Blossom School House

In the early years of Monroe County there were many different communities spread throughout the county. One such community that has been lost was Blossom. The Blossom community was a small gathering of buildings and even a post office that would be located southwest of Bloomington, Indiana on South Rockport Road at the intersection of Duvall Road where the South Union church still stands. This intersection shown by the map contains four buildings at each corner of the intersection, the two properties on the left are owned by The South Union Church and the ones on the right of the intersection now is a part of the Independent Limestone Quarry facility.

In 1884 a book was published by F.A. Battey & Co. publishers out of Chicago, Illinois that recorded on 1880 school-house #3 in Van Buren Township was a single room school-house that measured 22×30 feet, enrolled 44 pupils, and was taught by Ellsworth Williams. (Source: Counties of Morgan, Monroe & Brown: Historical and Biographical 1884 Chicago: F.A. Battey & Co., Publishers Charles Blanchard, Editor).

The Blossom one-room school house was listed as South Union School #3 in the Van Buren Township map of Monroe County Indiana in 1889. This map provides all of the school-houses, as well as their identification numbers within each township of the Monroe County area. I’m not sure as to why this is referenced this way by the date of this map as the 1910 Van Buren Township map and the 1920 Monroe County plat map state it is still called the Blossom School.  By 1932, all record of the Blossom/South Union one room school house is removed.

An early photograph from the Monroe County Library in the 1930’s of the South Union school house looking at the southwest corner.

The image above is from the Monroe County GIS system that shows the Blossom, or South Union, one room school house’s property location southwest of Bloomington, Indiana. To properly locate this parcel without any assistance from the Monroe County Library or Monroe County History Center, I had to navigate county section corners and various relocated roads based off of the maps previously shown.

To much of my surprise, this structure is the only remaining one room school house still in existence in Van Buren Township of Monroe County, Indiana. The owner allowed me access to the property in order to be able to accurately re-draw the exterior of the former school house based on existing photographs that I am grateful for. While many may think this is not a gold-mine so to speak, if you’ve walked up and down holler after holler in Van Buren Township for a few days looking for one of these, you would realize the opportunity this has given me. The Monroe County Interim Report performed by Bloomington Restorations, Inc. (BRI, Inc.) done in 1989 doesn’t even acknowledge this structure, whether it was lack of knowledge or lack of research, it’s right there in front of you. This same report from 1989 is currently used by the Monroe County Board of Review to “accurately” determine the status of all existing historic structures located through-out Monroe County.

The existing structure was modified by in the middle part of the 1900’s. While there are some exterior modifications that were made, the structure is still there intact and easily recognizable. The front porch was an addition and the chimney was relocated from the rear of the structure to the front southeast corner. Other modifications that have been made is the typical replacement of aluminum siding over the original wood lap siding and window opening size locations.