Delaware County’s Niles Township is remote. It’s so much so, in fact, that there’s never been an incorporated community within its bounds! That makes the evolution of its schools atypical of the rest of the county’s townships. I’ve spent some time in the area recently, and now is as good a time as any to talk about its scholastic history.
A school at Granville -the only real community in Niles Township, but an unincorporated one- was completed around 1836. A year later, classes were also conducted inside a cabin built by John Sutton. During the winter of 1838, more lessons were taught on the land of Daniel Dean, north of Albany. The following year, the first two purpose-built schoolhouses were constructed on the farms of Warner Mann and Robert Kimble1.
Niles Township was divided into official school districts in 1839, and new schools were established at the farm of John Lewis near Eaton-Albany Pike and on the land of Philip Stoner, just northeast of Granville2. John Battreall donated a portion of his land to build a new schoolhouse in District 1 in 18403, but those early schools were simply built, measuring no more than twenty by twenty feet.
Early schoolhouses were humble places, built with whatever materials a community could gather. Think of walls of notched logs packed tight with mud or clay, rising above rough puncheon floors toward an eight-foot peaked roof clad in hand-split shake shingles. Heat and cooking both came from a broad fireplace on the far wall- its chimney little more than mud and a lattice of sticks holding everything together. As for illumination, builders simply cut long, narrow openings into the logs five or six feet off the ground, creating makeshift windows that washed the room in a thin ribbon of daylight.
Before 1840, attending school meant paying a subscription fee; a kind of early tuition that kept the building open and covered the teacher’s salary. In 1840, lawmakers added something more helpful when they decreed that proceeds from real estate transactions could help offset those costs. Unfortunately, the support was short-lived. Once that yearly pot ran dry, every schoolhouse slipped right back into the old subscription model, leaving families to shoulder the burden once again5.
The era of subscription schoolhouses ended in 1851, when Indiana ratified a new constitution that provided for the basics of a township-based, common educational system6. The School Law of 1852 expanded upon the new constitution, authorizing a schoolhouse fund and an official statewide Superintendent of Public Instruction, as well as a “general and uniform system of common schools, wherein tuition shall be with out charge, and equally open to all7.”
Once public funds began flowing, Niles Township wasted no time transforming its old subscription schoolhouses into true free schools. Officials expanded the curriculum, brought in better-qualified teachers, and set the township on a new educational footing. By 1852, ten schoolhouses dotted the area, and in Districts 4, 5, and 10 alone, teachers earned a combined $127.54 for just three months’ work8. Over the next decade, the township’s rustic log buildings gradually disappeared, all replaced by sturdier frame schoolhouses by 18659.
The frame District 1 school on Green Street -an early pioneer road- blew over in 1871 during a freak windstorm on the fourth of July, and a brick replacement was erected that year. Eight years later, Samuel Selvey granted the township land for a new District 5 schoolhouse10. By 1881, nine schoolhouses served the township: District 1 at Green Street; District 2, called Bethel after a nearby church; District 3: Wingate or Oak Grove; District 4, known as Center; District 5, Huffman, District 6: Edginton, District 7, called Graham; District 8 at Granville; and District 9, known as Smith.
A new schoolhouse at Granville was constructed in 188511. Two years later, the township erected a new District 9 schoolhouse on the land of George and Sophia Lowe12. Still, there was no event more significant to the livelihood of Delaware County’s common schoolhouses than Charles Van Matre’s trip to the town of Webster in Wayne County. In 1897 Van Matre -Delaware County’s superintendent of schools- ventured thirty-five miles south to see Webster’s newly-consolidated schoolhouse, which combined three buildings into one and “answered every purpose of the three13”. In Delaware County, Perry Township was the first to consolidate in 189814.
Niles Township entered the consolidation era in 1907, when the District 7, Graham school merged with nearby District 9, Smith15. Change came quickly after that. The District 2, Bethel school shut its doors after the 1911–12 term16, and District 5, Huffman followed in 191517.
The final blow came two years later, when the State Board of Health condemned the remaining schoolhouses as unsanitary, especially compared to the modern consolidated buildings rising in neighboring townships. With their schools shuttered, Niles Township students were sent to classrooms in Eaton, Albany, and even nearby Dunkirk across the Jay County line18.
In 1959, Indiana’s State Commission for the Reorganization of School Corporations rolled out sweeping new standards that reshaped the state’s educational map. Every school district, they ruled, had to serve at least 1,000 students in average daily attendance and maintain an adjusted assessed valuation of at least $5,000 per pupil. In Delaware County, only Muncie and Yorktown cleared both thresholds19.
The fallout was immediate. Smaller districts were pushed toward consolidation, and by 1967, Desoto High School in Delaware Township, Royerton High School in Hamilton Township, and Eaton in Union Township merged to create the Delaware Metropolitan School District. Niles Township students were swept into the new district as well, and the school-city of Albany joined the following year, completing a major shift in the county’s educational landscape.
Today, the Niles Township landscape just hints at the schoolhouses that once anchored its crossroads and farm lanes. The township never had a main street to grow from and no incorporated town to pull everything into a neat center. Instead, it featured scattered communities, shifting districts, and generations of families doing the best they could to educate their children on the edge of the county map. In a township without a town, the schools were the towns! Although only a few of them survive, their history still shapes the landscape if you know where to look.
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 Kingman Brothers. (1874). Map of Delaware County, Indiana. Chicago, IL.
3 (See footnote 1).
4 Kemper, G. W. H. (1908). Education in Delaware County. In A Twentieth Century History of Delaware County, Indiana, Volume 1 (Vol. 1, p. 252). book, Lewis Publishing Company.
5 (See footnote 1).
6 Natali, B. L. (2007). The Impact of Caleb Mills on the Hoosier Education Debate: An Edition of Two Unpublished Addresses (thesis). University Graduate School, Indianapolis.
7 Indiana Constitution. (1851), art. 8, sec. 1.
8 (See footnote 1).
9 (See footnote 1).
10 Delaware County, Indiana. (1879 May 30). Deed Book 44. p. 403.
11 Delaware County Office of Information & GIS Services. (2021). Parcel ID: 0431231001000. Delaware County, Indiana Assessor. map, Muncie, IN.
12 Delaware County, Indiana. (1887 June 25). Deed Book 58. p. 466.Spurgeon, B. (1994, December 12). Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 4.
13 (See footnote 4).
14 (See footnote 4).
15 (See footnote 4).
16 Delaware County Public Schools. (1912). School directory, Delaware County public schools, Delaware County, Indiana 1912-1913. Muncie, IN.
17 Delaware County Public Schools. (1915). School directory, Delaware County public schools, Delaware County, Indiana 1915-1916. Muncie, IN.
18 Niles Township Schools May Not Open This Term. (1917, September 7). The Muncie Morning Star. p. 17.
19 Delaware County Committee for the Reorganization of School Corporations. (1959). A Comprehensive plan for the reorganization of school corporations of Delaware County Indiana. Muncie, IN; Delaware County Committee for the Reorganization of School Corporations
I had never thought of the idea of a townless township, but I suppose I should have. I continue to find it interesting that Indiana’s educational system is still so closely identified with that first school law from the 1850s.
It IS interesting!
I suspect I’ll have more townless townships to write about as I slowly migrate these roundups here from my old schoolhouse site.