Last week, a Facebook friend sent me a fascinating message. Jane was on a bike ride near Summit Lake in Henry County when she came across an unusual crossroads. One corner featured a plaque commemorating a long-gone school, while another held a brick pillar pointing the way to a tiny cemetery! She hadn’t stopped to take pictures but promised to investigate the next time she camped at the lake. Unfortunately, I couldn’t wait. Here’s what I found.

The crossroads in question was the intersection of Buck Creek Pike and County Road 700-North in Henry County’s Stoney Creek Township, just a mile east of Summit Lake. If it weren’t for the reservoir, 700-North would turn into Rogersville Road and lead towards that hamlet. Buck Creek Pike, on the other hand, was an old toll road that once fed into Muncie along the present route of US-35. It splits from the highway in the village of Mt. Pleasant before it appears to peter out about ten miles southeast in rural Dalton Township. 

I drove to the intriguing intersection with my sister and Eliza the dog. There, we noted its arrangement. Buck Creek Pike flowed southwest, but a secondary gravel path connected with County Road 700 at a north-south right angle. That may seem weird, but roads like these are common in rural Indiana. They allow through-traffic to pass as those heading east or west get a safer line of sight. 

Just to the side of the gravel part of the road, the stone marker Jane discovered was impossible to miss. I hopped out to read it, and here’s what it said: 

I had to revisit what makes up a “rod.” As it turns out, a rod equals 16.5 feet. That’s not as random a unit as you’d think, since it’s equal to exactly 1/320 of a mile. More helpful, an acre is 160 square rods. 

I saw no evidence of a burial ground as I surveyed the intersection, so I turned to Google for help. As it turns out, Google Maps features MIT’s Smoots¹ as one of its many units, but not rods. Argh! I was forced to do the calculations and the cemetery -technically a graveyard since it sat on church property- was 660 feet west of the marker, and 495 feet north. Plugging that data into Google Earth, it was here, at  40° 2’5.26”N,  85°16’11.20”W.

Unfortunately, that’s all I’ve been able to learn about Westberry Friends. I found no mention of the congregation in area newspapers or county histories, even under an alternate spelling of “Westbury.” By 1857, neither the meetinghouse nor the graveyard appeared on a local plat map. The property belonged to the Hodson family by then², and the site was much closer to the road than it is today now that Buck Creek Pike has been straightened. I still have some big guns to pull in for research, though, and I’ll provide an update if I uncover anything more.

The second interesting site at the intersection of Buck Creek Pike and 700-North was the metal marker that memorialized the site of a schoolhouse. According to it, Stoney Creek Township’s old Kerr Hill school served the students of District 5 and stood maybe 160 feet east of the Westberry marker. The schoolhouse is actually visible in an 1893 plat map of Henry County³.  Here’s what that marker said: 

Unfortunately, there’s no mention of the old Kerr Hill school in any Henry County history or relevant newspaper article I could muster. I found a Facebook post by the Henry County Historical Society that indicated the original structure was replaced in 1911⁴, but that’s all! I’ll be honest- Henry County has been tough to research. The old school had already been torn down by the time a 1950 aerial camera floated past. Nothing remains today.

I ultimately left this rural intersection with more questions than answers, but I guess that’s part of the fun. Without Jane’s curiosity, I never would have known to look for either place, and without those two markers, there’d be almost nothing left to suggest a schoolhouse and a Quaker meeting once stood nearby! I’m sure a few pass by without giving those sights a second though, but I’m glad Jane did. I’m sure I’ll learn more, but let this be a lesson to all of us: who knows what else is hiding at the next crossroads?

Sources Cited
1 Curran, S. (2005, December 19). Smoot makes his mark in standards and measurements. Massachussets Institute of Technology. Web. Retrieved October 10, 2026.
2 Map of Henry County, Indiana (1857). Harwood & Watson [New Castle]. Map.
3 The county of Henry, Indiana : topography, history, art folio : including chronological chart of general, national, state, and county history (1893). Rerick Brothers [Richmond]. Map.
4 Henry County Historical Society, Inc (2016, April 28). The picture of the school was the Kerr Hill School in District No.5. The first building was built in [Post]. Facebook.