Gettysburg is a village in Darke County, Ohio, United States. The population was 463 at the 2020 census.
History
Gettysburg was founded by natives of Adams County, Pennsylvania, in the late 1820s. When the settlement was platted by John Hershey in 1842, the community was named for Gettysburg, the county seat of Adams County. The community's first church was a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, established in 1847 or 1848, while the first school was built in 1850.
Around 1863 the Richmond and Covington Railroad (becoming part of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1921) constructed a rail line that ran through Gettysburg. Early in the morning of April 30, 1865, Abraham Lincoln's Funeral Train passed through the village on its journey to his burial place in Springfield, IL.
The railroad turned the town into a busy shipping point for agricultural products. For example, in 1907 one hundred and sixty-eight rail cars of tobacco valued at over one million dollars were shipped out. Also that year 398 carloads of grain valued at $300,000 were shipped from the town's grain elevators.
In 1922 Ira Petersime, a local businessman and entrepreneur, invented the electric poultry incubator. In short time Petersime and his son, Ray, built a manufacturing plant in Gettysburg and began shipping their incubators and other hatchery equipment all over the country and abroad. Their business grew to be one of the largest manufacturers of poultry incubators in the world. In 1933 a local historian commented that “the Petersime Incubator Co. put Gettysburg on the map of the world”.
Demographics
2010 census
As of the census of 2010, there were 513 people, 170 households, and 127 families living in the village. The population density was . There were 194 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the village was 97.5% White, 0.4% African American, 0.2% Asian, 0.2% from other races, and 1.8% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.6% of the population.
There were 170 households, of which 44.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 55.3% were married couples living together, 12.4% had a female householder with no husband present, 7.1% had a male householder with no wife present, and 25.3% were non-families. 20.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 4.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.02 and the average family size was 3.44.
The median age in the village was 32.7 years. 32.4% of residents were under the age of 18; 8% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 26.3% were from 25 to 44; 23.8% were from 45 to 64; and 9.6% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the village was 49.1% male and 50.9% female.
2000 census
As of the census