Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Perrysville, IN

Perrysville is a town in Highland Township, Vermillion County, Indiana, perched on a bluff on the west bank of the Wabash River.

Perrysville was platted and surveyed in 1825 by James Blair — just a year after Vermillion County itself was organized — and named for Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, the hero of the Battle of Lake Erie.

In its river-port heyday, Perrysville shipped local products to New Orleans on flatboats down the Wabash, Ohio and Mississippi rivers, while steamboats brought in heavy equipment and manufactured goods.

Perrysville was reputed to be the largest town between Chicago and Terre Haute before the railroads came, and in 1846 it was described as the largest and most promising town in Vermillion County, with tanneries, mills, blacksmiths and general stores.

The Wabash and Erie Canal boosted Perrysville further — a sidecut with locks allowed canal boats to be towed across the river to the town.

When the railroads arrived in the second half of the 1800s but bypassed Perrysville, the river trade that had sustained the town faded and its importance declined.

Perrysville's post office has been in operation since 1827, nearly as long as the town itself has existed.

Perrysville had 455 residents at the 2020 census, almost unchanged from 456 in 2010, when its people lived in 184 households.

Indiana State Road 32 runs through Perrysville, and the whole town covers only about a quarter of a square mile.

Perrysville students attend schools in the North Vermillion Community School Corporation, whose North Vermillion High School is located in nearby Cayuga.