The Village of Cridersville was started in the spring of 1856 when Ephriam Crider and his oldest son Isaac filed a map of a new town they decided to call Cridersville.

Ephriam Crider was born on Christmas day in 1805 in Virginia. His family moved to southern Ohio in 1810. He married Mary Magdelene Dunkle "Polly" in 1825. They had ten children and moved here in the 1850's.

There were only 24 lots and 2 streets on this first town map. Ephriam owned the lots on Main Street, and those on High Street were Isaac's.The Railroad came to town in 1858 and was to make Crider's new town a great success.

Farmers would come to Cridersville to ship their grain and livestock to bigger towns on the railroad. They also shopped in the new stores that were opening in Cridersville. With a railroad the town was sure to grow.

Ephriam Crider built the first steam powered gristmill in the area on the East edge of Cridersville. Farmers brought their grain to be ground into meal or flour.

Ephriam and Polly lived the rest of their lives in Cridersville. Ephriam died on December 3, 1880, and Polly died in 1886. They are both buried at St. Matthew's cemetery Northwest of Cridersville.

In 1885 oil was discovered in the area and within 2 years Cridersville was in the middle of the largest Oil Boom in the world. Thousands of workers came to drill wells around Cridersville. Hundreds of oil wells were drilled around Cridersville in the 1890's. The town grew fast. Many new stores and houses were built. The oil boom lasted about 20 years when finally the oil began to run out and people started to leave for the richer oil fields in Texas and Oklahoma.

On May 2, 1918 disaster struck when a boy was burning trash behind a store on E. Main Street. It was a windy day and embers from the fire blew into a nearby barn. It was 3:00 in the afternoon. Soon the barn was on fire. The wind blew embers from the barn fire onto the roofs of several stores on Main Street. The fire quickly spread from building to building until both sides of Main Street were ablaze. Cridersville had only had a hand pumper to fight this extraordinary fire with. So Firefighters were called from Lima and Wapakoneta to come help put the fire out. By 6:00 that afternoon both sides of the 100 block of East Main Street, the commercial center of Cridersville, was burned to the ground.

Today the Post Office, Fire station, and homes sit along the 100 block of East Main Street.To learn more about the history of Cridersville, visit our local historical museum at 111 W Sugar Street, behind the Municipal Center. The museum is open the first and third Sunday of each month from 1:00 to 4:00pm.