Northville One-Room Schoolhouse

The land for this wooden structure was purchased in 1862. Originally it held classes for 1st through 8th grade, and in its later years contained grades one through six. It was shut down as part of the consolidation of New Milford schools, and after 1955 Northville students traveled to schools in the center of town. In 2002, Mr. Truman Richmond recalled that when he attended in the 1920’s, the schoolroom was surrounded by blackboards and students sat facing the teacher’s desk which was located on a raised platform in the front of the room. The desks varied in size, with the smallest at the very front of the room near the teacher’s desk. A round woodstove in the front of the teacher’s desk heated the building. At the buildings’ entrance, the boys’ cloakroom was on the left and the girls’ on the right. For bathrooms, students were excused to use unheated outhouses behind the school. Older students usually performed daily chores, such as fetching water from a spring, chopping wood for the stove, and sweeping floors. the northville one room school houseFor many years the Northville Volunteer fire Company used the building for storage. The town owns the schoolhouse now and the Northville Schoolhouse Committee oversees its maintenance and use.