John Gardiner (ca. 1770–1839), clerk, public official, and merchant, was a native of England who moved to Washington in 1800 from Dublin, where he had managed a cotton factory. He advertised himself in Washington as an auctioneer, 1802–03, and as the teacher of an evening school, 1803–04. Gardiner received a patent for an “Improvement in erecting dry docks” in 1802 and another in 1829 for improved “roller or wheel roads, and carriages for the same.” From 1803 until 1806 he served as a secretary on the city council, and from 1808 through 1812 he was the secretary of the Columbia Manufacturing Company. Gardiner began a clerkship in 1806 in the General Land Office, which was under the Treasury Department until it became an independent agency in 1812. He continued in that capacity until 1821, serving the last seven years as chief clerk. Gardiner was a city commissioner from 1823 to 1827. From 1822 until his death in Washington, he ran a boardinghouse in his home and acted as a merchant, particularly of garden seeds (PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 41 vols. description ends , 33:64–5; Washington Federalist, 20 Dec. 1802; List of Patents description begins A List of Patents granted by the United States from April 10, 1790, to December 31, 1836, 1872 description ends , 30, 375; National Intelligencer, and Washington Advertiser, 24 Jan., 14 Oct. 1803, 31 Oct. 1804, 13 July 1808; Acts of the Corporation of the City of Washington [Washington, 1803–06]; Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, transmitting A Report of the Persons Employed as Clerks in the Treasury Department, During the year 1806 [Washington, 1807]; Gardiner to TJ, 9 Aug. 1807 [DLC], 18 July 1822; Washington National Intelligencer, 15 Feb. 1812; Terr. Papers description begins Clarence E. Carter and John Porter Bloom, eds., The Territorial Papers of the United States, 1934–75, 28 vols. description ends , 17:40–3; Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, accompanied With a Statement exhibiting the sums respectively paid to each clerk in the several offices attached to the Treasury Department, for Services Rendered in the Year 1814 [Washington, 1815]; A Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval, in the service of the United States [Washington, 1816], 7; Washington Gazette, 17 Mar. 1821; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 2 Dec. 1822, 17 July 1823, 12 Jan. 1828, 27 Apr. 1838, 28 Sept. 1839; Washington Daily National Journal, 15 Sept. 1827).

On 29 Oct. 1817 Gardiner sent copies of the enclosed map to Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and former president James Madison (Terr. Papers description begins Clarence E. Carter and John Porter Bloom, eds., The Territorial Papers of the United States, 1934–75, 28 vols. description ends , 17:541; Madison, Papers, Retirement Ser., 1:146).