New Vienna School c1893, 1910 and Duchemin House

Duchemin House c1910? New Vienna Ohio, now demolished, twin (with improvements) to house on corner of College & 2nd Sts.  Image Courtesy of Hayward Crone via Mike Whited.  [See further details about Duchemin House below.]

School New Vienna Ohio c1910 with Duchemin House and School Barn in background.  

Image Courtesy of Hayward Crone via Mike Whited.

School New Vienna Ohio, 1893 Elementary Students.  Image Courtesy of Hayward Crone via Mike Whited.

Duchemin? Duchmein? DuChemin?  In the census records it is also spelled Duchman and Deucheman.  Evidently this was a name in transition.

Two graduates of NVHS are listed with the last name of Duchemin, both members of the class of 1886: Lizzie Duchemin and Stella Cox Duchemin, though we can assume that Stella married a Duchemin rather than being born into the family.

Mary Elizabeth "Lizzie" was born in New Vienna in 1868.  She married William Edwin Dunn in Clinton County in 1893.  In 1920 they were living in Indianapolis.  She was the youngest child of Abraham (1814-1891) and Mary Elizabeth Woodmansee Duchemin (1833-1887).

Mary Elizabeth "Lizzie" Duchemin Dunn, 1886 graduate of New Vienna (Ohio) High School

Other children of Abraham and Mary Elizabeth included: John (1852-c1919), Florence (1853-1950), Martha (1854-?), and Frank (1857-1901).  To confuse matters, Martha married Robert Cox and became the step-mother of Stella Cox Duchemin (1866-?), the other graduate of NVHS.  Stella married the oldest brother, John, her step-mother's older brother.  Stella died in St. Louis sometime after 1930.  Her son, Robert Harold lived in Clinton/Highland county as a boy but moved to Missouri.

Four of the Duchemin family are buried in New Vienna's IOOF Cemetery:  Abraham and Mary Elizabeth on the East Side, and Frank, their youngest son, and his wife, the former Elizabeth M "Lizzie" Turner, on the West Side.  All of Frank and Lizzie's five children were born in New Vienna, one died at childbirth, two moved to California, one to Illinois, and the fate of the youngest, Edith born in 1897, is unknown.

From the NVHS Memory Book 1881-1963:
In the summer of 1876, Abraham Duchmein built a three story residence on the lot adjoining the present [now former] school house.  The Wilmington News-Journal stated that it was the largest private residence in the country.  [Did they mean county??]  Mr. Duchmein was a brick mason and a brother-in-law of Francis Woodmansee who built the large home across the street, facing the school house.  Mr. Duchmein died in 1891 and sometime later it was acquired by the school.  In 1918 when the present building was built, the High School held classes there and the grades were held down town town in rooms over the business houses and the first and second grades were held in the opera house, now the site of the Senior Citizens.  Later it [the Duchemin House] was used as the residence of the superintendent.

Due to a scarcity of teachers, a Clinton-Highland Normal school was opened in New Vienna High School in 1914.  The students did their practice teaching here also.  It was moved to Wilmington College in the fall of 1925.  Their last teacher Mary Hoskins also went to Wilmington College.