Northville High School Composites Reveal History

Since the construction of Northville Union School in 1865, Northville has remained a one-high-school community. Its status as Northville’s sole high school has provided a sense of community loyalty and hometown pride for more than 150 years. To this day, Friday night football games are an autumn ritual for many local residents.

current facility on Six Mile Road opened in 2000, the fifth high school in the community’s history. The Union School, located on the Main Street campus now occupied by and the district’s administration building (formerly Main Street Elementary) was converted into an elementary school in 1907 when a new high school was constructed.

The Union School burned to the ground in 1916. Rather than construct a new elementary, the district converted the 1907 high school building into an elementary school and built a new high school, which now houses Old Village School. The 1907 former high school remained an elementary school until 1936 when it was destroyed by fire. It was replaced by the Main Street Elementary School, now the administration and board offices.

In 1959, a new high school was constructed on Eight Mile and Baseline and remained the district’s high school until the current facility opened in 2000. The former high school was converted into .

Though the locations and facilities have changed since the first high school opened its doors in the final year of the Civil War, the sense of history has remained. There are residents today who attended Northville High School at the current Hillside site, and still others who attended the high school when it was housed in what is now Old Village School.

A history through photos

To get a sense of the continuity and history of Northville High School, one only needs to walk through the academic wing of the current facility. Lining the hallways are the composites of nearly a century of Northville High School graduates.

Professionally digitized and custom framed, these images reveal much of our history. The names include those of some the community’s pioneer families — Yerkes, VanValkenburg, Parmenter — and multiple generations of families.

The acquisition and restoration of the composites has been a more than 20-year project for longtime residents Martha and Jim Nield. Both bring a strong sense of community and a passion for history to the endeavor. Martha is a former member of the Northville Board of Education and a longtime member and past president of the Northville Historical Society. Jim served many years on Northville Township commissions and chaired the Northville Senior Advisory Commission during the renovation of the Northville Community Senior Center. Both Nields are former Northville Chamber of Commerce Citizens of the Year.

The composites displayed at the high school are copies. The originals are the property of the Northville Historical Society. To date, nearly all composites from 1901 to the present have been accounted for, save for a few elusive years.  Among those still missing are 1903, 1904, 1906, 1907 and 1920.

None of the photos from 1869, the year Alice Beal graduated as Northville High School’s first and only graduate that year, to 1900 have been found — provided there were class photos.  The class composite format — individual portraits with names listed beneath each image — first appears about 1910. Class portraits were more the fashion in the preceding years.

In the two decades since the Nields embarked on the composite project, many individuals and organizations have helped fund the cost of restoration. Nevertheless, it has been the Nields who have expended the greatest time and resources in sustaining this project  — from search and restoration to records maintenance and wall hanging.

Martha notes that class composites have come from far and wide. The most recent finds — 1913 and 1917 — were uncovered by local residents. A classroom photo of the class of 1908 also was found among items donated to the Northville Historical Society Archives. The Nields, with the help of Jim Lapham and John Brugeman, recently added the classes of 1913 and 1917 to the walls of Northville High School.

Records of all Northville High School graduates from 1869 to 2000 were compiled in a Northville High School Alumni Directory published in 2000. The directory has proven an invaluable resource, particularly for listing names in class portraits.

The Nields have been particularly stymied by the elusive composite of the Class of 1920. The following are the names of the graduates in that class: Gladys Black, Gibson Carpenter,  Ruth Cattermole, Stuart Colf, Mary Helen Fuller, Ethel Limpert, Helen Millard, Helen Miller, Genevieve Parmenter, Pauline Pickett, Margurite Stucey, George Wilcox and Gerald Woodworth.

Anyone with information about the missing images or other NHS class portraits or composites can contact Martha Nield at marthnield@comcast.net or Northville Historical Society Archivist Heidi Nielsen at archivist.nhs@gmail.com.