Niles Township’s Lowe schoolhouse in Delaware County

Read time: 2 min.

In 1863, John T. Ray granted a portion of his land on County Road 900-North to the Trustee of Niles Township to build a schoolhouse1. By 1881, the District 9 school was commonly known as the Smith school. It was taught by Eva Thomas2. The land the schoolhouse sat on was just south of 380 acres owned by Benjamin F. Smith, which is probably how it got its name3

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The artesian well at Granville, Indiana

Read time: 6 min.

I’ll never forget the first time I stumbled across a flowing artesian well.  It was midnight and I was twenty, fresh off a shift at my call center job. No twenty-year-old wants to stagger home and hit the sack right after work, so in those days I’d go explore the countryside by car. One night, with no idea where I was, I slowly crossed an iron bridge and found myself staring at a pair of enormous boulders that -I swear- had water spewing out of them. At that moment, I felt as though I had stumbled upon a biblical miracle.

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