GRANVILLE, a village in Licking county, Ohio, U.S.A., in the township of Granville, about 6 m. W. of Newark and 27 m. E. by N. of Columbus. Pop. of the village (1910) 1394; of the township (1910) 2442. Granville is served by the Toledo & Ohio Central and the Ohio Electric railways, the latter reaching Newark (where it connects with the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis and the Baltimore & Ohio railways), Columbus, Dayton, Zanesville and Springfield. Granville is the seat of Denison University, founded in 1831 by the Ohio Baptist Education Society and opened as a manual labour school, called the Granville Literary and Theological Institution. It was renamed Granville College in 1845, and took its present name in 1854 in honour of William S. Denison of Adamsville, Ohio, who had given $10,000 to the college. The university comprised in 1907–1908 five departments: Granville College (229 students), the collegiate department for men; Shepardson College (246 students, including 82 in the preparatory department), the collegiate department for women, founded as the Young Ladies’ Institute of Granville in 1859, given to the Baptist denomination in 1887 by Dr Daniel Shepardson, its principal and owner, and closely affiliated for scholastic purposes, since 1900, with the university, though legally it is still a distinct institution; Doane Academy (137 students), the preparatory department for boys, established in 1831, named Granville Academy in 1887, and renamed in 1895 in honour of William H. Doane of Cincinnati, who gave to it its building; a conservatory of music (137 students); and a school of art (38 students).
In 1805 the Licking Land Company, organized in the preceding year in Granville, Massachusetts, bought 29,040 acres of land in Ohio, including the site of Granville; the town was laid out, and in the last months of that year settlers from Granville, Mass., began to arrive. By January 1806 the colony numbered 234 persons; the township was incorporated in 1806 and the village was incorporated in 1831. There are several remarkable Indian mounds near Granville, notably one shaped like an alligator.
See Henry Bushnell, History of Granville, Ohio (Columbus, O., 1889).