Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Orangeville, IL

Orangeville is a village in Oneco Township, Stephenson County, in far northern Illinois, sitting about two miles south of the Wisconsin state line on Illinois Route 26.

The area's first settlers arrived in 1833, and most of the earliest families were Pennsylvania Dutch farmers from New York and Pennsylvania — 13 of the first 14 settlers were Pennsylvania Dutch.

Orangeville was founded by John Bower, who bought the land and its creek-side mills in 1846 for $950, built the Union House in 1849, and platted the village in 1851 with 48 original town lots.

The village was not incorporated until 1867, sixteen years after it was platted.

In 1854 Orangeville won a literal street lineup vote against the rival village of Oneco to decide which town would get the federal post office, winning by a narrow margin.

The Illinois Central Railroad arrived in 1888 — Orangeville was the only incorporated village on the new Freeport-to-Madison line — and it sparked a brick building boom that produced most of today's historic downtown between 1888 and 1914.

Orangeville's High Street holds four of the village's five National Register of Historic Places listings, including the Central House hotel, the Union House, and the Orangeville Masonic Hall, which was built in 1876.

Famed rescue-mission founder Mel Trotter was born in Orangeville on May 16, 1870, and lived there until age five.

The 2020 census counted 766 people in Orangeville, down slightly from 793 in 2010; in the 2000 census the village had 297 households.

Orangeville's children attend Orangeville Community School District 203, which combined its elementary school and junior-senior high school into a single campus in 2019, after which the old elementary building was converted into apartments.