Students went there as early as Civil War days1, but it’s unclear how Salem Township’s District 11 school got the name of Mt. Healthy. For starters, the schoolhouse doesn’t sit on any appreciable summit. Beyond that, illness raged through the “neighborhood” during 1881! It necessitated the closure of the community’s Sunday school2.
My guess is that the Strickler family, on whose land the building sat3, hailed from Mt. Healthy, Ohio. For what it’s worth, there was also a Mt. Healthy school in Madison County’s Pipe Creek Township near Elwood4.
The schoolhouses of Salem Township were redistricted around 18805. Mt. Healthy was listed as District 6 in 1874, but served District 11 seven years later6. That year, the Mt. Healthy neighborhood was prominent enough to earn periodic mentions in the Muncie newspapers7 but it wasn’t well-populated.
That January, for example, only nineteen pupils were enrolled at Sunday school in Mt. Healthy, compared to 65 at tiny Cross Roads8. Perhaps the area’s location on the Middletown and Daleville Pike -surveyed and laid out in 1840- helped burgeon its reputation.
The extant schoolhouse, just south of the Shackelford subdivision, appears to have been built in 18919. In 1897, Delaware County Superintendent of Schools Charles Van Matre began exploring consolidating one-room schools into larger structures. Salem Township -where Van Matre lived- began combining schools three years later.
Mt. Healthy was the township’s second to close when its seven pupils were sent to the District 10 schoolhouse at Cross Roads in 1901. Today, the old Mt. Healthy schoolhouse still stands as a home.
Sources Cited
1 Greene, D. (1946, March 28). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star Press. p. 6.
2 Mt. Healthy. (1881, April 18). The Muncie Daily News, p. 2.
3 Kingman Brothers. (1874). Map of Delaware County, Indiana. Chicago, IL.
4 Prayer Did Not Cure. (1901, February 3). The Muncie Morning Star, p. 7.
5 Salem Township Shows. (1880, March 24). The Muncie Daily Times, p. 2.
6 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.
7 Notes from Mt. Healthy. (1881, June 18). The Muncie Daily News, p. 2.
8 Paths of Peace Found in the Sunday – School. (1881, January 25). The Muncie Daily Times, p. 2.
9 Delaware County Office of Information & GIS Services. (2021). Parcel ID: 1417376001000. Delaware County, Indiana Assessor. map, Muncie, IN.
