Take out a ruler and hold your fingers an inch apart. That’s how close I was to seeing Fall Creek Township’s old Mendon schoolhouse in southern Madison County! Unfortunately, the building was demolished in August 2021. Its lintel was still visible near its neatly-graded footprint when I visited on the nineteenth. The bulldozer was still sitting there!
My trip to Mendon wasn’t the first time I’ve been skunked on seeing an old schoolhouse I’ve traveled to, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Nevertheless, it’s still frustrating- almost as much as trying to understand the community’s early history! Mendon sits about three miles south of Huntsville, just east of Ingalls, near State Road 9. Clarence O. Loy wrote its early history for the Pendleton Times in 1949 and admitted that it was difficult to figure out.
Loy advised that a church at Mendon was first erected in 1844. Another, Antioch Methodist Episcopal, was built eleven years earlier and met in a log cabin that served double duty as a sanctuary and the first schoolhouse1. Markers in Mendon’s cemetery date to 1832 and 1833, so the actual year the place was established is anyone’s guess.
Nevertheless, we know the extant Mendon United Brethren Church and a new District 11 schoolhouse were built in 18682, and a historical marker near the church was dedicated a hundred and fourteen years later in 19823.
The last brick school at Mendon was built in 1895, according the decapitated lintel I saw. It closed in 1907 when township officials agreed to consolidate all but two of its rural schoolhouses into Pendleton4. Until recently, the sign, the church, the cemetery, the school, and a cluster of homes were all that remained of the community5. Now that the schoolhouse has been destroyed, there’s one less reason to go to tiny Mendon.
Sources Cited
1 Cabins – and a burial site and small pox (2018, June 14). The Pendleton Times-Post. p. A7.
2 Hull, M. (2014, May 22). Vanished villages. The Herald Bulletin. Web. Retrieved December 28, 2021.
3 Milner, P. (1982, September 22). Mendon historical marker dedicated. The Pendleton Times. p. 3.
4 School Controversy Is In Court After Peaceful Methods Failed (1927, August 18). The Alexandria Times-Tribune. p. 1
5 Jackson, S. T. (2018, April 1). Incident involving Douglass highlights history of Spring Valley. The Herald Bulletin. Retrieved December 25, 2021.
