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1859–1899 and after
The town's schoolhouse was built as a Methodist college and bought for a tenth of its cost. The New Carlisle Collegiate Institute was erected by the Methodist Episcopal church in 1859 and opened in 1861 under the church's patronage; Howard records that it "took high rank as a classical school" and flourished seven or eight years in a substantial two-story brick building, 44 by 75 feet, before the expense proved too heavy for the church. Chapman prints the purchase that followed with a dry edge: the town "bought an $8,000 school-house for $1,500… J. H. Service gave $500 to start it as a Methodist college, and afterward was taxed to buy it for the town" — the $1,500 being the church's unpaid indebtedness on the building. The building became the school town's schoolhouse; an alumni reunion on 29 August 1907 drew some eighty alumni and perfected a permanent organization. The school town itself ended by statute: under an act approved 3 March 1899 (Acts 1899, p. 373), towns of not more than 1,500 inhabitants without school indebtedness could transfer their schools to the township trustees, and New Carlisle took advantage of the act — "it has since been simply a civil and not a school town," Howard writes. The town's schools today stand inside the New Prairie United School Corporation, dug at seat strength in the government section and at full depth in this build's schools pass.