Green Street/Green

One of the earliest roads in Niles Township was laid out sometime after 1836, a mile west of the the township’s eastern boundary. Today known as North County Road 800-East, early settlers referred to it as Green Street since most of them came from Greene County, Ohio (Ellis, 1898). It was on this road that the District 1 schoolhouse, later known as Green or Green Street, was established on land that John Battreall donated in 1840 (Helm, 1881).

In 1852, the Green Street schoolhouse was one of ten operating in the township. John Ellis -who later authored a history of Delaware County- served as teacher in 1860-61, in charge of as many as 83 pupils at a time during his time at the schoolhouse (Marks, 2006).

The initial, frame building was destroyed in 1871 during a windstorm on the fourth of July, but its replacement -the extant schoolhouse- was erected the same year (Shirk, 1947). It appears on an 1874 map of Delaware County (Kingman), and in 1881, Helm indicated that Edward Philelmum was the teacher. 

Esta P. Cochran of Eaton was the final teacher of District 1, which closed after the 1916-17 school term along with the rest of the Niles Township schools (Delaware, 1917). After its closure, the students of District 1 were sent to the Dunkirk school in Jay County, 2.5 miles away since the school at Albany was nearly twice as far.

Today, the building is used as a barn. Between 2016 and 2021 the schoolhouse was significantly damaged by winds that toppled a portion of its western gable. 

References

Ellis, J. (1898, June 8). Our County. The Muncie Morning News. p. 3.

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.

Marks, M. (2006, March 31). Only one 19th-century Niles Township school is standing. The Muncie Star Press. p. 3C.

Shirk, O. (1947, January 25). The Green Street School. The Muncie Morning Star. p. 5.

Delaware County Public Schools. (1917). School directory, Delaware County public schools, Delaware County, Indiana 1917-1918. Muncie, IN.