Revolutionary War patriot Levi Harrod is buried in Union Grove Cemetery

MOUNT VERNON — I was curious about a couple of close-up photos posted by Jason Bennett in the wonderful Memories of Knox County, Ohio group of Facebook.

The pictures showed three different markers on the grave of one Levi Harrod, who was identified as a veteran of the American Revolution.

No further information was given, so I was curious to learn a little more about another one of those revolutionary fighters who ended up moving to Knox County.

The furthest I can trace his roots is through his father, John Harrod (also spelled “Herrod”), who was born in Wales in the British Isles some time in the early 1700s.

John came to the American Colonies in 1734, according to the Draper Papers, that great source of detailed information for the revolutionary period, especially on the frontier.

Harrod settled in Pennsylvania, and though history did not record the name of his wife, we know that they had several children, including a son named Levi, who was born on Jan. 22, 1750, in Bedford County, Pennsylvania.

In Pennsylvania, Levi served in the militia, which led to his involvement in the Revolutionary War. He was officially part of the Washington County, Pennsylvania, Militia, which was then absorbed into the Continental Line.

Whatever the difficulties of war may have been, Levi did not give up the fight, serving many years.

Even in the midst of his absences in war, his family maintained a sizeable farm, recorded by the 1781 tax list as including 300 acres of land, horses, cattle, and sheep.

Records show that Levi enlisted as a private, then rose to the rank of sergeant, before finally being promoted to the rank of lieutenant.

According to genealogical information in Lois Taylor’s 2006 book, Revolutionary War Patriots of Knox County, Ohio (published by Daughters of the American Revolution, Lucy Knox Chapter, Mount Vernon), Harrod served under Capt. Benjamin Stitt, Lt. James Blackburn, and Lt. Elijah Mills.

A census in Pennsylvania records Levi Harrod as living there in August of 1810, yet we also know that he is listed on the 1810 tax list for Knox County, Ohio, compiled by Esther Weygandt Powell in the book Early Ohio Tax Records.

This gives us an unusually precise indication of when Levi Harrod and his family moved to Ohio.

It is likely, however, that this was a move made after Harrod had already achieved great familiarity with the Ohio frontier, for he is also listed as continuing to work in the post-revolutionary period as a frontier ranger.

This suggests that he was involved with scouting and tracking Native American movements in the early frontier period as the state of Ohio was carved out of the new Northwest Territory.

Levi Harrod is specifically listed in the Draper Papers as a guide for something called the “White Woman’s Campaign” in 1790 or 1791. What this is has remained elusive to me.

All the known references to “White Woman” on the Ohio frontier in the 1700s refer to Mary Harris, a white woman who lived with a group of converted Jesuit natives who settled around what it now known as Coshocton (then White Woman’s Town, because of Harris).

She had been captured as a child during a war raid in Massachusetts. Growing up with Mohawk Indians in Canada, she later relocated to central Ohio in the 1740s.

Harris made at least one visit back east during this period to see her elderly mother, but she chose to return to her town in Ohio, where she is last recorded in the 1750s.

In 1764, Col. Henry Bouquet led an expedition to central Ohio in search of Harris or other whites who had been drawn into native tribes.

This expedition is the one most likely to have been referred to as the White Woman Campaign, for as part of Col. Bouquet’s negotiations with tribes to end Chief Pontiac’s War, was for the Indians to return all the white captives they held.

Over 200 were repatriated to the colonies, though a number of them later escaped and returned to the Indians.

Whatever the case, Mary Harris was not among them, having either having died by this time or moved elsewhere.

(As an interesting side note, there is a fascinating ghost story over in Coshocton County that claims that a galloping horse has been heard — but never seen — near Coshocton. Legend has identified it as Col. Bouquet’s ghostly ride.)

If Levi Harrod was involved in this campaign, he would only have been 14 years old.

While that would be a very young age for a guide, it’s not out of the question, considering that, according to the Draper Papers, Levi and his brothers were all over the frontier, heavily involved in all the military and Indian-fighting activities of this period.

I have not been able to identify a 1790 campaign in the region.

Considering that Harrod was so involved throughout the Revolutionary period, this does raise a disturbing question: Was he ever involved in any of the atrocities against natives in this period?

The infamous Gnadenhutten Massacre was led by Major David Williamson, a commander of the very same Washington County, Pennsylvania, militia to which Harrod belonged.

It is known that Williamson’s Indian-fighters were primarily drawn from Washington County, and they were also the rag-tag soldiers who made up Colonel William Crawford’s doomed expedition to Upper Sandusky, which resulted in an unruly rout and Crawford’s execution.

If Levi Harrod was ever part of any of these actions, no paperwork has survived to identify him as such. Rosters survive for 14 of the 16 companies involved in the Crawford Campaign, and Levi Herrod is not shown.

Militia lists do, however, continue to show him in the Pennsylvania militia into the mid 1780s. Quite simply, he may have been deployed elsewhere in 1782.

Levi and his wife Rachel (born Mills) brought many of their children and grandchildren with them to settle in Knox County in 1810. The area where they settled was in the early years of the county considered part of Morgan Township.

But after the reorganization of townships in the 1820s, they were considered part of Pleasant Township.

Levi passed away on his farm on Oct. 2, 1825, and was buried in Union Grove Cemetery, on Grove Church Road.

According to A. Banning Norton’s 1862 A History of Knox County, Levi’s sons Levi, Jr., and Samuel still lived in Knox County, in Clay Township, while son William had moved to Indiana in the late 1840s.

Their mother, Rachel, outlived her husband by nine years, but was buried next to him after her death in 1834.