Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Seymour, IN

Seymour is the largest city in Jackson County, Indiana, with 21,569 people at the 2020 census — although the county seat is the smaller town of Brownstown.

Seymour was platted on April 27, 1852, by landowner Meedy Shields and named for Hezekiah Cook Seymour, a civil engineer on the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad; it was incorporated as a city in 1864.

The city grew where the north-south Jeffersonville Railroad crossed the east-west Ohio and Mississippi Railroad, earning Seymour the nickname "Crossroads of Southern Indiana."

On October 6, 1866, the local Reno Gang robbed an Ohio and Mississippi Railroad train just east of Seymour — an episode widely considered the first peacetime train robbery in the United States.

During World War II the U.S. Army Air Forces operated Freeman Army Airfield southwest of the city, and the base was the site of the 1945 Freeman Field mutiny, a milestone in the desegregation of the U.S. military; the airfield is now a civilian airport.

Seymour is the birthplace and hometown of rock musician John Mellencamp, who was born there on October 7, 1951, and whose hit song "Small Town" is about Seymour.

The Southern Indiana Center for the Arts is housed in a 19th-century Greek Revival mansion in Seymour that has been owned by the Mellencamp family since 1991, and a Seymour diner served as a filming location for Mellencamp's movie Falling from Grace.

The 2020 census counted 21,569 people in Seymour living in 8,144 households — a sharp rise from 17,503 people in 2010, growth of more than 23 percent in a single decade.

Seymour's Hispanic population reached about 26 percent of the city in 2020, up from under 1 percent in 1990, driven substantially by immigration from San Sebastián Coatán, Guatemala that began in the late 1980s.

Cummins' Seymour Engine Plant is the global headquarters for the company's high-horsepower engines, and automotive-parts maker Aisin has operated a plant in Seymour since the 1980s.