Everyone who knows me is familiar with my fascination with old one-room schoolhouses. As such, they know about my compulsion to find all of them in East Central Indiana! As it stands, I’m pretty sure that I’ve been to all of the old schoolhouses in Delaware, Madison, Blackford, and Randolph counties. I thought I’d wrapped Jay County up, too, until I learned about Jackson Township’s White Oak school.
A couple years ago, I found a newspaper clipping from the 1950s or 60s in the Facebook group called Remembering Portland, Indiana. It was a picture of an old school in a forest somewhere with a caption that read “ THE MISSSING Loblolly Marsh schoolhouse does exist…”
“If you want to see the school for yourself, here’s how to get there from Portland: go north on US 27, then west on Ind. 18. Continue about four miles until you come to County Road 101, where you turn right (north) for less than a mile until you come to a ’T.’ This is County Road 20. Turn right (east) here.”
“After you have driven only a hundred yards or so, the road will come to an abrupt halt, but you will be able to see where the continuation of the road once existed. If it’s a dry day, you can follow this continuation in your car. Otherwise, do it on foot.”
“You will want to follow the continuation which veers quickly off to the left (north). You will shortly see that it is a very clearly defined dirt road through woods and swamp. The schoolhouse is several hundred yards down the road on your right.”
With that information, I was able to find the schoolhouse in short order using Google Maps and a 1900 plat map of Jackson Township. Today, the old road is a dirt trail to the building partially covered by a pair of ponds. Nevertheless, a schoolhouse stood at the end of it.
Jackson Township’s District 2 school, called White Oak, was built in 1899. A brick structure, the one-room schoolhouse was one of ten common schools in Jackson Township along with Karney, West Liberty, Glenwood, Kitt, Sugar Grove, Oakland, West Grove, Boyd, and others.
It was winter when I learned this, which made it the perfect time to track down a building that appeared to be situated seventy-five back from the bounds of a swampy forest. Although the old article seemed to welcome those who went past the school on a Sunday drive, times have changed! The schoolhouse had a hold on me, so I bought a drone. I didn’t have a chance to fly it until later that summer.
My mom’s interested in my history projects and she’s a valued member of my research party. I invited her on my trip, along with my six-year-old niece. Chloe’s preternaturally smart at the age of six, and she’d been along on a previous trip with us to look at artesian wells.
The drive took an hour. The most direct site from which to fly the drone to the schoolhouse appeared to be the end of West County Road 800-North, which turns into a driveway. The problem was that most of the drone’s flightpath would be above a large, angular pond and some significant tree coverage.
I decided to take us to the corner of West County Road 850-North and North County Rod 400-West, about half of a mile as the crow flies from the schoolhouse. With no cars in sight, we parked on the gravel road. I set the drone down, let it obtain a GPS signal so it could return home if by autopilot if needed, and launched it up!
I piloted the drone to 70 meters up and flew it in the general direction of the schoolhouse. Unfortunately, I lost my bearings and swiveled it around before I located the squarish pond just beyond the tree line. A quick break in the woods just beyond the pond signaled the location of the schoolhouse, but there wasn’t enough room for me to land or touch down.
I’d planned to hover in front of the trees about ten feet above the ground in order to get a decent picture of the schoolhouse head-on. That wasn’t going to happen, though, since the building stood about sixty feet into the forest. I positioned the drone nearby, but it lost signal just above the pond, half a mile away from me. The camera went black.
I’ll admit it! I panicked. I’d flown the drone before with interference and piloted it back to me, but I’d never just flat-out lost signal. An icon popped up on the controller that strongly suggested a push of the thumb that’d allow it to find its own way home. That was another feature I’d never used, but I clicked it. Gingerly, I held the icon.
I couldn’t see it since I was so far away, but the telemetry readout on my phone told me that the drone gradually rose to 100 meters -my predetermined return-to-home altitude- and regained enough signal to fly back. Eventually, I saw it and switched the drone back to manual mode to pilot it back to the road. A Jeep whizzed by just after I picked it up from the gravel.
I got a couple decent photos from the first flight, but none were really that great. Overall, the drone had flown nine minutes over the course of a mile, there and back. The maximum altitude it achieved was 101 meters (331 feet)! I spent just over a minute waiting for it to regain signal once the screen went black.
Despite my metal range extenders, I figured a flight with less tree coverage might lead the signal to be better. With that in mind, Mom, Chloe, and I moved down the road towards where we’d come from. I installed a new battery and launched the drone for another try.
That flight was much less dramatic- I flew for twelve minutes, at a maximum height of 78 meters (255 feet) and found the schoolhouse a lot quicker. I swiveled the camera on its gimbal to take more overhead shots, then retreated back over the square pond for more. Unfortunately, maneuvering the drone down through the trees caused me to lose signal again.
Autopilot was triggered. I was ready to bring it home without any photos, but I decided to regain control and circle the building. I figured some decent angles of the school might emerge, and I was right! All of the pictures I’ve posted are from the second flight, and the drone reached a total furthest distance of 861 meters from its controller. That’s more than half a mile, with two rows of trees and all sorts of hazards to account for.
As best as I could tell, my flight was successful! The mission was a success. To my knowledge, my flawed photos represented the only ones taken of Jay County’s White Oak schoolhouse by an actual person in a long time.
Next time I drone the old White Oak/Loblolly school I’ll make a couple of changes. the interim, though, these photos are a great start to the final Jay County schoolhouse in my collection, and a good resource for people who’ve never even seen a lick of Jackson Township’s White Oak Schoolhouse. I’m sure many never knew it existed in the first place.
