WEBSITE INVITATION
Members of our class should have received an invitation to join the classmates only section of the website that will include information about reunion, classmate bios, class notes, our senior pictures and more. If you did not receive the invitation, email [email protected] for access.
Please create a password and log in. We hope you will share an update by filling out the Classmate Bio.
Members of our class should have received an invitation to join the classmates only section of the website that will include information about reunion, classmate bios, class notes, our senior pictures and more. If you did not receive the invitation, email [email protected] for access.
Please create a password and log in. We hope you will share an update by filling out the Classmate Bio.
A little about Northfield Mount Hermon
Northfield Mount Hermon was founded by 19th century evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody as two institutions, Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies in 1879 and Mount Hermon School for Boys in 1881. The schools aimed to educate young people from poor families who had limited access to education. Moody hoped to create generations of committed Christians who would continue his evangelical efforts.
The Bible was the primary classroom tool in the early days, but religious instruction was accompanied by a challenging academic program similar to that of other private secondary schools of the era.
Another factor that distinguished the schools, and continues to do so today, was the manual labor required of all students. At Northfield, girls worked 10 hours per week, helping prepare meals or cleaning dormitories. At Mount Hermon, boys performed janitorial, laundry, kitchen, and farm work. The work requirement has shrunk over the years, it is now four hours per week, and while students still help in the dining hall and on NMH's farm, they perform a variety of other jobs as well.
The schools enrolled students from all races and ethnicities; 16 Native Americans were among the first 100 students at Northfield, and Mount Hermon's first graduates included a former slave as well as students from China, Sweden, England, Ireland, Canada, and Japan. NMH maintains this commitment to diversity, with students of color making up 20 percent of the student body and 23 percent coming from other countries.
In 1971, Northfield and Mount Hermon became a single coeducational school. In 2004, after years of intense discussion and thorough evaluation, the NMH Board of Trustees voted to consolidate the school’s educational program on the Mount Hermon campus. Consolidation created a more cohesive learning environment, reduced operating costs, increased the resources available per student, and permitted significant investment in facilities.
In 2009, Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the arts-and-crafts retail chain, purchased the 217-acre core Northfield campus from NMH. Since then, ownership of this property and the surrounding forest acreage has changed. The majority of the buildings and some acreage now belong to Thomas Aquinas College, a California-based Catholic great books college that opened an East Coast campus there in 2019. Plans call for it to serve 350 to 400 students.
Some additional acreage and 10 other buildings are now owned by The Moody Center, a nonprofit organization honoring the legacy of NMH founder D.L. Moody. The buildings donated to the center were the Homestead, the Auditorium, Revell Hall, Holton, Duly, the Bookstore, Daley, Hibbard, Moore Cottage, and Betsey Moody Infirmary (later a dorm known as Moody).
Nearly 1,300 acres of forest land in Northfield and Warwick were purchased by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation. NMH made this arrangement to ensure the land would be available, permanently, for public use.
NMH continues to use The Auditorium in Northfield for Sacred Concert, which has been held there annually for more than a century.
Northfield Mount Hermon was founded by 19th century evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody as two institutions, Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies in 1879 and Mount Hermon School for Boys in 1881. The schools aimed to educate young people from poor families who had limited access to education. Moody hoped to create generations of committed Christians who would continue his evangelical efforts.
The Bible was the primary classroom tool in the early days, but religious instruction was accompanied by a challenging academic program similar to that of other private secondary schools of the era.
Another factor that distinguished the schools, and continues to do so today, was the manual labor required of all students. At Northfield, girls worked 10 hours per week, helping prepare meals or cleaning dormitories. At Mount Hermon, boys performed janitorial, laundry, kitchen, and farm work. The work requirement has shrunk over the years, it is now four hours per week, and while students still help in the dining hall and on NMH's farm, they perform a variety of other jobs as well.
The schools enrolled students from all races and ethnicities; 16 Native Americans were among the first 100 students at Northfield, and Mount Hermon's first graduates included a former slave as well as students from China, Sweden, England, Ireland, Canada, and Japan. NMH maintains this commitment to diversity, with students of color making up 20 percent of the student body and 23 percent coming from other countries.
In 1971, Northfield and Mount Hermon became a single coeducational school. In 2004, after years of intense discussion and thorough evaluation, the NMH Board of Trustees voted to consolidate the school’s educational program on the Mount Hermon campus. Consolidation created a more cohesive learning environment, reduced operating costs, increased the resources available per student, and permitted significant investment in facilities.
In 2009, Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the arts-and-crafts retail chain, purchased the 217-acre core Northfield campus from NMH. Since then, ownership of this property and the surrounding forest acreage has changed. The majority of the buildings and some acreage now belong to Thomas Aquinas College, a California-based Catholic great books college that opened an East Coast campus there in 2019. Plans call for it to serve 350 to 400 students.
Some additional acreage and 10 other buildings are now owned by The Moody Center, a nonprofit organization honoring the legacy of NMH founder D.L. Moody. The buildings donated to the center were the Homestead, the Auditorium, Revell Hall, Holton, Duly, the Bookstore, Daley, Hibbard, Moore Cottage, and Betsey Moody Infirmary (later a dorm known as Moody).
Nearly 1,300 acres of forest land in Northfield and Warwick were purchased by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation. NMH made this arrangement to ensure the land would be available, permanently, for public use.
NMH continues to use The Auditorium in Northfield for Sacred Concert, which has been held there annually for more than a century.
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