Williamson/McCulloch

The original Hamilton Township District 4 schoolhouse was built sometime between 1874 and 1881 on the triangular plot of land owned by Adam Williamson bounded by East County Road 400-N, North County Road 200-E, and Indiana State Road 67. The schoolhouse was soon referred to by Williamson’s name  (Helm), and in 1887 it was still situated on that plot (Griffing, 1887). Later, the site of the old school was near the point that the old Pleasant Grove Church stood (Greene, 1954). 

The extant Williamson school was built in 1897 on Thomas McCulloch’s land and featured three rooms- a large classroom and two small cloakrooms (National, 1984), in a layout that closely resembled a previous plan for a model schoolhouse (Helm). Hamilton Township’s 1899 consolidation abandoned the school after only two years in operation, and students there were transferred to the consolidated school at Royerton (Kemper, 1908). Hamilton Township was the first organization in the county to fully consolidate, and it did so around the two-room Royerton school, which received a four-room addition in 1903 (Kemper). 

The old District 4 schoolhouse is now a home. It is one and a half stories tall with an entrance underneath a square bell tower. Between 1917 and 1919, Norman Richards altered the structure to include a rear addition connected to the schoolhouse via an enclosed porch and a finished attic with a gabled dormer window. Richards also dropped the original arched windows and bricked in the bell tower’s louvered openings (National). 

Today, the District 4 school is the only Delaware County township schoolhouse to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, an honor it received in 1984. 

References

Helm, T. B. (1881). Mount Pleasant Township. In History of Delaware County, Indiana: With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers (pp. 268–269). book, Kingman Brothers.

Griffing, B. N. (1887). Mt. Pleasant Township. An atlas of Delaware County, Indiana . map, Philadelphia, PA; Griffing, Gordon, & Company.

Greene, D. (1954, January 21). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star Press. p. 6.

National Register of Historic Places. (1984, December 27). Hamilton Township Schoolhouse No. 4. National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination Form. United States Department of the Interior.

Kemper, G. W. H. (1908). Education in Delaware County. In A Twentieth Century History of Delaware County, Indiana, Volume 1 (Vol. 1, p. 252). book, Lewis Publishing Company.