page_title: Lyles Station, Indiana
section_title: Education
hierarchical_section_title: Lyles Station, Indiana / Education
caption_attribution_description: English: Taken by Kurt Weber (en:User:Kmweber) on November 5, 2006
context_page_description: Lyles or Lyles Station is an unincorporated community in Patoka Township, Gibson County, Indiana. The community dates from 1849, although its early settlers first arrived in the 1830s, and it was formally named Lyles Station in 1886 to honor Joshua Lyles, a free African American who migrated with his family from Tennessee to Indiana around 1837. Lyles Station is one of Indiana's early black rural settlements and the only one remaining. The rural settlement reached its peak in the years between 1880 and 1912, when major structures in the community included the railroad depot, a post office, a lumber mill, two general stores, two churches, and a school. By the turn of the twentieth century, Lyles Station had fifty-five homes, with a population of more than 800 people. The farming community never fully recovered from the Great Flood of 1913, which destroyed much of the town. Most of its residents left for economic reasons, seeking opportunities for higher paying jobs and additional education in larger cities. By 1997 approximately fifteen families remained at Lyles Station, nearly all of them descended from the original settlers.
context_section_description: The first school in what became Lyles Stations was subscription school, where parents paid a fee for their children to attend. Established about 1865, its classes were held in a local church building. The community's second school, a three-room schoolhouse, replaced the earlier school. It was built across the road from the Wayman Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
  Lyles Consolidated School, which now serves as a community center and museum, was Lyles Station's third school. Although the population of Lyles Station declined after the flood of 1913, a new school was erected to educate the remaining children of the community, when older schools at Lyles Station and nearby Sand Hill and Sugar Bluff were closed as part of a statewide trend towards school consolidation. The school opened in 1919 and was an integrated school until 1922, when it became an all-black public school. (White students were enrolled at Baldwin Heights School in Patoka Township.) Lyles Stations's school was integrated once again in the 1950s; it closed in 1958 due to declining enrollment.
  Following its formation in 1997, the Lyles Station Historic Preservation Corporation began plans to restore Lyles Consolidated School for use as a local heritage classroom, living history museum, and community center. The school was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. After decades of deterioration, fundraising efforts and additional grants provided the financial resources needed to restore the school building to serve as a community gathering place and museum.
caption: The restored Lyles Consolidated School building
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