I was meandering through southern Madison County on the way home from the Lick Creek ford -no clue exactly where I was- when something familiar popped into view: the old Poly Walk schoolhouse. I’d been there before. Of all the old schoolhouse names I’ve come across, “Poly Walk” easily makes the top five!
After Indiana’s new state constitution opened the door for publicly funded common schools, Adams Township wasted no time in building them. Five old schoolhouses were torn down, which made way for ten brand-new frame buildings1. One of those was the District 10 schoolhouse2. It was a small, but significant, piece of a big shift in local education.
Historian A.L. Kingman called the original District 10 schoolhouse “Buttonwood,” in a nod to the towering American sycamores that once filled the area. But locals knew it by another, much muddier name: Poly Walk3. Before the land was drained, the southwestern corner of Adams Township was a swampy mess- so boggy, in fact, that people laid down poles to create makeshift roads. To get to school, kids would literally walk along them, taking the “poly walk” across the muck4. The name stuck, and the story still squishes with character.
As distinctive as “Poly Walk” sounds, District 10 wasn’t the only schoolhouse in Adams Township to carry the name. District 5 was also called Poly Walk at one point, though it was more commonly known as Wildwood5. That building, unfortunately, is long gone.
The current District 10 structure dates back to 1889. It likely saw its final class dismiss in the early 1920s, when the consolidated school in Markleville was expanded and remodeled between 1922 and 1924. After that, students from District 10 made the move to town6, leaving their little country schoolhouse behind.
Sources Cited
1 Fox, J. (n.d.). Adams Township Had 10 Schools. Madison County Historical Society. Retrieved September 29, 2021, from http://www.andersonmchs.com/adams-township-schools.php.
2 Kingman Brothers. (1880). History of Madison County, Indiana with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches. Chicago, IL.
3 Forkner, J. & Dyson, B. (1897). Historical Sketches and Reminiscences of Madison County, Indiana. book. Anderson, IN.
4 Phillips, V.B. (1975, July 27). ‘Brush, Swamp’ Days Recalled. The Anderson Herald. p. 11.
5 (See footnote 1).
6 Plat Book of Madison County Indiana (n.d.) W. W. Hixson & Co. Rockford, IL. map. Map Collection, Indiana Division, Indiana State Library.
