Breaks students plan get-together - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

Former students, teachers, and friends of the old Breaks Consolidated School are expected from many parts of the country, Sunday, July 18, when a basket dinner will be held at 12:30 p.m. in the basement of Liberty Chapel Church which is about two miles north of the old school.  Many are planning to attend the morning worship at the church which will begin at 11 a.m.  

The afternoon program will consist of two black-face comedians who will entertain the crowd.  Also all living teachers have been contacted and are expected to be in attendance. Mrs. Stella (Wilson) Chadwick, who taught at the school the first year after the school was opened, is expected to tell about the first school year.

Breaks school has an interesting history because, among other things, it was the first experiment in consolidation in Montgomery County.  Just before the turn of the century the consolidation concept was being promoted in Indiana and North Union Township was selected for the first such venture.  A large two-story, four-room structure was erected five miles northwest of Crawfordsville on land donated from a part of an original land grant to Richard Breaks.,

The dedication and opening was in the fall of 1901 with a faculty of four teachers and a janitor and a curriculum of 12 years of education.  

The new structure featured a central heating system (coal-burning furnace) and other innovations unknown in the old one-room schools.  However, there was no electricity rf plumbing of any kind.

The school was planned to accomodate pupils who had been attending about eight different one-room schools in the area and the students were no longer compelled to walk but were picked up at or near their homes by horse-drawn conveyances known as "hacks."  Seven of these were used.  These gave way in later years to motorized vehicles as roads were improved.  

This initial consolidated school was destroyed by fire in the spring of 1906, but work was started immediately on another identical building and it was ready for use in November of that same year. Few are now living who remember the first building or the fire which consumed it.

Several other "consolidated" schools were later built around the county but not many remain intact today.

High school was phased out at Breaks with the class of 1916.  However, the elementary grades were continued until 1949 when it was feasible to "bus" students to more modern and "more consolidated" facilities.  

Soon after the abandonment of the Breaks School it was offered for sale and was purchased by a former student, Ray Mahan for use as a residence.  

All former teachers and students are being urged to be at this reunion. Current officers are Paul Wilson, President; Marion Cowan, Vice President; Margaret Cowan, Treasurer; and Pauline Long, Secretary.