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A Brief History of Lyles Station, Indiana

The legacy of Lyles Station, Indiana, a small community located 4.5 miles west of Princeton, Indiana, began when brothers Joshua and Sanford Lyles, freed slaves from Tennessee, migrated north and purchased land near the convergence of the Wabash, Patoka, and White Rivers in the late 1850’s. After the Civil War, Joshua Lyles returned to Tennessee a successful farmer and urged family and friends to join him in Indiana. On September 16, 1870, Joshua Lyles donated sixty acres of his land to the Airline Railroad, which maintained a station in Lyles Station for passenger and mail service until the 1950’s. In 1886, the settlement was officially named Lyles Station in honor of Joshua Lyles. That same year, William H. Roundtree successfully petitioned the federal government for a post office in Lyles Station and became the first black postmaster north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

The town flourished during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, developing into a self-sustaining community of approximately 800 residents. At its peak (1880-1913), Lyles Station consisted of fifty-five homes, a post office, a railroad station, an elementary school, two churches, two general stores, and a lumber mill. The town even had its own military band. However, the 1913 flood of the Patoka and Wabash Rivers left much of the area under water, signaling the start of the settlement’s decline. With their homes, farms, and businesses decimated, many residents relocated north to cities such as Terre Haute and Indianapolis where industries such as steel mills were seeking workers.

George Madison Farm in the Patoka Bottom Land. Flood of May 1961

Today, only a few homes remain in the community of Lyles Station but nearly half of the residents are descendants of the original black settlers. Along with the scattered houses, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a grain elevator, and the schoolhouse are all that stand as a physical reminder of the once-thriving settlement of Lyles Station, Indiana. However, the spirit of freedom and perseverance which made the town prosper is still very much alive in the hearts and minds of those individuals who are working to restore the Lyles Consolidated School building. Plans are underway to renovate the building which will be used as a living historical museum and a Heritage School, where students will be exposed to the educational techniques of the late nineteenth-early twentieth century. The project is expected to be completed in 2003.