Read time: 4 min.

I joined the board of the Delaware County Historical Society about a year ago and edit our newsletter, the Society Quarterly. I’m obsessed with local history! I like venturing out in the field to meet fellow historians, and I get the chance every quarter or so as a speaker in our ongoing Lost and Found series. The most recent event was last night, and it focused on Delaware Township and the town of Albany.

The mission of DCHS is to be Delaware County’s storyteller by sharing the compelling narrative of its history. Programs like Lost and Found are a crucial component of that! Not to brag, but our work is well-received. In 2019, we won the Indiana Historical Society’s Indiana History Outstanding Event or Project Award for our Remember When series. 

I wasn’t on the board back then, but contributed to Remember When as a volunteer. Traveling from township to township, we invited the residents of Delaware County to share local history and stories. Four hundred attendees brought historic images and documents for us to digitize! As one of the people doing the scanning, I was sorry to see it end.

Lost and Found carries on the spirit of Remember When. Our first presentation was in Center Township, Muncie, and our second was in Yorktown/Mt. Pleasant Township. Delaware Township was third, and my board colleague, Chris Flook, started the evening with a piece explaining the differences between political, civil, and survey townships. Then, he told the story of Delaware Township’s historical communities and dove into its early settlers and modes of transportation.

I always learn a lot with Chris behind the clicker. There was much to learn about a part of Delaware County I don’t often venture to, particularly regarding the community of Sharon. My segment came next. As you might imagine, I focused on schoolhouses and flowing wells. Fine examples of both can be found as long as you know where to look!

East-Central Indiana is home to a slew of old schools. Delaware County has more than any I’ve been to, and five remain standing in Delaware Township. The most prominent was later remodeled into an interurban station that, remarkably, became a Ford dealer, an auction house, and, later, a Pizza King!

Our old schools are more than just buildings waiting to be torn down and forgotten. They’re pieces of the educational and social history that shaped our communities. The schoolhouses of Delaware Township continue to teach us valuable lessons more than a century after they last saw a student, and I think I got my point across.

Next came the artesian wells. I’ve been to three in Delaware Township. Flowing wells have been in the news lately, and an email from a WRTV6 reporter I received a few months ago suggests that the trend might continue. I hope shedding some light on the ones I’ve been to helps advocate for their preservation. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve driven past a flowing well and spied people filling jugs and jugs of pure, clean, water!

Old-fashioned schoolhouses and flowing wells are both intriguing and important. In fact, they’re important enough to prompt me to talk about them to an audience! I’m not a fan of public speaking, but I do it anyway since places like the Albany Glass Museum, which hosted our event, are where I need to be. My work friends think it’s cool that I contribute to historical society presentations, but it’s a niche interest they often don’t share. I never thought I’d say I’ve worked in factories for the past four years, but I’ve found that the less time I spend in them, the better.

Our Delaware Township event featured our lowest attendance yet, but I felt at home with the history fans who attended and especially enjoyed chatting with everyone afterward. I even learned that the area’s last township-owned schoolhouse, Oak Grove, is being restored! I don’t know where our next trip will take us, but I hope it’s one of Delaware County’s more rural townships like Harrison or Perry. Each of our communities have stories worth telling, and I can’t wait to keep doing my part.