ORANGEVILLE Tiny community shows 25 percent loss in census

One census worker said some Orangeville residents might have been counted as residents of nearby Vernon Township.
By REBECCA SLOAN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
ORANGEVILLE -- The 2000 census shows a quarter of the population of the tiny Trumbull County community of Orangeville packed bags and moved out of town during the last decade.
The census results say that Orangeville's population went from 253 in 1990 to 189 in 2000.
Orangeville's mayor, Ruth E. Bennett, disagrees with those statistics, however.
"Our population has stayed about the same," Bennett said. "In a community as small as ours, if 25 percent of the people living here moved away, you'd definitely notice."
Bennett attributes the reported population decline on the fact that Orangeville residents have two different ZIP codes.
"Some of our residents have an Orangeville ZIP code, but a lot of them have a Burghill ZIP code," she said. "If people listed a Burghill ZIP code when they mailed in their forms, then they probably weren't counted Orangeville residents."
Janet Metzinger, who works at Orangeville's post office, also expressed disbelief over the 2000 census results.
"I have worked at the post office for a while and I get a good idea of how many people live in Orangeville. Believe me, we did not lose a quarter of our population," she said.
Choice of address: Metzinger said anyone who does not live within a half-mile of the Orangeville Post Office has a choice of having an Orangeville or a Burghill mailing address.
Burghill, a tiny crossroads community, is west of Orangeville and is part of Vernon Township. Orangeville is in Hartford Township.
So if there wasn't really such a drastic dip in Orangeville's population since 1990, what community were those 25 percent counted as a part of?
Tom Finnerty, a research associate with the Geographic Information Systems department at Youngstown State University -- a department that dealt with census maps and other census related information -- said people living in Orangeville who have a Burghill mailing address could have been counted as residents of Vernon Township.
"People with a Burghill ZIP code should have been counted as Orangeville residents, but it is possible that a mistake was made and they were counted as residents of Vernon Township. I know there have been mixups like that in previous censuses," Finnerty said, adding, "The numbers certainly reflect that this could have occurred."
Web site info: According to the U.S. Census Bureau's Web site, Vernon gained 75 people in the 2000 census, going from a population of 1,690 in 1990 to a population of 1,765 in 2000. That figure is right on target with Orangeville's loss of 74 people since 1990.
Finnerty also said, however, that in a village as tiny as Orangeville, it wouldn't be very difficult to experience a 25 percent population decrease during a 10-year period.
"Since there are only about 200 people living there, it doesn't take too many people for them to lose a significant percent," Finnerty said.