Church at Heart of Chuckery

From the Columbus Dispatch

by JoAnne Viviano

Drive about 7 miles west of the Plain City Shell station, where motorists can buy “Got Jesus?” bumper stickers along with their Subway sandwiches, and you’ll pass a green-and-white road sign announcing the community of Chuckery.

It’s a mere crossroads in the midst of Darby Plains farmland, but a church there has helped its residents preserve an identity that calls to mind images of covered bridges, one-room schoolhouses and picnic lunches.

The community centered at Rts. 161 and 38 along the Union-Madison county line dates to at least the 1820s, according to Rebekah Headings, who maintains a Chuckery website and blog. She said Chuckery is more alive than ever, with a thriving St. Paul Lutheran Church and School and farmers who are proud of their “black gold” of fertile soil along Little Darby Creek.

“I like to think of our farm as our modern-day Little House on the Prairie,” she said. Headings’ husband, Dennis, is the president of the St. Paul congregation, and two of his great-grandfathers were among its founders.

The 500-member church celebrated the 120th anniversary of its school in the spring with a service that drew nearly 300 people and was followed by the graduation of seven seventh- and eighth-grade students.

The school was built as a one-room schoolhouse by German settlers in 1892. The church was formed the following year, and a separate church building was built in 1902. The current school building was dedicated in 1953, and the current church building in 1964.

According to folklore, the town got its name from the holes that woodchucks burrowed along the roads. It once was the site of a Methodist church, a general store, a post office and a high school.

Chuckery had 36 residents in 1930, according to the U.S. census, and is now listed by the U.S. Geological Survey as an unincorporated “populated place” with no census designation. The church is now part of Darby Township, where 2,060 people lived in 2010.

“There’s actually only about two families that live actually in Chuckery,” said native Art Loschky, 93.

Loschky was baptized in St. Paul church and attended its school. His parents and older sisters spoke German, but he never learned it. After World War I, Germans “were not too well liked,” he said, and the congregation voted to stop teaching the language when the state fire marshal visited to discuss a rumor that someone planned to burn down the church. A German service was offered monthly until the late 1940s.

Mrs. Headings said the “little country school” won’t offer eighth grade this fall, because of budget concerns, but its five classrooms will teach about 55 children through grade seven. Her husband attended the school — about 10 kids were in his class — and their 3-year-old daughter starts preschool there this fall.

Although Mrs. Headings is not a native, her work helps keep the community on the map. She puts her fondness for it this way: “I am not Chuckery-born, and I was not Chuckery-raised. But I am Chuckery-married. And when I die, I plan to be Chuckery-buried.”

Those who make the place home have fought to keep the green roadside sign from coming down, and those who leave for college and careers often return to raise families, Mrs. Headings said.

“I guess it is just the way the community has always been,” she said. “There is something special about being able to call Chuckery home.”