I’ve been alarmed at how many old schoolhouses have been demolished since I first started taking photos of them. It’s only been a handful, I guess, but there weren’t that many to begin with! It’d been nearly three years since I’d checked in on some of Blackford County’s, so I decided to see if what little I once discovered of Licking Township’s District 3 structure was still there. At one point, it was known as Corn Cob.
Licking Township’s District 3 schoolhouse once stood in the far-western regions of Blackford County. I don’t know when it opened, but the school was one of the county’s earliest to close. It was shuttered in 1907 under a law that, among other things, compelled township trustees to shut down schools whose attendance had fallen below twelve pupils1. After Corn Cob closed, its students were sent to the District 5 school, known as Pleasant Grove2.
The District 3 school’s bizarre name of Corn Cob appears to have been a common nickname for a rural and backwards area, similar to places like “Possom Trot” or the “Polecat Church3.” Unfortunately, the schoolhouse -also idiomatically referred to as Corn Cob Chapel- was fallen down by 19484. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to have decayed any more than it had when I first set eyes on it. Read more about the old Corn Cob schoolhouse here.
Sources Cited
1 Law Will Close School (1907, April 13). The Muncie Star. p. 10.
2 Hartford City (1907, September 16). The Muncie Star. p. 6.
3 News From a New Locality (1916, March 17). The Monroe Journal. Page 2.
4 The Hard Way (1948, April 24). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 16.
I have always been amazed how nobody cares enough to finish what nature started with ruins like this.
Same.