Read time: 4 min.

I dug into the history of Madison County’s one-room schoolhouses a couple years ago. Most were cut-and-dried, but one in particular still puzzles me- Pipe Creek Township’s District 7 school. There’s a house just north of where the building once stood that bears a striking resemblance to an old schoolhouse! Could it be the original building cleverly disguised as a home? I still wonder today.

Pipe Creek Township’s first schoolhouse was taught by a Dr. Perry. It was built on land owned by Jacob Sigler in 1836¹. Other schools sprung up here and there, and one was eventually established on County Road 500-West at the end of County Road 900-North, about half a mile east of Howard Cemetery. It appeared on an atlas in 1876². Four years later, the school served students from District 7³. It faced property owned by the Dixons, so locals eventually began to call it the Dixon schoolhouse⁴.

That’s all I knew about the institution until I stopped and took photos of the house. Unsure of its provenance, I asked the Madison County Historian, Steve Jackson, for more information. Unfortunately, Steve wasn’t sure the school still stood. Dixon was a frame building, he said, and it wasn’t open for very long. He figured the home I’d driven past was a regular old farmhouse.

He could be right. Indeed, the Dixon school is missing from a 1901 map of Pipe Creek Township. It’s clear that the place wasn’t in business for very long! To complicate matters, I’ve only seen passing references to it in newspaper archives. The earliest I found was from 1878, when J.A. Shell was named the teacher⁶. Another mention from 1886 described ditch work being performed just south of the building⁷. 

I’d love to have discovered another old schoolhouse in Madison County, but a couple things indicate that I didn’t. For starters, old maps show the school centered at the corner of 500-West and County Road 900, while the house I stopped at sits about two hundred feet north of the crossing. In addition, the county assessor’s office says the building I took photos of was built in 1910⁸– years after the schoolhouse seems to have closed. 

Still, a couple things make me wonder about the home I visited. County records of old buildings are often wrong, for one. The silver maple and elm that frame its front appear quite old, as well, and that’s a telltale sign of an old school. In addition, Google’s Street View cars took pictures that show an old walk that connected its front to the road in 2009 and 2013. Old trees, a central walk, and the building’s complex roofline just scream schoolhouse to me! So do the height of its windows.

It’s been three years since I first passed that perplexing house, and I’m still scratching my head. Did the school get moved from its original site and rebuilt, or is it just one of the many old humdrum farmhouses that dot Madison County? Whatever the case, the building has received an impressive makeover over the last few years. Hopefully, someone out there knows the story and can help solve the mystery.

Sources Cited
1 Forkner, J. (1914). History of Madison County Indiana. A Narrative Account of Its Historical Progress, Its People and Its Principal Interests, Volume 1. book, The Lewis Publishing Company. Chicago, IL.
2 Indiana Counties 1876 (1876). Madison County. Baskin, Forster, and Company [Chicago]. Map. 
3 History of Madison County, Indiana, With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches (1880). Kingman Brothers [Chicago]. Book. 
4 “Dead Dog, Frog Pond? They’re School Names” (1967, September 9). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 4.
5 (1901). Pipe Creek Township. An atlas of Madison County, Indiana. map, Cleveland, OH; American Atlas Company.
2 Funeral of Samuel hughel On Sunday (1915, October 1). The Anderson Herald. p. 1. 
6 Personal Mention (1878, August 9). The Anderson Democrat. p. 3. 
7 Brannock Corner Musings (1886, April 23). The Frankton Weekly Enterprise. 
8 Madison County Office of Information & GIS Services. (2024). Parcel ID: 48-05-29-300-004.001-025. Madison County, Indiana Assessor. map, Anderson, IN.