The Jaybird schoolhouse is disappearing before our eyes

By: Ted Shideler

I first visited many of Delaware County’s old one-room schoolhouses on a trip with my mom and grandma -a pair of teachers- when I was twelve. It wasn’t until I was twenty-four, though, that I started taking pictures of them. I thought I’d captured every last one until a deep dive into Google Earth proved me wrong! Turns out, I missed Harrison Township’s District 9 schoolhouse, known as Mount Olive or Jaybird. Sadly, what remains of it is fading fast. It likely won’t be around for future generations.

The early history of Harrison Township’s District 9 school is confusing: in the 1860s, two churches with the word “Olive” in their names held services at a pair of township schools. The first was Olive Chapel United Brethren Church, which used the District 2: McCreery schoolhouse before the congregation built a purpose-built sanctuary at the northwest corner of present-day Indiana State Route 28 and North County Road 450-West.

The remains of the schoolhouse as they appeared on January 25, 2015.

Several miles southeast, the Mt. Olive Methodist Protestant Church worshipped in a succession of schoolhouses before building a new church across Nebo Road in 1898

The first Mt. Olive school was a frame structure built in 1867 on land donated by Charles Mansfield. The structure was replaced by a brick schoolhouse in 1873, and the following year it was referred to as the District 7 school. This designation changed by 1881, though, as Mt. Olive was listed as District 9 when E.E. Grimes was the teacher.

At some point, perhaps after the church moved out, people began referring to the District 9 building as the Jaybird schoolhouse. Unfortunately, it closed after the 1923-24 term, when Harrison Township’s remaining one-room schools were taken into the new Harrison Township consolidated school four miles northwest. Eugene Gibson of Muncie was the last teacher at District 9.

Forty-two years after its closure, the schoolhouse was described as a “brick ruin.” Retired Muncie doctor Phil Ball later purchased the property in 1971 and was able to preserve the western wall of the structure along with the school’s old well. 

Photo taken April 6, 2021.

Unfortunately, the wall was crumbling when I revisited the schoolhouse in 2021. I’ve driven by several times over the past three years, and it’s disintegrating quickly! Hidden beneath thick foliage, the remains of Harrison Township’s Mt. Olive/Jaybird school are already hard to spot. If no one steps in to preserve it, what little is left will soon vanish completely. I’m glad I captured some photos before it’s lost to time for good.