The intersection of State Road 36 and Raider Road in northwestern Henry County is a study in educational contrasts. The campus of Shenandoah School Corporation -and the massive wind turbine that helps power it- stands on the northeastern corner, while a home that was once a schoolhouse sits just across the road. I’ve driven past it for years without finding much out about it. Until yesterday.
Henry County has a rich educational history, but its schoolhouses have proven more difficult to research than most. For starters, none of the myriad plat maps I’ve found are worth a damn in labeling each schoolhouse with its district number. That’s a huge, county-wide oversight! Most Indiana townships districted their schoolhouses in a serpentine manner starting at the northeast corner, but there were almost always exceptions. Without that crucial piece of information -the district numbers- I’ve held off on writing about most of the schools I’ve encountered.
Enter Lisa Hubbs Hawk, my friend and a former colleague of my mom’s. She’s a fantastic historian when it comes to the Middletown/Fall Creek Township area, and her blog post yesterday finally gave the old schoolhouse across from Shenandoah a name: College Corner1. According to her sources, Joseph Wilhoit built a frame schoolhouse in 1856. The brick building still standing eventually replaced it, but I haven’t found out when. The county assessor’s office says 19002, but that’s often an inaccurate placeholder.
A church, also named College Corner3, popped up just south of the school sometime before 18934. Unfortunately, a plat map thought to be published in 1925 shows nothing in that area5 and there’s nothing but a field there today. For its part, the College Corner schoolhouse remained open until 19166, just after a $55,000 consolidated school was completed in Middletown. Three years after it was shuttered, College Corner was sold for $3107.
Sources Cited
1 Hawk, L. (2026, September 5). You may recognize this property that is on the north west corner of SR36 and Raider Road, 1856. Lisa’s Blog and Learning Center. Web. Retrieved September 5, 2026.
2 Parcel 003-01742-00 (2026). Office of the Assessor. Henry County [New Castle]. Web. Retrieved September 5, 2026.
3 Mechanicsburg. (1902, November 14). The Tri-County Banner [Knightstown]. p. 5.
4 The county of Henry, Indiana : topography, history, art folio : including chronological chart of general, national, state, and county history (1893). Rerick Brothers [Richmond]. Map.
5 Plat book of Henry County, Indiana (1925-1940). W.W. Hixson & Co. [Lombard]. Map.
6 (See footnote 1).
7 (See footnote 1).
