Decorative drawing: a small American settlement seen from a low hill. Not a photograph of this place.

Kimbolton, Ohio

15 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1909 and the latest in 1994. It stands in Liberty Township. It lies in ZIP code area 43749. The Survey maps it on the Kimbolton quadrangle. 152 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 801 feet above sea level.

Kimbolton within Guernsey County

Population over time

3 figures

Kimbolton fell from 190 to 152 between 2000 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

Year	People	Change
2000	190
2010	144	-46 (-24%)
2020	152	+8 (+6%)

Then and now

1909 to 1994

The same ground, surveyed 85 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Kimbolton, surveyed 1994

Topographic sheet of Kimbolton, surveyed 1909

Topographic sheets covering this place

15 sheets

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

In the county-history sources

388 words on this township

Portrait and Biographical Record of Guernsey County, Ohio, Containing Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens of the County, Together with Biographies and Portraits of All the Presidents of the United States, published 1895 names this settlement in its chapter on Liberty Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

The village of Kimbolton was founded by John Gibson in 1829. The first settlers in Liberty Township were William Gibson, John Philipps and a Mr. Harper, who came to the county in 1806, via an Indian trail. Following is the language of William Gibson: " We began to keep house in a shanty at the upper end of Libert3\ We soon got a cabin; that was bettei'."

Passage source: Portrait and Biographical Record of Guernsey County, Ohio, Containing Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens of the County, Together with Biographies and Portraits of All the Presidents of the United States, published 1895.

Naphthali Luccoek settled in Liberty in 1831, and when the people petitioned for a postoffice they were notified that no more poetoffices named Liberty, as the village w:is then called, would be allowed in the state of Ohio. Mr. Luccoek therefore suggested the name Kimbolton (after his native Kimbolton in England), and by mutual consent it was adopted, and the postoffice was granted. The name of the village remained unchanged, however, until the advent of the Cleveland & Marietta Railroad, but is now known as Kimbolton.

NapLthali Luccock was the first Postmaster, and also the first Justice of tlie Peace. The township of Liberty was organized in 1820. The first teacher in the township was a New England man named Austin Hunt, who believed in the rod as a necessary instrument of persuasion and enlightenment. But to better illustrate the ideas of our pioneer teachers we quote the language of the venerable James Gibson, of Kimbolton: "I went to keeping school, and kept school here in Liberty. Some of the boys from over the creek began to run off and stay around the creek and hunt mussels and crawfish. I found it out and brought them up and gave them a tannin'. They went home and told their folks I had whipped them. The next day their fathers rode up to the schoolhouse, called me to the door and said they had come to give me a tannin'for whipping their boys. I replied: -What color are you going to tan me ? If you have any business j'ou can attend to it, but if you come into this schoolhouse I will do the tannin'." Tliere was no tannin' done. I think a good tannin' never liurt a boy when he needed it."

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Liberty Township.

Fires near this place

10 since 2013

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 10 fires within 5 miles of Kimbolton between 2013 and 2020, burning about 12 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	6
Smoking	2
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
30 September 2018	Smoking	under an acre	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	13025
26 August 2017	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	8905
7 April 2013	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	3.0 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	not named
24 March 2017	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	8107
15 March 2014	Smoking	1.0 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	not named
11 March 2018	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	14408
11 March 2018	Debris and open burning	2.0 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	14411
11 March 2018	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	14409

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Guernsey County

Specimens collected near this place

12 of 268 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 268 specimens collected within 10 miles of Kimbolton between 1875 and 1975: 135 Fungi, 79 Animalia, 50 Plantae, 2 Unrecorded, 2 Protozoa. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by Adams, W. (William), Adams, W.; Adams, S., Adams, William; Adams, Sue and others. Each is a physical object with a catalogue number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be concluded from a species being absent.

Species	Year	Collected by	Where, as recorded
Synechoblastus rupestris (F.Desp.) Trevis.	1902	F.O. Grover	Black Swamp
Fomes fraxinophilus (Peck) Sacc.	1922	F. O. Grover	Black swamp
Clavaria kunzei Fr.	1923	Treat, Dorothy	Birmingham
Asclepias tuberosa L.	1875	s.c.	Fairmont
Enslenia albida Nutt.	1875	s.c.	Fairmont
Impatiens pallida Nutt.	1875	Lloyd, Curtis Gates	Fairmont
Stereum spadiceum (Pers.) Quél.	1893	Holden Wm.	College Hill
Favolus europaeus Fr.	1895	Holden Wm.	College Hill
Lenzites trabeus (Pers.) Fr.	1895	Holden Wm.	College Hill
Pleurotus nidulans (Pers.) P.Kumm.	1895	Holden Wm.	College Hill
Polystictus versicolor (L.) Fr.	1895	Holden Wm.	College Hill
Trametes malicola Berk. & M.A.Curtis	1895	Holden Wm.	College Hill

All 268 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Storms near this place

17 since 1998

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Kimbolton in 17 storm reports between 1998 and 2024: 13 thunderstorm wind, 3 hail, 1 flood. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
July 2012	Thunderstorm Wind	Kimbolton	$40,000	Emergency management reported 10 to 20 large trees down in Kimbolten.
July 2013	Thunderstorm Wind	Kimbolton	$25,000	Law enforcement reported trees down.
April 2010	Thunderstorm Wind	Kimbolton	$25,000	Law enforcement reported trees down near Kimbolton.
August 2007	Thunderstorm Wind	Kimbolton	$10,000	Emergency management reported trees down on Irish ridge.
October 2001	Thunderstorm Wind	Kimbolton	$5,000	no account filed
April 1999	Thunderstorm Wind	Kimbolton	$3,000	A few trees were downed by thunderstorm winds.
July 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Kimbolton	$2,000	Large trees down.
April 2000	Thunderstorm Wind	Kimbolton	$2,000	Thunderstorm winds downed a few trees.
June 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Kimbolton	$1,000	Trees were reported to be blown down in Kimbolton.
April 2023	Thunderstorm Wind	Kimbolton	-	Trees were reported down at intersection of 21 and Brodhead Road.
June 2022	Thunderstorm Wind	Kimbolton	-	Numerous trees down and power outages in the area.
July 2020	Thunderstorm Wind	Kimbolton	-	Local law enforcement reported tree and wires down.
September 2018	Thunderstorm Wind	Kimbolton	-	The public reported large tree branches down.
July 2006	Flood	Kimbolton	-	Flooding occurred along Rte 22 east of Winterset; along Rte 658 Covered Bridge Rd; in the Freedom area; and in the Birmingham area.
May 2024	Hail	Kimbolton	-	no account filed
May 2024	Hail	Kimbolton	-	no account filed
August 1998	Hail	Kimbolton	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Guernsey County

Nearest settlements

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Place	Distance	Sheets
North Salem	1.5 miles	15
Guernsey	2.3 miles	15
Tyner	3.3 miles	15
Toledoville (historical)	4.0 miles	16
Birds Run	4.1 miles	16
Odell	5.1 miles	17
Flat Ridge	5.6 miles	16
Indian Camp	5.6 miles	16

Elsewhere

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

Wikipedia article on Kimbolton	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q944132	The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0).

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 1064937. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.

Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.

Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.