From 1997 to 2011, nearly every trip to my dad’s carried me past the tiny town of Kimmell on US-33, a stretch of the old Lincoln Highway. The road’s modern routing glides over the town on an overpass. Because of that, I somehow missed one of the community’s best landmarks: an old schoolhouse situated at the corner of Schlabach Street and Jackson. Once I finally spotted it, I knew I had to turn around and take a closer look.

One of my oldest schoolhouse mysteries involved the District 7 building in Henry County’s Dudley Township. An old Quaker meetinghouse called Hopewell stands nearby. I attended a meeting there something like twenty years ago and was told the building had originally served as a schoolhouse! Its T-shaped form looked the part, and I carried that little nugget around for years. Unfortunately, the truth appears to be sitting right next door, where some very obvious evidence comes to a different conclusion.