The following was found on page 274 of Rev. T.H. Ball's Lake County, Indiana, 1884: An Account of the Semi-Centennial Celebration of Lake County, September 3 and 4, with Historical Papers and Other Interesting Records Prepared for this Volume:
At Pleasant Grove, an early center of Methodist labors and influence, where resided along the years of 1846 and 1847 the families of the Rev. S.B. Lamb, the circuit preacher, and of the Rev. G. W. Taylor, a local preacher, there was at this time a Sabbath-school conducted by William McCarty, himself an earnest public school teacher and zealous Methodist. The first prepared public address to a Sabbath-school, which the writer of this paper, then a young Baptist, remembers ever to have given, was delivered before this school, in either 1846 or 1847, at the request of his young friend, W.P. McCarty.
The following information was found on pages 33-34 in T.H. Ball's The Sunday Schools of Lake: An Account of the Commencement and Growth of the Sunday Schools of Lake County, Indiana, from about 1840 to 1890:
It is placed beyond question that Ephraim Cleveland was the first superintendent and that he continued in office until his death in 1845. E.W. Bryant was his successor and the school was still at the Cleveland house. It is in the personal knowledge of the writer that in 1847 William Pleasant McCarty, then a young public school teacher and Methodist church member, was Superintendent. . . . Who succeeded W.P. McCarty is not known.