Not much is left of Licking Township’s District 3 schoolhouse, commonly known as Corn Cob. The school was one of Blackford County’s earliest to be discontinued, in 1907, under a law that compelled township trustees to shut down schools whose attendance had fallen below twelve pupils, as well as to provide transportation for all students who lived two miles from the school they were compelled to attend1. Upon the school’s closure, its students were conveyed to the District 5 school, known as Pleasant Grove2.
The District 3 school’s bizarre name of Corn Cob appears to have been a common nickname for an extremely rural or backwards area, similar to whimsical locations like “Possom Trot” or the “Polecat Church3.”
The Pleasant Grove school, a one-room structure one and a half miles south of District 3 by way of Angling Pike, was gutted by fire in 1936. Though it was initially believed to be salvageable, officials decided against doing so. Instead, they chose to send its pupils and teacher4 to the larger Carney School three miles northeast.
The Corn Cob schoolhouse, also idiomatically referred to as Corn Cob Chapel, was fallen down by 19485. Today, its remains are invisible throughout most of the year- you’ve got to go there during fall or winter to see what’s still there.
The Corn Cob school is one I was pretty sure no longer stood in any appreciable capacity when I first researched it. A second pass in Google Maps led me to see some inorganic-looking straight lines in the satellite imagery, though, so I marked its location to make drive past in person. Sure enough, a portion of it still stands.
Sources Cited
1 Law Will Close School (1907, April 13). The Muncie Star. p. 10.
2 Hartford City (1907, September 16). The Muncie Star. p. 6.
3 News From a New Locality (1916, March 17). The Monroe Journal. Page 2.
4 School Building Is Damaged By Fire (1936, December 19). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 10.
5 The Hard Way (1948, April 24). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 16.
Ted Shideler 