Photo Credit: Students working on a project at Garfield Elementary in 1963. Image courtesy of Ball State University's Bracken Archive.
The earliest schools in Delaware County were one-room log cabins, the first of which in Muncie was located on the southwest corner of Walnut and Main streets. The County Seminary opened in 1841, seeking to “encourage principles of humanity, honesty, industry, and morality.” The seminary was eventually torn down, but public education remained a priority in the 19th century. Township trustees informally operated various one-room schoolhouses until 1873, when a Board of Education was created to supervise the entire county’s education system. In the early 20th century, the one-room schoolhouses were replaced with graded schools. After a period of consolidation, the remaining schools were organized into the districts we know today: Cowan, Daleville, Delaware, Liberty-Perry, Muncie, and Yorktown.
The Eastern Indiana Normal School was founded in 1899 to train primary and secondary school educators. After several unsuccessful attempts to establish itself, the school became a state college in 1918 after Ball family members purchased the school and donated it to Indiana as a branch campus of Indiana State Normal School. The state legislature renamed the school Ball State Teachers College in 1929. The college became Ball State University in 1965.
Muncie Central in the 1970s.
Image courtesy of Ball State University's Bracken Archive and Special Collections.