Shepherd/Lincoln

Thomas Helm indicates that the Mt. Pleasant schoolhouse and church -built on land donated by James M. Van Matre in 1843- was located near the site of the Mt. Pleasant Township District 3 schoolhouse (Helm, 1881). The deed to the plot of land Van Matre donated does mention “School District 3 (Delaware, 1843),” but it’s more than four miles south of District 3 as officially laid out in 1854.

At any rate, G.W.H. Kemper advised that a Shepherd school -the predecessor to the extant District 3 structure- was constructed in the early 1840s (Kemper, 1908); a history of the Mt. Pleasant Township school system narrows the year of completion to 1844 (History, 1956).

In 1866, Benjamin D. Snodgrass granted the Mt. Pleasant Township Trustee half an acre of his land to establish a schoolhouse (Delaware, 1866) Due to the recent assassination of the president, it’s likely that this is when the school’s common name changed from Shepherd to Lincoln. Probably a frame structure, the school was visible at its present location in the 1870s (Kingman, 1874) and was replaced by a brick building in 1886 (Delaware, 2021). 

The Lincoln school served students from grades 1-8 and was the last one-room building in the township to close, which it did after the 1924 school year when George Lambert was the teacher (Delaware, 1923). 

Six years after the school’s closure, Athel Watson converted the building to a home. A 1980 restoration framed in a front porch using bannisters from the demolished Daleville High School (Winters, 1982). Despite many additions, the original portion of the schoolhouse, facing west, is identifiable. It is located at 40.211253, -85.537946, on the east side of N. County Road 800-W, 1/4 mile south of County Road 150-N.

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.

Delaware County, Indiana. (1843, April 7). Deed Book 7. p. 386.

Kemper, G. W. H. (1908). Education in Delaware County. In A Twentieth Century History of Delaware County, Indiana, Volume 1 (Vol. 1, pp. 237–237). book, Lewis Publishing Company.

History of the Mount Pleasant Township School System. (1956). Delaware County Historical Alliance. p. 1.

Delaware County, Indiana. (1866, June 15). Deed Book 31. p. 343.

Kingman Brothers. (1874). Map of Delaware County, Indiana. Chicago, IL.

Delaware County Office of Information & GIS Services. (2021). Parcel ID: 1005300002000. Delaware County, Indiana Assessor. map, Muncie, IN. 

Delaware County Public Schools. (1923). School directory, Delaware County public schools, Delaware County, Indiana 1923-1924. Muncie, IN. 

Winters, R. (1982, September 5). A Little Brick Schoolhouse Becomes a Home. The Muncie Star, p. B1.