Read time: 4 min.

I first heard of Mendon, Indiana, while I chased down a photo of its old T-shaped schoolhouse. The tiny community sits just a few miles south of Pendleton, tucked off State Road 9, and I worked it into a larger schoolhouse hunt that took me through several townships. When I finally rolled into town, I was met with a surprise- there was no school in sight! I parked in the cemetery, checked my bearings, and only then realized the building had recently been demolished. Even so, Mendon hasn’t lost all of its charm. For a history buff, the crossroads still has a few stories left to tell.

Mendon is sometimes known as Menden. Home to one of the first post offices in Madison County, the community was never platted and thus never amounted to much. Still, the place got its start when Thomas Jordan built a store on what’s now West County Road 1050-South. Jordan soon sold the store to Morgan Drury, and a post office was soon established in Drury’s home. John Pyle and Jonathan Wiseman succeeded him¹, but the post office fell out of use by 1859². 

A better-traveled thoroughfare, the Pendleton-Eden Turnpike -the highway, now- came in 1862³. Fortunately, a post office wasn’t all that stood in Mendon near the crossroads. Settlers built a Methodist Episcopal Church just west around 1831. Mendon Cemetery dates to the same period, but a United Brethren Church came shortly afterwards. Eventually, three doctors even ended up practicing in the area- physicians named Richison, Wiseman, and Williams⁴. 

That said, the community of Mendon was -and is- dominated by religion. The extant Mendon Church was built in 1868 by Sim Brown, who constructed the building by hand from native poplar and used it to craft all its fixtures. The schoolhouse that served the students of Fall Creek Township’s District 11 was completed the same year. That’s the one I just missed seeing, but there’s still some schoolhousery to be found so long as the old building’s lintel suffices. It’s on display just east of the church. 

Today, Mendon’s raison d’être is the quiet cemetery that bears its name. Spread across gentle, rolling hills, it serves as the final resting place of nearly 2,500. Among them are at least forty-five members of the Mingle family- so many, in fact, that in its earliest years locals simply called the place “Mingle⁵!” One of the interments belongs to Jacob Mingle, who may be the same who built the first tavern in Pendleton⁶.

One old county history describes Jacob Mingle’s patrons as “principally immigrants, seeking homes at various points in the State. Although the tavern was not faultless in its appointments and accommodations, “the tale continued, “it was infinitely preferable to the open air or the covered wagon⁷.” 

Aside from the wide, sloping graveyard, the church, and the footprint where the old schoolhouse once stood, Mendon doesn’t offer much in the way of buildings. On my visit, I counted maybe three or four houses, depending on where you decide the little hamlet begins and ends. Still, there’s more than meets the eye. The sanctuary, renovated in 1999⁷, is more than just a relic of the past: once a year, it opens its doors to a congregation that gathers to honor those who oversaw the building’s construction. It’s the kind of fellowship that keeps Mendon’s name alive on the map, if only just.

Sources Cited
1 History of Madison County, Indiana (1880). Kingman Brothers [Chicago]. Book. 
2 “Madison County”. Jim Forte Postal History. Web. Retrieved August 10, 2025.
3 Cabins—and a burial site and small pox (2018, June 14). The Pendleton Times-Post. p. A7.
4 Mendon Cemetery aka Menden/Mingle (n.d.). Pioneer Cemeteries and Their Stories, Madison County, Indiana [Anderson]. Web. Retrieved August 10, 2025. 
5 (See footnote 4).
6 (See footnote 1). 
7 Historic Mendon Church Seeks Funds for Restoration (1999, February 3). The Pendleton Times-Post. p. 7.