Orangeville

How Orangeville began

Orangeville, one of the easternmost incorporated communities in Ohio, sits on the Pymatuning River directly on the Pennsylvania state line in northeastern Hartford Township. A Pennsylvania county history credits Jacob Loutzenhiser, who arrived about 1797-98 and built a hewed-log gristmill with a 25-foot undershot wheel just across the state line, as the place's pioneer founder; within what is now Ohio, Charles Merry was the first settler, arriving about 1799-1800 on land later known as the N.E. Austin farm. The first Ohio-side village lots were laid out in 1818 by Augustus and Levi Moffatt, and the village incorporated in 1868 with R.E. Grey as its first mayor. Water power from the Pymatuning drove a succession of grist-, saw- and woolen mills that anchored the local economy through the 19th century. The village's population peaked at 397 in 1960 and has declined since, standing at 174 as of the 2020 census.

Settled c. 1799-1800 (Charles Merry, first settler within the present Ohio village limits); mills at the site from c. 1797-98 across the Pennsylvania line, platted 1818, by Augustus and Levi Moffatt, incorporated 1868, by Charles Merry (first settler); Augustus and Levi Moffatt (platted the first village lots); R.E. Grey (first mayor after 1868 incorporation).

Where the name comes from

No source consulted explains the origin of the name Orangeville; the 1882 county history describes only that 'for many years the northeastern portion of the township has been known by the name of Orangeville' without saying why. A transferred name from Orange, Connecticut, remains a plausible but unconfirmed guess, in keeping with the Western Reserve's pattern of carrying New England place names west.

Before the town

No Native village, camp or treaty event specific to Orangeville is recorded in the sources we reviewed. The village sits directly on the Pennsylvania state line, within the wider region the county's 1882 history describes as Delaware-occupied hunting ground used seasonally by Seneca and Mingo bands through the 1700s, but no source found names a site at this specific location.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware), Seneca, Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga).

Timeline

1. c. 1797-98 — Jacob Loutzenhiser, credited by a Mercer County, Pennsylvania history as the place's pioneer founder, builds a hewed-log gristmill with a 25-foot undershot wheel at the site, just across the state line in Pymatuning Township, Pennsylvania -- the first mill on the Pymatuning at this location.
2. 1799-1800 — Charles Merry becomes the first settler within the present Ohio village limits, on land later known as the N.E. Austin farm; he soon moves on to Vernon Township.
3. 1818 — Augustus and Levi Moffatt lay out the first village lots on the Ohio side and build the first carding machine; Levi Moffatt, a clothier by trade, later sells it to Charles and Richard Hull.
4. 1821 — A flat-boat loaded with butter and cheese is launched at Orangeville and sent down-river to the New Orleans market.
5. 1835 — Three Moffatt brothers build two flat-boats, load them with produce, and take their families west by river; the same year the Baptist church of Fowler, Hartford and Vernon reorganizes at Orangeville, now the members' most central point.
6. c. 1845 — A post office is established at Orangeville, per the 1882 county history (Wikipedia gives 1840); Rensselaer Root serves as first postmaster.
7. 1862 — The railroad reaches Orangeville, superseding the tri-weekly stage mail between Warren, Ohio, and Greenville, Pennsylvania.
8. 1868 — Orangeville is incorporated as a village; R.E. Grey becomes its first mayor and a village special school district is organized.
9. 1869 — Shafer Brothers, then owners of the flouring mill, spend $40,000 improving the mill and dam.
10. 1872 — The Orangeville Methodist church, organized about 1837, builds its present church at a cost of $5,000.
11. 1910 — Orangeville's population is recorded at 185.
12. 1960 — Orangeville's population peaks at 397.
13. 2020 — The census records 174 residents, an 11.7 percent decrease from 2010.

Stories

A gristmill on the state line

Orangeville's earliest industry sat squarely on the Ohio-Pennsylvania line, drawing its power from the Pymatuning River. According to a Mercer County, Pennsylvania history and atlas, Jacob Loutzenhiser arrived about 1797 or 1798 and built a hewed-log gristmill just across the border, with an undershot wheel twenty-five feet in diameter -- the first mill in Pymatuning Township, Pennsylvania, and for years known locally as Hahn's mills after the man who bought it from Loutzenhiser in 1802. A sawmill followed. The mill changed hands repeatedly over the following decades -- Keck, then A. and L. Moffatt, then Hoadley, then Clark -- until Shafer Brothers spent $40,000 rebuilding mill and dam in 1869, a substantial investment for a rural crossroads. By 1882 Hendrickson & Walworth operated the flouring mill that grew from that first crude structure eighty years earlier.

Flatboats to New Orleans

Landlocked Orangeville nonetheless had a river trade. About 1821 a flat-boat loaded with butter and cheese was launched in the millrace below the Orangeville mill and sent downstream toward the New Orleans market, a journey that would have carried it down the Pymatuning-Shenango-Beaver river system to the Ohio and on to the Mississippi. In 1835 three Moffatt brothers -- Levi, Lot and Zelotus, sons of the family that had platted the village's first lots -- built two more flat-boats, loaded them with produce likely to sell along the way, and set out with their families for a new life farther west, a reminder that for early Orangeville the rivers, not the roads, were the route to a wider market.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · commons.wikimedia.org

No water-system data is linked to Orangeville's ZIP codes yet.

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-08-24: county board of elections.

Money issues on the ballot since 2016: 3 of 3 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 1 of 1.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-01-08

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