Two hidden artesian wells near Perkinsville in Madison County

Read time: 8 min.

Aside from occasional digging or a ride in a golf cart, my trips to flowing wells are usually pretty sedate. I roll up, hop out, take a picture, and, usually, take a swig! That said, it was a different experience tracking down two wells just east of Perkinsville in western Madison County last week: the trek involved traversing abandoned roads, blazing a path through the forest, and wrangling a Gator down a fifty-foot slope to the White River’s banks.

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Pipe Creek Township’s Hawkins schoolhouse in Madison County

Read time: 2 min.

In 1880, Pipe Creek Township’s District 5 schoolhouse was located about an eighth of a mile east of the present-day intersection of North County Road 900-West and West County Road 900-North in Madison County, on the land of C. Quick and Company1. The school was not visible on a map produced twenty-one years later, although William R. Hawkins owned the 160 acres immediately north of its former location. Jasper Huffman owned the land that the schoolhouse was situated on2

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What’s left of Richland Township’s College Corner schoolhouse in Madison County

Read time: 2 min.

Although Richland Township’s brick College Corner schoolhouse was erected in 18841, an older District 4 schoolhouse, likely frame, sat on the land of J.H. Chambers at the southeast corner of College Corner Road and North County Road 100-East even earlier2.

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The Madison County, Indiana Courthouse (1972-)

Read time: 8 min.

“Bullies don’t like to fight, son. They like to win.” 

The poet Kwame Alexander wrote those words in his graphic novel Booked, a story about a twelve-year-old soccer player named Nick who struggles to navigate life after his parents’ divorce. Who among us was twelve and wasn’t bullied for one stupid reason or another? If you were, it’s time to pool our funds and buy a jacket to send to Madison County. We may have to bring the tent and awning company in on this one.

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Adams Township’s Lost Woods or Possum Glory schoolhouse in Madison County

Read time: 2 min.

Many frame schoolhouses were erected in Adams Township during 1854, two years after a state law that allowed for the operation of free, common schools went into effect1. In 1880, a frame District 1 schoolhouse was located on the land of Granville Ellison in Section 2 of Adams Township, just east of Sly Fork at what would later become West County Road 500-South2.

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Finding Madison County’s old King schoolhouse

Read time: 5 min.

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.

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