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. 

I was driving through rural LaGrange County when I saw a schoolhouse. As I pulled over for a closer look, I wondered if I’d have any luck researching the school and it’s history since its so far from where I usually roam. Fortunately, I have the archives of the old Topeka Journal on hand! They filled in much of the story. 

A schoolhouse has anchored what’s now the southwest corner of County Road 200 South and State Road 5 in rural Grant County for well over a century. As early as the 1860s, an institution serving Monroe Township’s District 7 stood there on land owned by James Hults¹. 

Researching Huntington County’s old Ginger Hill schoolhouse -District 8 in Jackson Township- introduced something I’d never seen before: an 1879 plat map that shows it as “Contemplated S.H. No. 8¹!” Indeed, that’s the year it was built on land owned by William Brown². 

I’ve spent fifteen years trying to find a photograph of Mt. Pleasant Township’s long-lost Sycamore School in Delaware County. That’s nearly forty percent of my life! Somewhere along the way, the building became my white whale; the one local landmark I was convinced had vanished without leaving so much as a single image behind. Then yesterday, while researching something completely unrelated, I stumbled across one by accident. The school looked nothing like I’d imagined.

A schoolhouse serving District 3 has stood at the corner of Old Fort Wayne Road and East Lamont Road in Huntington’s Union Township since at least 1866, when it appeared just north of the Wabash & Erie Canal on land owned by the Silvers family¹. The building was commonly known as Whippoorwill².