Girls' College, Granville, Ohio. other one for "the Seport of a School," and a spring, which was long famous in the community, was reserved for public use. These several actions, providing as they did for the church, the school, the graveyard, the park and the spring, are really characteristics of the quality of citizenship which has marked the people of this new Granville for the beginning. One find in them the spirit of the New Englander, determined to build for the future under the ideas dominant in that glorious ordinance under which the whole Northeast Territory was to become a place of homes for a free people. The same thing is illustrated in a vote taken a month or two later, when a committee was ordered "to receive subscriptions for the encouragement of a library and to draw up in form a constitution for the said Library Co." Books were purchased and circulated throughout the community for a number of years. It is to be regretted that the interest did not develop sufficiently for the permanent establishment of a library of sufficient vitality to last until the present time. Like similar efforts in later years, this organization disappeared although in the case of a later library company the charter of the society was strained sufficiently to allow it to be used for banking purposes in the days of the "wild-cat currency."       In May of 1806 a committee was appointed to ask for the incorporation of the community into an election district of Fairfield County. Nothing, however, seems to have been done until late in the fall of the same year, when another committee was chosen to take measures to have the township organized. The necessary order from the County Court was obtained; and on the first day of January 1807, Granville township was set apart as one of the divisions of Fairfield County. The only officers chosen seem to have been called magistrates. The judicial functions apparently being the first ones recognized. The company continued to hold meetings, and new members were elected to it from time to time, the settlement remaining a close corporation where each member was received after vote. The first regular election of the township was held in April, 1807, when the following officers were chosen: a clerk, three trustees, two overseer of the poor, two fence-viewers, two house appraisers, one of them being the listor, four supervisors of highways, two constables and a treasurer. The total expenses of the town up to this time seem to have amounted to two dollars. Mention of these first officers suggests a comparison with the organization of the present day. The overseers of the poor no longer appear as distinct officers of the township, the duties being included in those of the trustees. If there is any longer work for the fence-viewers, at least no separate officials are selected for this purpose. The duty of appraising property is now in the hands of a single officer called an assessor, whose work if limited to a comparatively few days of each year.       The last meeting of the company was held in December, 1805. No busi- — page 111 — Beginning Previous Page | Next Page | Granville Page | Hampden County History & Genealogy |