BLADENSBURG — Washington Houck came to Knox County from Huntington County, Pennsylvania, when his family moved here in 1805.

They lived in Clay Township, near Martinsburg, so Washington didn’t want to set up his own life as an adult too far away from the rest of the family. He headed a few miles east, just over the line into Jackson Township and found the perfect spot.

  • The school in Bladensburg preceding the current structure.

  • This vintage postcard view pictures downtown Bladensburg, circa 1910.

  • The Bladensburg Masonic Hall still stands today, though the exterior has been altered.

  • Colonel Charles Waterhouse’s painting of the U.S. Marines’ last stand at the Battle of Bladensburg during the War of 1812. The American loss in this battle allowed the British to burn down Washington, D.C.

With John and Samuel Wheeler, Houck laid out the plan for a small town. Only problem was, they were all too modest to name the new town after themselves. Casting around for ideas, they asked township resident Samuel Davidson what they should name it.

Davidson suggested they name it “Bladensburg,” after the Battle of Bladensburg, a conflict which took place in Maryland during the War of 1812. Davidson was familiar with it because he had fought in the battle himself.

You can’t help but wonder what made Davidson want to memorialize that engagement, though, for it has gone down in history as one of the nation’s most disastrous defeats. British forces routed the U.S. troops, resulting in the fall of Washington, D.C., and its subsequent burning.

Maybe he was making a sly dig at the politics of the 1830s, when President Andrew Jackson was upending traditional leadership in Washington. Whatever the case, the name stuck.

The town has never been incorporated, and has hovered at or below a population of about 200. John Wheeler served as postmaster and Houck served as mail carrier, porting bags of mail to and from Martinsburg for the wage of $8 every 18 months. Houck was also the first tavern-keeper in town.

In an 1859 advertisement in the M’Arthur Democrat in McArthur, Ohio (Vinton County), doctor “W. Floyd, M.D.,” claimed that he could “extirpate the most difficult cases of cancer in the short span of from 30 minutes to seven hours; almost in every case without the use of the knife.”

He specifically lists John Wheeler, Esq., of Bladensburg, Knox County, Ohio, as a reference.

The July 24, 1863, Fremont Register carries a story from Licking County, where local officials were having trouble completing the draft registrations for the currently unfolding Civil War. Central Ohio was a hotbed of the southern sympathizers known as Copperheads, and the article says that the Copperheads attempted to organize resistance to the draft in Licking County, but failed.

The article then says 200 of the troublemakers, “went to Bladensburg, Knox Co., to join the rebel force there.”

In the 1880s, the village boasted three stores, two hotels, two blacksmiths, a jewelry store, a dress shop, a barbershop, a harness shop, a grist mill, and a saw mill. Though the population remained steady in the early 20th century, the local shops gradually closed as such businesses concentrated in larger towns.

After 1948, Bladensburg saw renewed activity from oil and gas drilling, something that has continued in waves ever since.

An article in the March 26, 1965, issue of The Newark Advocate quotes an oil leasing agent as saying that oilmen were leaving Texas and coming to Bladensburg because of the quality of its oil in the Clinton sand formation, about 2000 feet beneath the surface.

While Bladensburg has a ways to go before it replaces Texas in the oil business, it remains an area of natural gas exploration and drilling.