Huntzinger/Huntsinger/Hontzinger

Unfortunately, there’s little information available about Stony Creek Township’s District 8 schoolhouse.

Here’s what we do know, though: In 1881, a District 8 schoolhouse was located on the land of Daniel McClintock at the southwestern corner of what is now West County Road 200-South and South County Road 700-West, just southwest of what was then called Bruin Post Office (Kingman, 1880). The post office at Bruin lasted only six years, from 1878 to 1884 (Madison, 2021).

In 1914, a Republican Party meeting was held at the Huntzinger/Huntsinger schoolhouse on October 13, 1914 (Republican, 1914). The schoolhouse closed in 1925 in order to send its students to Lapel, and two years later the abandoned schoolhouse was sold via trustee’s auction to Quinter Bevers for $400 (Five, 1927).

Today, the schoolhouse is a home. In recent years, the yellow siding of the house has given way to the current gray color scheme (Jackson, 2021). Nevertheless, the structure is still identifiable as a one-room school given the distance from the top of its dropped windows to the roofline, its general appearance, and the building’s provenance in old maps.

References

Kingman Brothers. (1880). History of Madison County, Indiana with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches. Chicago, IL.McTurnan, L. (1900). Handbook For The Teachers of Madison County. Madison County, Indiana. Anderson, IN.

“Madison County”. Jim Forte Postal History. Web. Retrieved 12/21/21.

Republican Meetings For This Week (1914, October 13). The Elwood Call-Leader. p. 6.

Five Rural Schools Near Lapel Are Sold (1927, July 15). The Elwood Call-Leader. p. 6.

Jackson, S.T. (personal communication, August 20, 2021). discusses Madison County’s Stony Creek Township schoolhouses