The Carmel Clay Historical Society recently completed a year-long research project on the history of Carmel schools. Among many exciting discoveries, Society researchers learned the true origin of Carmel High School.
Though CHS celebrated its centennial 32 years ago, 2019 marks the 150th anniversary of the school’s actual founding.
In 1868, a Quaker congregation in Carmel known as the Richland Monthly Meeting built a two-story brick schoolhouse on the southeast corner of Smokey Row Road and Range Line Road. It has long been thought that the congregation operated the school as a private academy. However, CCHS researchers discovered a lease document in the subbasement of the old Hamilton County courthouse that tells a different story. Rather than operating the school themselves, the congregation leased the property to the township, which furnished the building and opened a public graded school on Jan. 4, 1869. A school announcement published in a Noblesville newspaper in 1869 confirmed the arrangement between the church and township.
For the first several years, the school was called Carmel Academy, but by 1872 it was more commonly called Richland High School and later Carmel High School intermittently.
Researchers found more convincing evidence in several newspaper announcements for Carmel High School in 1882 and 1883. These were published four to five years before the school was thought to have been founded.
In 1887, Clay Township and Delaware Township built what has long been credited as the first Carmel High School. However, the staff and students of the new school understood it to be a continuation of the original Carmel High School. This was evident in a history of Carmel published in the 1901 Carmel High School Annual yearbook: “In the year 1868 the Richland Academy was built which was occupied until 1888 when the school was moved to the present high school building.”
That characterization of the relationship between the schools was echoed in a 1919 CHS yearbook edition of the Carmel Standard newspaper, and it is supported by the fact that the staff and administration carried over from one building to the other.
At some point in the last century, this history was forgotten. Fortunately, the discovery was made in time for the school’s sesquicentennial. Carmel’s legacy of excellence in education is more profound than initially thought as Carmel High School was one of only a handful of public high schools in the state when it was founded.
The Carmel Clay Historical Society has published its findings in a book titled The Early History of Carmel Schools. It is on sale now at the Monon Depot Museum.