Wayne Township’s Compromise school might be the best-preserved old schoolhouse I’ve ever come across. The tidy, brick building sits about two-thirds of a mile east of Randolph County’s modern Jericho Friends Meeting House.
The first schoolhouse in Wayne Township was conducted by the Jericho Friends Meetinghouse1. Mariam Hill taught twenty or twenty-five students there in 1822 or 18232, but some say that a school existed as early as 18133.
Major disagreements about opposition to slavery caused the Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends to break into disparate factions in 18434. Around that time, a second school was erected to the west of the meetinghouse5.
Whether due to the split or not, several competing institutions followed. By 1865, officials in Wayne Township constructed a township school to serve District 7 just south of the meetinghouse6. Another school was relocated to a nearby site in 18817.
Officials decided to replace the old District 7 school with a new structure in 1889. The decision to build it a mile east of the meetinghouse was met with outspoken opposition by the Friends congregation! After some back-and-forth, the new District 7 school was eventually built halfway between both points. It gained the common name “Compromise” in the process.
The District 7 schoolhouse closed in 1912 to consolidate into the Wayne Township School two miles east. Today, the old school is a home.
Sources Cited
1 Hinshaw, G. (2008). A History of Education in Randolph County, Indiana. Retrieved February 13, 2022.
2 Tucker, E. (1882). History of Randolph County, Indiana. book. Chicago, IL; A.L. Kingman.
3 Wayne Twp. School Ass’n. Holds First Reunion at Grimes Grove (1939, August 28). The Union City Times-Gazette. p. 6
4 Edgerton, W. (1856). A history of the separation in Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends: which took place in the winter of 1842 and 1843, on the anti-slavery question … and some account of the action of other yearly meetings of Friends …. Cincinnati: Achilles Pugh, printer.
5 (See footnote 1).
6 Warner, C.S (1865). 1865 Wall-Map of Randolph County. C.A.O. McClellan & C.S. Warner. Waterloo, Indiana. map.
7 (See footnote 1).
