The township era: a schoolhouse of 1858, moved into town in 1876

1858–1907 · LINCOLN TOWNSHIP'S SCHOOLS, FROM HOWARD'S COUNTY HISTORY

Schooling on this ground begins, as it does across Indiana, as a township act: Howard's history of 1907 records that Lincoln Township's first school house was erected in 1858, about a mile from the present town of Walkerton — two years after the Walkerton plat itself — and that the building was removed into the town in 1876, the year before the town incorporated. The one-room and district schools of the township's countryside stand behind that sentence in Howard's telling rather than in front of it: by the time he wrote, the township's graded schools had gathered the children in, and he records the outcome in a single line — graded schools of a high order, including a high school in Walkerton, had long since provided for the township's youth. The district-by-district roll of the township era — the one-room schools' names, sites, and closing years — was not found in the record reached for this section; Howard prints no such roll for Lincoln Township, and the township trustee's records and the county superintendent's reports that settle it are not online. The era is therefore printed at the size Howard gives it, and the missing roll rides in the closing gaps (GAP-WKSCH-9), not filled with inference.

Sources:

1. Timothy Edward Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (Lewis Publishing Co., 1907), Part 49 (Lincoln Township): the first school house of 1858, its removal into Walkerton in 1876, and the graded schools with a high school in Walkerton.