Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near West Hoyleton Hoyleton, IL

Hoyleton is a village in Washington County, Illinois, settled in 1858 when two Congregational ministers, the Reverends J. A. Bent and Ovid Miner, arrived with a colony of ten families from New York State.

Because of its New England roots, the settlement was known as 'Yankee Town' until 1860.

The town was named for Henry Hoyle, who donated the bell for the belfry of the Hoyleton Seminary, a school the two founding ministers helped establish.

Hoyleton's residents voted to incorporate as a village on March 26, 1881, approving the measure by 25 votes to 12.

Hoyleton has kept a remarkably steady population for well over a century — it counted 312 residents in 1880, peaked at 542 in 1980, and recorded 520 in the 2020 census.

The 2000 census counted 520 people in Hoyleton, living in 186 households and 130 families.

German heritage runs deep in Hoyleton — nearly half of its residents (48.2 percent) reported German ancestry in the census.

Hoyleton children attend Hoyleton Consolidated School District 29 through eighth grade or the village's Trinity Lutheran School, and high school students go to Nashville Community High School.

In 1901 the village granted brothers H. William and Henry F. Rixmann the right to build Hoyleton's first telephone line within the village limits.

Hoyleton is the hometown of Kirk Rueter, a left-handed pitcher who played for the Montreal Expos and the San Francisco Giants.