Cardington

How Cardington began

Cardington grew up where Isaac Bunker settled on the Whetstone River in 1822 and put up a grist-mill, a saw-mill and later a foundry making Jethro Wood plows; Horton Howard's carding machine of 1823 gave the post office, and then the village laid out by Lumas Cook and John Shunk in 1836, its name. The Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis Railway reached it in 1851, it incorporated in 1857, and it became a woolen, furniture and tannery town of 1,365 people by 1880. An oil boom swept the area in the early 1960s, and a tornado on June 13, 1981 wrecked its business district and killed four people. The 2020 census counted 2,051 residents.

Settled 1822 (Isaac Bunker, who built mills at the site), platted 1836, by Lumas Cook and John Shunk, incorporated 1857, by Isaac Bunker (settler), Horton Howard (carding mill, 1823), Lumas Cook and John Shunk (plat).

Where the name comes from

Baskin (1880) says the post office, established about 1826 through the influence of Horton Howard, a Quaker and land-office receiver, took the name Cardington from the manufacturing interests of the place, namely Howard's carding machine; Cook and Shunk named the village in 1836 from the post office, which had given the community its name for some years.

Before the town

Baskin's 1880 county history describes a large Native village on the rising ground where the Firstenbarger residence then stood in Cardington Township: huts about eight feet long, built up on three sides with poles and covered with bark, two facing each other across a fire. The people, whom the book calls Wyandot, Seneca and Miami, came down from their reservation in April or May, stayed until corn-planting time, went back to plant, and returned for the fall hunt; many stayed all winter hunting and trapping. They had been granted the right 'to fish, fowl and hunt' on the land north of the Greenville line while it remained government land. They treated the settlers in a friendly way and liked contests of strength and endurance, and the visits went on for twelve or fifteen years after the first white settlers came in 1822, ending as game grew scarce. The township lies in land the 1818 treaty cleared of Native claims.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Seneca, Miami (Myaamia).

• Native village at the Firstenbarger place (village) — rising ground in Cardington Township where the Firstenbarger residence stood in 1880, near the Whetstone River, seasonal use by Wyandot, Seneca and Miami families into the 1830s (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1819 — Asa Mosher builds the first mill in the township on the Whetstone, before the land is surveyed; the 1880 history places it on a farm other than the future village site, and Isaac Bunker's grist-mill at the village site follows, grinding first in fall 1822.
2. 1822-03-28 — Isaac Bunker arrives with eight or ten men from the Peru settlement, chops out a road, and has a cabin up by April 1 where the Resley House later stands; his wife and eleven children follow in May.
3. 1823 — Horton Howard, a Quaker and receiver of the Delaware land office, and Peleg Bunker put a carding machine in a log cabin on the north side of the Whetstone.
4. 1827 — A post office named Cardington is established at the settlement; Baskin (1880) dates it to 1826, with Isaac Bunker as first postmaster, while postal records and Wikipedia say 1827.
5. 1827 — Isaac Bunker builds a frame foundry on the east bank of the Whetstone that makes Jethro Wood's patent cast-iron plow.
6. 1830 — Slocum Bunker opens the first store, in a frame addition to the old Bunker cabin.
7. 1834-06-20 — After Bunker's failure at Granville, his Cardington mills and lands are sold to Arthur Mott of Onondaga County, New York.
8. 1836 — Lumas Cook and John Shunk, who had bought the mill property after Isaac Bunker's failure, lay out the village on their land and name it Cardington after the post office.
9. 1840 — The first frame schoolhouse is built at Second and Center streets and serves as a church for every denomination for fourteen years.
10. 1848 — Cardington and its township became part of the newly organized Morrow County.
11. 1851-02 — Trains of the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis Railway run regularly through Cardington.
12. 1857 — A petition headed by F. E. Phelps and Gen. John Beatty with 111 other names succeeds in incorporating the village, three years after a first petition was defeated.
13. 1874-12 — After a series of fires, Cardington buys a No. 3 Silsby steam fire engine for $6,000 and organizes a fire department.
14. 1880 — The census counts 1,365 people in Cardington.
15. 1923 to 1927 — Thad H. Brown, listed among Cardington's notable people, serves as Ohio Secretary of State.
16. early 1960s — An oil boom sweeps the area, with wells drilled in town back yards and gas flares lighting the night; the Cardington East field is the largest of the fields developed.
17. 1981-06-13 — A tornado passes through the center of Cardington, damaging the whole nine-block business district and destroying or badly damaging about 100 homes; four people are killed, and the National Guard is called in on June 14 (a heritage-society page also dates four deaths to June 11, so sources conflict).
18. 2010 — The census counts 2,047 people in Cardington.

Stories

The tornado of June 13, 1981

On Saturday, June 13, 1981 a tornado passed through the center of Cardington. It damaged the entire nine-block business district, destroyed or heavily damaged about 100 homes, and flattened more than 800 trees; four people were killed and several injured. The National Guard was called in and the search for victims went on the next day, when the governor asked for federal disaster relief. A substantial part of the village had to be rebuilt. Wikipedia and a local heritage page describe it as two tornadoes, on June 11 and 13, with four deaths each, but the heritage page itself gives June 11 and June 13 for the same four deaths, so the record of a first storm is unclear.

Named for a carding machine

Cardington took its name from a machine. In 1823 Horton Howard, a Quaker who was receiver in the Delaware land office, bought land on the Whetstone and, with Peleg Bunker doing the work, put a log cabin on the north side of the river to hold a carding machine; fulling and cloth-dressing machinery was added in a frame building across the river. About 1826 Howard secured a post office there, and the name Cardington, suggested by the carding machine, went on it. When Lumas Cook and John Shunk laid out their village in 1836 they named it from the post office, which had furnished a generally accepted name to the community for some years.

The bull on the track

Trains of the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis Railway ran regularly through Cardington from February 1851, and in about a year the village had its first railroad smash-up. A freight train running late met a young bull on the track. The engine had no cow-catcher, the conductor stood with the engineer consulting, and they decided to try conclusions with the bull. The collision, the county historian says, was heard at Woodbury, nine miles away. Nineteen freight cars were demolished, the conductor was thrown under the machinery and lost both legs, and he died of his wounds. The company later owned twelve acres and one of the finest depot grounds on its line, where citizens had set out 250 maple trees.

Isaac Bunker and the plow foundry

Isaac Bunker, a Vermont wagon-maker who sold sixty iron-bound wagons in his last season there, came to the Whetstone in 1822 after neighbors at the Caledonia mill site threatened to dam the creek above him and he sold out. He brush-dammed the river, built a grist-mill that first ground in fall 1822 with buhr-stones cut from a boulder, and a saw-mill, then a wagon shop in 1825 and in 1827 a foundry making Jethro Wood's cast-iron plows at nine dollars for the largest size. Andirons and mill parts followed. In 1829 he put his capital into a plow venture at Granville, which failed and took everything he owned; the mills and land were sold in 1834 to Arthur Mott, and Bunker later went to Texas, where he died. Lumas Cook and John Shunk bought the property and laid out Cardington.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · morrow.ohgenweb.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · postalhistory.com · cardington-ohio-heritage.com · cardington-ohio-heritage.com

Del-Co's East Knox wellfield at Bryant and Lucerne Rds, Wayne Twp, about 5 miles WSW of Fredericktown The water here

• Del-co Water Company, Inc.73% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells
• Cardington Village27% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (4)

Public libraries (2)

Police stations (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (5)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-01-01: county board of elections.

Money issues on the ballot since 2018: 6 of 7 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 1 of 1.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-05-07

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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