Delaware County’s original Hamilton Township District 4 schoolhouse was built sometime between 1874 and 1881 on a triangular plot of land owned by Adam Williamson. The plot is now bounded by East County Road 400-N, North County Road 200-E, and Indiana State Road 67. Locals soon referred to the building by Williamson’s name¹, and the old Pleasant Grove Church was built nearby shortly afterwards². 

The District 4 schoolhouse moved in 1897 when the extant Williamson school was built on Thomas McCulloch’s land. It featured a large classroom along with two small cloakrooms³ in a layout that closely resembled a previous plan for a model schoolhouse⁴.

The schoolhouse was abandoned after only two years in operation during Hamilton Township’s initial wave of consolidation. and its students were transferred to the Royerton school⁵. Hamilton was the first township in Delaware County to consolidate its rural schoolhouses and mostly accomplished the task by 1903⁶. 

The old District 4 schoolhouse is now a home. The building is one-and-a-half stories tall, with an entrance underneath a squat bell tower. Between 1917 and 1919, Norman Richards altered the structure to include a rear addition connected to the original building by an enclosed porch. Richards also lowered the original arched windows and bricked in the bell tower’s louvered openings⁷. 

Today, the District 4 school is the only Delaware County township schoolhouse to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, an honor it received in 1984. 

Sources Cited
1 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 (pp. 268–269). book, Kingman Brothers.
2 Greene, D. (1954, January 21). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star Press. p. 6.
3 National Register of Historic Places. (1984, December 27). Hamilton Township Schoolhouse No. 4. National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination Form. United States Department of the Interior.
4 (See footnote 1).
5 Kemper, G. W. H. (1908). Education in Delaware County. In A Twentieth Century History of Delaware County, Indiana, Volume 1 (Vol. 1, p. 252). book, Lewis Publishing Company.
6 (See footnote 1).
7 (See footnote 4).