A decade or so ago, my girlfriend’s mom lived off of County Road 1200-North in rural Delaware County. I was there all the time! I don’t have much reason to travel the old Dunkirk and Moore Pike past it today, but someone let me know that the old Poor schoolhouse there was in dire straits. Sure enough, it is- the roof of its porch has absconded.
Many Delaware County residents know about the stone marker that commemorates the old Poor schoolhouse. It’s stood at the corner of County Roads 1200-North and 200-East since 19491. Fewer probably realize that they’ve driven past the old schoolhouse as well: if my research and local recollections are correct, it still sits about a third of a mile east of the monument.
Thomas C. Poor granted officials a portion of his land for use as a schoolhouse in 18582. Poor charged the township $2.00 and insisted that the rights to the land expire after ninety-five years or once the plot was no longer used for a school3.
A frame schoolhouse was soon erected. In 1918, it was the last of Union Township’s schools to consolidate into Eaton4. After its closure, it appears as though the building was moved a third of a mile east to be used as a home! One of its residents, Norma Haas Robbins, recalled that the home on their acreage was “an old schoolhouse, not too bad5.”
Later generations of Haas Robbins’ family were told that the house was originally the Poor School “that had been moved to the location on the 26-acre farm,” but admitted that “it is quite possible that the story is only that – a story6.” Still, it seems plausible to me. Tales like that don’t sprout from nothing, and the home looks all the world like an old frame schoolhouse if its siding were removed.
Unfortunately, some of it has. It reveals part of the building’s timbers. With the porch roof now gone and its substructure exposed to the elements, the old building feels precariously close to crossing an invisible line from neglected to lost. Whether it truly began life as the Poor schoolhouse or simply carries that story forward in its bones, the old home still embodies the fragility of rural history.
Sources Cited
1 Greene, D. (1951, December 3). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star Press. p. 4.
2 Delaware County, Indiana. (1858, August 13). Deed Book 20. p. 506.
3 (See footnote 2).
4 Delaware County Public Schools. (1918). School directory, Delaware County public schools, Delaware County, Indiana 1918-1919. Muncie, IN.
5 Haas, R. (1992). North of Eaton Farm. RobbHaas Family Pages. Web. Retrieved December 25, 2022.
6 Haas, R. (1992). Poor School. RobbHaas Family Pages. Web. Retrieved December 25, 2022.
The “someone deeds lands for a school for free/very low cost, but if it’s not a school anymore goes back to the family” seemed to be a common thing in that era. Here in Portland during the 1970s when the school-age population contracted and closures began, the school board looked at two schools and decided to close the one that was either underperforming, in a worse location, worse physical plant, or something else. Then someone looked through the records and found out that if they did, the land would revert to the original family, meaning they would make zero off of the sale of land. So they closed the better school instead.