During a recent piece I noted there is one Revolutionary War soldier buried in Glendale Cemetery. That man was Martin Brockway, who died in 1844 at the age of 83. By my calculation he was a teenager when he fought in that war.
Coincidentally, I was reading some past history of the town and found a story and photo published in the Morrow County Independent January, 1981 about the oldest structure in Cardington. The two-story brick building stood on East Main Street on an alley which connected the street with Second Street.
If you are over 40 years old you may remember the building which stood on the site that is FC Bank today.
This oldest structure was constructed by Martin Brockway. Doing the math I figure that Martin’s son, Martin Brockway, Jr., also an early business man, built it and maintained it as a grocery store. Of Greek Revival design, it was erected in the 1850s with a beautiful Greek pediment roof line.
The story notes that its simplicity was in keeping with the Greek Revival style of the 1851 time period.The first story had been altered but the four original pallsters remained. Before it was destroyed by the June, 1981 tornado just five months later, Pythian Sisters owned it.
Shirley Robinson remembers the meetings they held there. It was the first home of the Cardington Church of the Nazarene, later served as a residence, was occupied by a newsstand and small retail establishments. The foundation was of uncut stone and bricks in the structure were probably made in an early Cardington brickyard located near the corner of Center Street and Lincoln Avenue.
The picture accompanying this story is exactly how I remember the stately structure. Martin Brockway, Jr. died in 1880.
70 years ago, 1948: Roy Hindman, of Westerville, opened a shoe repair shop in the Willits building behind the Shell gas station on the square. His wife was hired to teach one of the first grade classes in the town’s school. She was the former Mabel Teat who taught in Cardington several years earlier.
Morrow County had a Pioneer Club whose members were 75 years and older. Total membership was 170.
Pictured in the Union Register was the Westfield Methodist Church, the edifice at that time was the longest in use by any one Morrow County Church. The story said a Methodist Society was organized at Westfield one of the county’s earliest towns in 1822. A log church was erected in 1844 and the building pictured was erected on the site of the old church in 1853 with the cost being $2,600.
This church was destroyed in a Palm Sunday tornado in 1964. Twins Evelyn Davis Shoults and Elizabeth Davis remember ringing the bell in the old church when they were youngsters. Their father was the church custodian. A new church was built later at another site.
Also pictured was the Fulton Methodist Church, then less than three years old, having been built in the autumn of 1945 to replace the frame church erected in 1886 which was destroyed by fire in December, 1944. This edifice represented the latest type of small town church architecture, and the approximate cost of the one story brick building with basement was $12,000.
Avery Hollandshed, Jr., 1948 Cardington High School graduate, enlisted in the U.S. Navy.
60 years ago, August, 1958: Lynn Beveridge, 8, of near Cardington, appeared as a featured tap dancer on the Jack Sherrick TV show on Channel 6, Columbus.
