Oakville is one of those tiny hamlets that somehow refuses to blend into the landscape. For a place with just a handful of streets, it announces itself with a massive grain elevator visible from miles in every direction! A couple of old commercial buildings and a post office across the street hint at the community’s past, but Oakville once had something else, too: its very own schoolhouse.
Oakville was laid out at the southern edge of Delaware County by John Holsinger in 18731. The community got its start as Pleasant Hill, but took its present name seven years later. In 1884, every one of the village’s homes but four were destroyed in an April Fools’ Day tornado2! The community built back, though, and a school to serve Monroe Township’s new District 11 was erected in the early 1890s3.
Unusually, the Oakville schoolhouse was a three-room building that served grades 1-8. The third room, dedicated to manual training, doubled as extra space for the First Brethren Church next door4. Inside, one classroom revolved around an old pot-bellied stove. It was kept roaring by the boys who fed it firewood in exchange for a ten-cent weekly wage5.
By 1918, the Oakville school had been renumbered as District 86. The school briefly reverted to District 11 before it closed in 1924-25. O.D. Kirkham served as the last teacher before the building’s students were sent two miles north to the consolidated school in Cowan7. Unfortunately, nothing remains of the Oakville schoolhouse today. Its site serves as a parking lot for the town’s First Brethren Church.
Sources Cited
1 Haimbaugh, F.D. (1924). History of Delaware County Indiana. Historical Publishing Company [Indianapolis]. Book.
2 (See footnote 2).
3 Hillman, R. (1989, April 24). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 4.
4 (See footnote 3).
5 (See footnote 3).
6 Delaware County Public Schools. (1918). School directory, Delaware County public schools, Delaware County, Indiana 1918-1919. Muncie, IN.
7 Hillman, R. (1989, May 19). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 4.
