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Stilesville, Indiana

14 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1953 and the latest in 1986. It stands in Franklin Township. It lies in ZIP code area 46180. It stands on East Fork Mill Creek. The Survey maps it on the Coatesville quadrangle. 269 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 804 feet above sea level.

Stilesville within Hendricks County

Population over time

2 figures

Stilesville fell from 316 to 269 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

YearPeople Change
2010316
2020269-47 (-15%)

Topographic sheets covering this place

7 surveys from 14 printed sheets

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

In the county-history sources

7,970 words on this township

History of Hendricks County, Indiana, Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Towns, Educational, Religious, Civil, Military, and Political History, Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens, published 1885 names this settlement in its chapter on Franklin Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

The first settler in Franklin was Judg-e Nathan Kirk, who, without doubt, located on Mill Creek where the old Terre Haute road crosses it, in 1820, and kept a house of entertainment. The next settler of whom we can get any account was Jeremiah Stiles, the founder of Stilesville, in 1S80. He settled there in 1823, and was closely followed by John Swart, Jolui and Isaac Wilcox, John Eslinger, David Ocsburn and Jacob Reese. It is not known when Franklin Town.-.r"i,^* was organized but it was soon after the beginning of Hendricks County. Jere Stiles was the first .Justice of the Peace. He laid out the town of Stilesville in 1830. S.amuel Wick

Passage source: History of Hendricks County, Indiana, Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Towns, Educational, Religious, Civil, Military, and Political History, Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens, published 1885.

The first religious meetings in the township were held by the New Lights, and John Smart and Thomas Woods did tlie prcaeliing. This denomination organized a church at Orsburn's horsemill, which was the most noted place in the townsliip until about 1835. At this mill the Cliristian church was organized by Tiiomas Lockhart, in 1832. There are at present five churches in the township - Christian, Methodist, Presbyterian, Missionary and Regular Baptist. Three of these are in the village of Stilesville.

Passage source: History of Hendricks County, Indiana, Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Towns, Educational, Religious, Civil, Military, and Political History, Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens, published 1885.

The first schoul in Franklin Township was taught in 1831, by Jed iah White, one mile south of Stilesville. The district consisted of two townships. Thomas Barker was successor to Mr. AV'iiice in the school. He was a good teacfier, of fair attainments, but addicted to the use of "tanglefoot." Often, at noon recess, he would go to the village and return much exhilarated, and would devote the afternoon to illustrated lessons in politeness, which the children enjoyed hugely. In 1831 Eli Lee taught the first school in Stilesville; in connection with this he also mended shoes. One day while a class was up rattling off its lesson, and the teacher was pegging away on a shoe, Luke Stiles, who had been sent out from the school to prepare some fuel, cut down a tree which fell the wrong way and came down with a crash across the school house.

Passage source: History of Hendricks County, Indiana, Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Towns, Educational, Religious, Civil, Military, and Political History, Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens, published 1885.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Franklin Township - it names this place 19 more 19 times.

Fires near this place

1 since 2010

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 1 fire within 5 miles of Stilesville in 2010, burning about 4 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause Fires
Equipment and vehicle use1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

DateCause SizeReported by Name on the report
6 October 2010Equipment and vehicle use4.0 acresHoosier National ForestBLANTON

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Hendricks County

Storms near this place

12 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Stilesville in 12 storm reports between 1994 and 2020: 7 hail, 4 thunderstorm wind, 1 flash flood. The reports record 1 death. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

WhenEvent Place namedHarm What the report says
June 2008Flash FloodStilesville1 killed, $5,000A Coatesville man drowned Saturday afternoon on June 7th after his airboat capsized on floodwaters in Mill Creek in southwestern Hendricks County. He attempted to turn the boat to avoid a fallen tree, causing the boat to take on water and capsize. His boat was found at 1430 EST on Sunday and his body was found at 1030 EST on Monday, roughly 100 yards from his boat.
July 2004Thunderstorm WindStilesville$10,000no account filed
July 2016Thunderstorm WindStilesville$4,000Trees were downed in this location due to damaging thunderstorm wind gusts.
July 2008Thunderstorm WindStilesville-A 9-inch diameter tree limb was blown down by thunderstorm winds.
March 2020HailStilesville-no account filed
June 2008Thunderstorm WindStilesville-no account filed
May 2006HailStilesville-no account filed
May 2005HailStilesville-no account filed
May 1996HailStilesville-no account filed
April 1996HailStilesville-no account filed
April 1996HailStilesville-no account filed
June 1994HailStilesville-no account filed

Every storm recorded in Hendricks County

Nearest settlements

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Map PlaceDistance Sheets
Amo3.6 miles12
Coatesville3.9 miles14
Springtown4.6 miles12
Pecksburg4.7 miles12
Reno5.3 miles14
Hazelwood6.1 miles13
Summit6.2 miles12
Hadley6.6 miles12

Elsewhere

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

Wikipedia article on StilesvilleAn encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q2835375The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0).

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 444163. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.

Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.