Ethan Bancroft
1779-1814

Bryant Number: 811
Type of Memorial: Marble with sandstone base
Stonecarver: Unknown

Inscription:

ETHAN BANCROFT
BORN AT
GRANVILLE MASS.
SEPT. 26, 1779
ARRIVED IN LICKING CO. 1805
WAS A MEMBER OF THE
VOLUNTEER COMPANY OF
GRANVILLE OHIO 1812
DIED
MAY 14, 1814
______________
ERECTED BY THE
GRAND CHILDREN OF HIS
SON LYMAN

Commentary: An original settler of Granville, 26-year-old Ethan Bancroft was a member of the second advance party to migrate to the new Granville in Ohio, leaving Massachusetts on May 20 of 1805 and arriving on July 5. This early group was charged with the strategic goal of building a grist and saw mill in advance of the arrival of larger family groups in the fall. Bancroft, a master carpenter, was an important member of the crew by virtue of his woodworking skills. The aspiration to establish a working mill quickly, however, was foiled by a ruinous flood at their selected site, which was near what is now Denison Drive, south of Newark-Granville Road. The work in progress was destroyed, as was a second attempt shortly thereafter. The eventual establishment of a mill in Granville would take the pioneers a frustratingly lengthy time to achieve.

As farmlands were allocated in the new settlement, Ethan Bancroft and his wife Lucy selected a highly desirable tract to the east of town, located on both sides of what is now the Newark-Granville Road. According to Theresa Overholser’s account in Beneath This Sod: A Walk Through Granville’s Old Colony Burying Ground, this beautiful farm was graced by springs, a creek, and terrain suitable for fields, orchard, and pasture. The Bancrofts’ potentially idyllic life there was marred, however, by tragedy: First, their one-day-old infant, born in April of 1806, became the first burial in Granville’s newly-established burying ground. The location of the child’s grave is now lost. Then eight years later in 1814, Ethan himself was killed at the age of only 34 when he was thrown and kicked by an unruly colt as he tried to ride it home from the fields.

Ethan’s headstone in the Old Colony, shown here, was preceded by another now-lost grave marker that bore a scantier text, which was recorded by Charles Webster Bryant in 1886. The replacement headstone, provided by Ethan and Lucy’s great-grandchildren, was probably placed around the turn of the 20th century.

Find a Grave link: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/19647669/ethan-bancroft