Cridersville

How Cridersville began

Cridersville was platted in 1856 by Ephraim and Polly Crider, who had farmed 80 acres in Duchouquet Township, Auglaize County, for two decades along the surveyed route of the Dayton & Michigan Railroad. The village grew once that line was completed in 1858, giving area farmers rail access to larger markets. On May 2, 1918, a wind-driven fire destroyed most of its downtown, an event still marked by a state historical marker. Cridersville sits about halfway between Lima and Wapakoneta, immediately west of Allen County's Shawnee Township, and remains a small rail-side village today.

Settled 1836, platted 1856, by Ephraim and Polly Crider.

Where the name comes from

The village was named for its founding family, Ephraim and Polly Crider, who farmed the land before platting the town along the proposed Dayton & Michigan Railroad route in 1856.

Before the town

No Native American site, village, or trail specific to Cridersville itself is recorded in the sources checked. The documented Hog Creek Shawnee reservation set off by the 1817 Treaty of the Maumee Rapids lay in present-day Shawnee Township, Allen County, immediately to the east of Cridersville, not in Duchouquet Township, Auglaize County, where Cridersville actually sits — so it is noted here as a neighboring, not a site-specific, association. Fort Amanda, a War of 1812 U.S. Army supply depot built in November 1812 on Lt. Robert Pogue's orders on the west bank of the Auglaize River, and listed on the National Register on November 10, 1970, stands on the site of a former Ottawa village — but it is located in Logan Township, Auglaize County, well southwest of Lima and a different township from Cridersville's Duchouquet Township. It is not attributed to Cridersville here; it belongs with a Logan Township or Auglaize County entry.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Ottawa.

• Fort Amanda (other) — Logan Township, Auglaize County, on the west bank of the Auglaize River (not Cridersville/Duchouquet Township), War of 1812 (built November 1812, abandoned 1815); site of an earlier Ottawa village (en.wikipedia.org)

Timeline

1. 1836 — Ephraim Crider and his son Isaac came from Fairfield County and purchased 80 acres of land in Duchouquet Township that the family farmed for two decades.
2. 1844 — A Methodist society is organized in the Burk settlement near the future Cridersville and meets in the Burk school house; its log building served as church and schoolhouse until a frame church was raised in 1868.
3. 1856 — Ephraim and Polly Crider platted the village of Cridersville along the proposed route of the Dayton & Michigan Railroad.
4. 1856 — John Mumaw keeps the first store in the new village, about the date of its organization; James McMillin's general store was the second place of business.
5. 1858 — The Dayton & Michigan Railroad was completed through the village, giving area farmers rail access to larger markets and spurring the town's growth.
6. 1865 — A large grain warehouse is built at Cridersville, later owned by John Reichelderfer, from which grain and other farm produce were shipped by rail.
7. 1870 — Cridersville is first counted by the census, with 167 residents.
8. 1875 — The United Brethren Church is organized (its church building followed in 1878) and the village builds a two-story, four-room brick school.
9. 1878 — The Methodist frame church of 1868 is moved from the Burk settlement into Cridersville.
10. 1880 — The census counts 260 residents; the village then has two dry-goods stores, two groceries, a furniture store, a hotel, a steam grist mill and a steam sawmill.
11. 1886 — The oil pools near Cridersville are tapped on the Delong and Sellers farms, part of the Allen County field that reaches into Duchouquet Township.
12. 1897 — The Free Methodist congregation, organized in 1896, builds its church.
13. 1900 — John Bierline builds a tile factory and Smith Bear a sawmill.
14. 1918-05-02 — A fire driven by 40-mph winds broke out about 3 p.m. and by 6 p.m. had destroyed Cridersville's downtown: 32 structures, including two stores, a harness shop, the Home Bank of Cridersville, a physician's office, and eight residences, leaving 50 people homeless.
15. 1960 — Cridersville passes 1,000 residents for the first time (1,053), up from 684 in 1950.
16. 2020 — The census counts 1,791 residents.

Stories

The Great Fire of 1918

Cridersville's roughly 400 residents woke on May 2, 1918, to an ordinary day. About three o'clock that afternoon the fire bell rang, and within an hour both sides of Main Street were ablaze, pushed by a wind blowing near 40 miles an hour. The village had a single hand pumper to fight it. Firefighters drew from the town pond, but it ran dry within the hour, and Lima and Wapakoneta sent their fire companies, with Boy Scouts and soldiers from Lima joining the effort. By six that evening the downtown was gone: two stores, a harness shop, the Home Bank of Cridersville, a doctor's office, and eight houses, 32 buildings in all, leaving 50 people without homes. Only the bank's cast-iron safe was found standing in the ashes. The smoke column was visible for miles, and the heat kept trains from passing through town, but remarkably no one was seriously hurt.

A railroad town platted on the Crider farm

Ephraim and Polly Crider brought their family from Fairfield County to Duchouquet Township in 1836 and farmed 80 acres for twenty years. When surveyors laid out the route of the Dayton & Michigan Railroad through their land in the 1850s, the Criders platted a village along it in 1856 rather than simply sell the right-of-way. The gamble paid off: the railroad reached completion in 1858, and the station it brought let area farmers ship crops and livestock to city markets and bring goods back in, turning the Criders' farm town into a working village that eventually became part of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad system.

Oil under the farms, 1886

Cridersville was a quiet railroad village of a few hundred until the oil boom of the mid-1880s. In 1886 drillers struck the great pools near the village on the Delong and Sellers farms, a southward extension of the Allen County field, and wells followed one another in quick succession; the county history notes that Duchouquet Township's oil lay in a twelve-foot rock layer under a hard cap. For several years afterward grocers, clothiers and dry-goods houses did what the 1905 history calls an extensive business supplying the oil workers, and some Cridersville merchants made handsome fortunes and retired.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · hmdb.org · limaohio.com · en.wikipedia.org · ohiohistory.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · archive.org · archive.org

Auglaize River water fills the Bresler and Williams upground reservoirs west of Lima; Ottawa River water fills the Ferguson, Metzger Lake and Lost Creek reservoirs east of Lima; both feed the East Wayne Street treatment plant The water here

• Lima City61% of residentsAuglaize River and Ottawa River, stored in city upground reservoirs
• Cridersville Village36% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Brightstar Lima MHP3% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Nursing homes (2)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (1)

Public libraries (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Public EV charging (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 1 of 1 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 2026-01-22

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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