Read time: 3 min.

As much as I’ve learned about East-Central Indiana’s old schoolhouses, I don’t consider myself an expert. Experience has taught me otherwise! Just when I start to feel confident, some new detail comes along and humbles me. That happened about five years ago, when I was told the building at 3604 East Jackson Street in Muncie was once a schoolhouse. It’s a fascinating claim, but one I’m not convinced is true.

Muncie takes up most of Delaware County’s Center Township. Researching its schools is more complicated than elsewhere since most of them were annexed into the city as it grew. Nonetheless, I’m pretty sure I narrowed down all of their old locations. 

I could tell you with certainty where the old Bishop, Congerville, Conn, Forest Park, Hurst, Madden, McClellan, Moore, Mound, Orphan’s Home, Priest, Reese, Shaffer, West Side, and Whitley schools all stood. Unfortunately, the one I’m missing is Boyceton. 

Boyceton’s school was established in the early 1890s and served District 11, an industrial neighborhood established by James Boyce near the intersection of East Jackson and South Leland Avenue¹. At some point, I got the impression that the schoolhouse was an inexpensive frame structure. That might be why it was one of the first to consolidate when it sent its students to the District 14 schoolhouse at Whitely in 1902².

Old plat maps from 1874, 1887, 1900, and 1921 consistently provide the locations of Center Township’s schools, both before and after they entered into the Muncie system. None of them show a school at the corner of Jackson and Bennett, but Boyceton is the only one I’ve never been able to definitively track down. Sanborn maps tell me where the neighborhood stood³, but they don’t go into any detail about the schoolhouse itself. 

All that’s to say that I hyper-focused on the old Boyceton schoolhouse when that person reached out about the home on East Jackson. Maybe it had been moved there! After all, the house is only seven-tenths of a mile west of where Boyceton once stood. I doubt it, but it’s possible. 

Another schoolhouse, Truitt, stood just two miles east in Liberty Township. Maybe it had been relocated! Unfortunately, vintage aerial images show the old school still standing at its original site as late as 1961. That doesn’t jive with what the county assessor says about the home at 3604 East Jackson, which appears to have been erected in 1913⁴.

Sadly, my research is at a standstill on this one. Nothing’s left of Boyceton today- it was pretty much demolished to clear the way for Indiana Steel & Wire long before I came on the scene. Still, parts of the old house down the road does sort of look like an old school! I’m publishing this without a definitive answer, but I hope that someone might stumble across it and point me in the right direction. 

Sources Cited
1 Boyceton (1888, May 5). The Muncie Morning News. p. 4.
2 Satterfield, E. (1992, September 6). African Americans have long history in religious community. The Muncie Star. p. 45. 
3 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Muncie, Delaware County, Indiana (1902). Sanborn Map Company. Web. Retrieved January 2, 2026. 
4 Parcel 1112359011000 (2026). Office of the Assessor. Delaware County [Muncie]. Web. Retrieved January 2, 2026.