Little is known about Harrison Township’s District 3 schoolhouse. There was no school in the area in 1874 and there weren’t any close by. Perhaps that’ wa’s because Harrison Township has never had any significant communities aside from the hamlet of Bethel¹. 

Sarah Stokes granted the Harrison Township Trustee a portion of her land for the construction of a school in 1880 in exchange for fifty dollars². By the following year, the District 3 school was known by the common name of Brady, and C.W. Rector taught its pupils³. The land of William Brady was situated three-fifths of a mile to the west, which may have provided the schoolhouse with its common name⁴.

A brick building, the school was 1.5 stories tall with a partial basement. At some point, its patrons began referring to the schoolhouse as Maple Grove⁵. 

Though the majority of Harrison Township’s schoolhouses closed when the consolidated township school opened up after the 1923-24 year, District 3 was an anomaly: it was the second school in the township to permanently close, shuttering after the 1915-16 school year⁶. Harrison H. Summers of nearby Gaston was the final teacher at District 3.

Today, the old District 3 schoolhouse is a home.

Sources Cited
1 Kingman, A.L. (1874). Map of Delaware County, Indiana : from recent & original surveys, made expressly for this map, drawn, compiled and published by A.L. Kingman and assistants. map, Chicago, IL; A.L. Kingman.
2 Delaware County, Indiana. (1880, July 19). Deed Book 46. p. 475.
3 Helm, T. B. (1881). Mount Pleasant Township. In History of Delaware County, Indiana: With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers. book, Kingman Brothers.
4 (See footnote 1).
5 Greene, D. (1977, January 18). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 4.
6 Delaware County Public Schools. (1916). School directory, Delaware County public schools, Delaware County, Indiana 1916-1917. Muncie, IN.