Originally called Funk’s Station thanks to its place on the railroad1, the community of Linwood grew enough to necessitate a schoolhouse by 18922. Designated as Lafayette Township’s District 11, the first schoolhouse still stands about a quarter of a mile east of the train tracks that dominate the community.
Continue reading “Lafayette Township’s Linwood schoolhouse in Madison County”
A village called Monticello was laid out by James Hilldrup and a man simply known as Sanders in 1851 at the present-day corner of West County Road 900-North and North County Road 700-West near Frankton in Madison County1. A log schoolhouse was built on the south side of County Road 900-West at the crossroads the following year.
Continue reading “Pipe Creek Township’s Monticello schoolhouse in Madison County”
I’ll never forget stumbling across my first artesian well. It felt as though I’d come across a biblical miracle! After I learned what they were, I made it my mission to track down all of them around East Central Indiana. Eventually, that trek took me to Madison County. I’ve found three there so far, but we’ll talk about two of them today.
Continue reading “Two flowing wells in rural Madison County”
Lafayette Township’s District 5 Schoolhouse was built around 18821 at a crossroads originally called Mt. Herman. The District 5 schoolhouse, most often called Keller, was also known to those who lived nearby as the Buttermilk school.
Continue reading “Lafayette Township’s Keller or Buttermilk schoolhouse in Madison County”
Lafayette Township’s District 9 schoolhouse in Madison County was known as Closser. It sits at the northeast corner of today’s West County Road 300-N and North County Road 500-W. In 1880, 300-N was known as the Anderson and Perkinsville Pike, a toll road that connected those two communities1. The schoolhouse got its name from the family that originally deeded its location to the township.
Continue reading “Lafayette Township’s Closser schoolhouse in Madison County”
This is what remains of Madison County’s Pipe Creek Township: District 8 schoolhouse, colloquially known as King’s. There’s not much to be seen of it today, but it’s there under the all the brush and bramble. I’ve found and taken photos of nearly two hundred one-room schoolhouses over the past couple of years, and my process for finding them starts rather simply: I locate a plat map from the late 1800s and compare it to recent satellite images from Google Maps. I get some coordinates and go take a picture. Sometimes it’s not that simple, but in this case, pictures be damned, it pretty much was.
Continue reading “Finding Madison County’s old King schoolhouse”