Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Rendville, OH

Rendville is an incorporated village in Monroe Township, Perry County, Ohio, founded in 1879 as a coal-mining town by Chicago industrialist William P. Rend of the Ohio Central Coal Company, and named for him.

Rendville incorporated on May 2, 1882, and a post office served the village from 1879 until 1982.

With just 28 residents at the 2020 census, Rendville is the smallest incorporated community in the entire state of Ohio.

Rendville was once far larger: at its coal-boom peak, more than 2,000 people lived in the Rendville area, drawn by mine owner William P. Rend's then-unusual practice of hiring African American and European immigrant miners to work side by side.

In 1888 Dr. Isaiah Tuppins — the first African American to receive a medical degree in Ohio — was elected mayor of Rendville, making him the first African American mayor in Ohio.

Rendville produced another first in 1969, when Sophia Mitchell became Ohio's first African American woman mayor, and in 1963 Roberta Preston had become the first African American woman postmaster in Ohio.

Rendville miner Richard L. Davis became a leading labor organizer who helped found the United Mine Workers of America in 1890.

An Ohio Historical Marker titled "Breaking the Color Barrier" was dedicated in Rendville in October 2010 to commemorate the village's role as one of America's earliest integrated communities.