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1837 – c. 1900
Liberty Township's first school-house was built of logs in 1838, half a mile south of the village near the Dunkard church site; the district-school record behind it is thin in both county histories, and the thinness prints. Chapman, read first-hand for the Liberty Township chapter: "The first school-house in Liberty township was erected near the site of the Dunkard church, one-half mile south of the village, in 1838. It was built of logs, and had a huge fire-place in one end of the room. The windows were one sash with three lights. One was in each side of the room." Howard, read first-hand, states the same in shorter form: "The usual first log school-house was erected in 1838. Since that date the schools have grown numerous and have improved as others in the county." The township frame around the school is settled: Liberty Township was formed by the county board's order of 2 May 1837, and the territory that became Lincoln Township was taken from it on 7 June 1866 — Chapman and Howard agreeing. Beyond that first house, the reached record thins out, and this section prints the thinness instead of filling it: neither Chapman nor Howard, in the Liberty text read whole, enumerates the township's district schools by number, name, or location, and neither dates any one-room closing; the National Register nomination for the town's commercial district carries no district-school enumeration either. Individual district traces survive only at snippet strength in Howard's biographical volume: Elmer Kane's first school "held in a log cabin… known as the Gearhart School" in Liberty Township; William E. Gushwa's fourteen years teaching in Liberty and Union townships after Valparaiso Normal; Albert O. Row's attendance at "the district schools near his home." The trustee-era administration of the township schools — the district numbering and the trustee's management of them — is documented in no carrier reached. The district schools' numbers, names, locations, and closing dates bank as a named gap (G-SC-1); Chapman's county Public Schools chapter, located in his contents but not read, the 1875 atlas's Liberty Township maps, the county superintendent's annual reports, and the state school-directory run are its settlers.