A crumbling patch of brick and stone has fascinated me ever since my family moved to Yorktown when I was seven. Every time we passed it, I’d catch a glimpse and wonder what story it held. One Sunday on the way to church, I finally asked my mom about it. “That’s an old schoolhouse,” she said. From that moment, I was hooked. Nearly twenty-eight years later, not much has changed: if you look closely, the remnants of Mt. Pleasant Township’s Nebo schoolhouse are still there, waiting to be noticed by anyone with a sharp eye.
An early iteration of Delaware County’s Mt. Pleasant Township’s District 1 schoolhouse was erected in 18421. The humble log structure didn’t just serve students, though- it also doubled as a gathering place for worship. In time, that small congregation grew into what later became Cammack Methodist Church2.
In its early days, the schoolhouse was simply known as McKinley after a nearby family farm3. That changed in 1874, when James R. Williamson granted a portion of his land to the Mt. Pleasant Township trustee for the construction of a new school4. The second District 1 schoolhouse was brick with a hipped roof, and locals started calling it “Nebo5” or “Mt. Nebo6.” The building stood on a slight hill and took its new name in a nod to the biblical mountain from which Moses was granted a view of the Promised Land.
In 1883, sixty-three students called the schoolhouse home7. Eventually, though, attendance dwindled. In 1907, a law was passed that forced county trustees to abandon a schoolhouse when its average attendance dropped below twelve students8. As a result, the District 1 school was the second in Mt. Pleasant Township to close. Its students were sent to the new, two-room school at Cammack sometime between 1910 and 19129.
The Mt. Pleasant Township Trustee finally advertised the abandoned building for sale in 193510. Four years later, the schoolhouse was still standing when its plot was excluded from the fifty-one-acre Westacres addition tract that wrapped around the southeast side of the property11. Twenty-one years later, the school was “still standing along Nebo Road…in bad condition12.”
As late as 1967, portions of the old schoolhouse walls were still standing. They were weathered, but still recognizable as a school13. By 1975, though, time and the elements had reduced the structure to little more than a scattered pile of bricks14. Over the years, those bricks have been arranged, rearranged, and stacked in different ways along the original foundation, as if each new owner of the property couldn’t resist trying to give the ruins a little order. Under some conditions, you can even spot the rusting remains of an ancient stove amidst the rubble!
The site has been obscured from the west by stacks of logs over the past few years, but even in ruin, the site of the old Nebo schoolhouse still tells its story to anyone willing to look closely.
Sources Cited
1 Helm, T. B. (1881). Mount Pleasant Township. In History of Delaware County, Indiana: With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers. book, Kingman Brothers.
2 Greene, D. (1961, March 10). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star, p. 6.
3 (See footnote 1).
4 Delaware County, Indiana. (1874, June 15). Deed Book 38. p. 484.
5 The County Superintendency. (1881, May 17). The Muncie Daily News, p. 2.
6 Sunday School Convention to be Held at Mt. Pleasant M.P. Church. (1888, July 5). The Muncie Daily News, p. 2.
7 Greene, D. (1953, November 6). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star, p. 6.
7 Law Will Close School (1907, April 13). The Muncie Star. p. 10.
8 Delaware County Public Schools. (1913). School directory, Delaware County public schools, Delaware County, Indiana 1913-1914. Muncie, IN.
9 Mt. Pleasant Township Trustee. (1935, October 24). Notice of Sale of Abandoned School Property. The Muncie Morning Star. p. 13.
10 Added Tracts Being Platted. (1939, April 12). The Muncie Morning Star, p. 11.
11 History of the Mount Pleasant Township School System. (1956). Delaware County Historical Alliance. p. 1.
12 Delaware County Indiana Historic Aerial Plats. (1967). photograph, Muncie.
13 Greene, D. (1975, May 2). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star, p. 4.
