Read time: 5 min.

Hundreds of old schools stand scattered across the rural Indiana landscape. From tiny one-room buildings to larger, multi-story structures, each echoes a bygone era! Unfortunately, many also stand silently over empty fields and quiet roads, only to be noticed by the occasional passerby. One of the most prominent in my area is Madison County’s old Cunningham Elementary School, just a stone’s throw east of Alexandria. It’s a real landmark worth preserving.

I first heard of Cunningham during my freshman year of college, just as my love of the back roads was beginning to take hold. A friend mentioned an abandoned school he’d spotted on Bethel Pike, northwest of Muncie. “Bah,” I replied, convinced he’d mistaken the old Odd Fellows’ hall in the hamlet of Bethel. Fortunately, a detour from my usual route eventually proved me wrong. There it was, looming over the road a couple miles further than I’d ever ventured. The proud old school instantly captured my attention.

It’s hard to fathom now, but Cunningham Elementary once stood as the pinnacle of rural scholarship. It represented the culmination of more than a century of educational evolution that dated to 1837, when the area’s first school was established in Alexandria¹. Flash forward to 1914 and Monroe Township was home to a whopping thirteen rural schoolhouses! Aside from a few in Alexandria’s suburbs, they were known as Carolina, Spiceland, Tennessee, Hall’s Corner, Manring, Mt. Pisgah, Starr, Ferguson, Fairview/Summers, Olive Branch, Orestes, Osceola, and Vermillion². 

Consolidation swept through Monroe Township rapidly after the schools at Orestes and Mt. Pisgah were destroyed by a tornado in the summer of 1922³. In response, Township Trustee William Cunningham purchased three acres of land from farmer David Ebsted the following August to build a new Orestes Elementary. His vision was to create a school that would serve all the students in western Monroe Township, but he faced strong resistance⁴. Ultimately, Cunningham’s plot took several years to unfold.

The school at Orestes eventually captured students from several one-room schools, but the eastern half of the township remained stuck in the pioneer days until 1938. That year, the Monroe Township Advisory Board erected a $60,000⁵ elementary school on the site of the old Manring schoolhouse. Ultimately, students from eleven one-room schools -Bush, Caroline, Hall’s Corner, Little Killbuck, Manring, Scott’s Addition, Spiceland, Starr, and Vermillion, along with several that had already been shuttered⁶– wound up attending classes there.

Cunningham Elementary was officially dedicated on October 31, 1938. The event was a big deal: William Cunningham introduced state superintendent of public instruction Floyd McMurray’s keynote address, then Madison County’s superintendent of schools, James W. Frazier, traced the history of education in Monroe Township. The Marion College Quartet even performed at the ceremony⁷!

It took nine years for the consolidated Orestes and Cunningham schools to become the only elementary schools in unincorporated Monroe Township, and Cunningham thrived as enrollment increased. Though rumors swirled that officials wanted to convert the building to a high school⁸, it never happened. Instead, the school was expanded to the southeast in 1956 with the addition of a cafeteria and four new classrooms. The wing featured red bricks that contrasted with the buff-colored structure, a choice driven by cost. According to a former principal, red bricks were half a cent cheaper to procure⁹!

Generations of Cunningham Comets passed through the school’s contrasting walls for sixty-eight years. Unfortunately, changing enrollment patterns eventually led to further consolidation. A series of modern schools has been built in Alexandria, and Orestes Elementary closed its doors after the 2002-03 school year. Cunningham followed suit just three years later. Ultimately, the school victim to the very trend it ushered in. Officials disposed of it in September 2007¹⁰.  

Eighteen years have passed since Cunningham Elementary closed its doors. A Muncie-based realty company purchased it in 2009¹¹, but the building’s fate remains uncertain. The exterior of the old school still holds hints of its vibrant past, but any new purpose -if one exists at all- remains concealed behind its aging walls.

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 Dead Dog, Frog Pond? They’re School Names (1967, September 9). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 4.
3 Trustee Cunningham Settles With Insurance Co. For Orestes School (1922, June 13). The Alexandria Times-Tribune. p. 1.
4 No Intention of Joining Innisdale With Orestes (1922, May 6). The Alexandria Times-Tribune. p. 1.
5 New School Bonds Go To Commercial Bank (1937, December 13). The Alexandria Times-Tribune. p. 4. 
6 Holtsclaw, S. (2006, May 17). After 68 years, Cunningham Elementary School says goodbye to Alexandria.” The Alexandria Times-Tribune. p. 1. 
7 New Cunningham School Building To Be Dedicated (1938, October 21). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 10. 
8 No Truth Rumor Of New School (1939, March 28). The Alexandria Times Tribune. p. 1. 
9 (See footnote 5). 
10 McBride, L. (2007, September 19). The Alexandria Times-Tribune. p. 1. 
11  Madison County Office of Information & GIS Services. (2024). Parcel ID: 48-06-21-200-006.000-021. Madison County, Indiana Assessor. map, Anderson, IN.