Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Hope, IN

Hope was settled in 1830 by a colony of Moravian Christians from Salem, North Carolina (now Winston-Salem), led by the Reverend Martin Hauser, who organized a Moravian congregation in Haw Creek Township, Bartholomew County.

The town was originally named Goshen, after the biblical land, but was renamed Hope when its post office was established in 1834 because Indiana already had a town named Goshen.

Hope is home to the only remaining Moravian church in the state of Indiana, and Moravian traditions survive there, including hanging Moravian stars, baking Moravian sugar cakes, and displaying the elaborate miniature Christmas scene called the "putz."

From 1866 to 1881, Hope hosted the Hope Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies, a boarding school run by the Moravian Church that drew students from across the Midwest; all that remains of it are its ornate iron gates on Main Street and the name of Seminary Street.

Hope had 2,099 residents at the 2020 census, living in 811 households.

Hope claims the oldest continuously running rural mail delivery in the nation, begun in 1896, a distinction honored by the Rural Letter Carriers' Museum in town.

Hope's Hauser Junior-Senior High School — named for town founder Martin Hauser — fields the Jets; its boys' basketball team won the Indiana Class A state championship in 2006, and its girls' softball team won the Class A state title in 2015.

Hope's entire downtown is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Hope Historic District, and the town's history is preserved at the Yellow Trail Museum.

Tiny Hope has buildings by acclaimed architects: its branch library was designed by Deborah Berke, and the former Hope Star-Journal building was designed by Harry Weese.

The Hope Star-Journal, created in 1912 when two competing newspapers merged, made Hope one of Indiana's smallest communities with its own newspaper until the paper moved online in 2014.