this place, and what barn gave up which piece of wormy chestnut that now makes a glowingly beautiful countertop, you can feel the connections. The doors of the tasting room, the beams overhead, all bring some history into this building that the owners themselves erected just a few years ago.

Outside, there’s a different sort of connection in the planters by the walk; they’re 185 gallon cypress wine vats, picked up from what was once Willow Hill Winery where now is Columbus International Airport. After long service at that historic Ohio winery, they still are part of wine making here at Otter Creek.

There’s something about wine that lends itself to that kind of intertwined reality, when the seasons and the sunlight and the process of crushing and fermentation put the essence of a year now past into a glass in your hand. Out on the patios behind the tasting room, overlooking a pond central to the different slopes of grapevine all about, you feel a connection to the land yourself as you sip, and think about which of their varieties you’ll take home.

The Traminette and Catawba wines are very popular**, but whether for tasting samplers for enjoying the atmosphere on site sip by sip, or to buy a case to take home, all ten varieties are quite popular.

They make all the wine they sell at The Winery at Otter Creek; most of the grapes are grown there, as well, except for the chardonnay and cabernet varieties that don’t find Ohio winters all that welcoming. “I’m just trying to make wine in central Ohio,” says Jeff modestly, but the Chrisman and Evans families are making something more, here by the banks of Otter Creek in Licking County.

For hours and special events, including musical entertainment, check their website at www.thewineryatottercreek.com - try not to get lost in the pictures. Go on out and see it for yourself!