The first District 7 school appears to have been built on the Noah Ryan farm a mile west of the present-day intersection of West Eighth Street Road and North County Road 600-West. It may have originally been called Ryan due to its location there¹. In 1880, the schoolhouse was three quarters of a mile further east².

The schoolhouse that still stands -the third- was finished in 1903 as a two-story, two-room structure³. Upon its completion, students from the old District 7 school and the District 8: Epperly school consolidated into it⁴. In 1912, the school shut down for a couple of weeks because of a diphtheria outbreak⁵.

In its later years, the students of Jackson Township attended elementary classes at Perkinsville before completing middle school coursework at Hamilton. After eighth grade, they went on to nearby high schools at Lapel in Stony Creek Township or at Walnut Grove in Hamilton County⁶.

In 1955, a Jackson Township consolidated school opened nearly four miles northwest of the District 7 schoolhouse and it was shuttered⁷. At the time, the Perkinsville and Hamilton schools were the oldest in the county. Today, the old District 7: Hamilton schoolhouse is a dwelling.

Sources Cited
1 Bock, G. (1969, August 23). No Kidding, There Was Once Bell Rattle School. The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 4.
2 Kingman Brothers. (1880). History of Madison County, Indiana with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches. Chicago, IL.Harden, S. (1874).
3 Schools of Jackson Township Good Ones (1904, February 5). The Elwood Daily Record. p. 1.
4 (See footnote 1).
5 May Close The School (1912, October 31). The Alexandria Times-Tribune. p. 8.
6 Perkinsville School To Be Used For Last Year (1954, September 1). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 19.
7 New Township School Planned (1952, January 22). The Anderson Herald. p. 1.