Verona High School Class Photos

Verona High School was organized in 1899, with its first graduating class in 1901. For many years, an annual collage would be made of that year's seniors by pasting their individual photos to a board and sometimes hand-painting on labels. The master collage each year would be large - sometimes upwards of 2X3 feet. A photograph would then be taken of the assembled collage, and smaller copies of that photo would be available for the seniors to have.

Each year's master collage would then be hung in the old brick high school building that formerly stood on South Marietta Street. Many of the collages were lost when either that building or the one it was later attached to was torn down. During one of those demolitions, a quantity of them were recovered from a dumpster by Richard Tollefson (Class of 1950). Richard gave several of the ones he recovered to people he recognized in the photographs. Several of those collages were later donated to us for preservation - and we are very appreciative!

During the big high school move in Summer of 2020, the Verona High School donated about a dozen more that had been in storage and occasionally displayed. We enjoy taking care of these and look forward to the day when we have a display space to put them back in the public eye.

Some of the senior photos below are scanned from our collection, and others are quick snapshots of ones we've seen in other places.

1906:

Note about 1906, above: This collage was hard to date, and it is most likely 1906. In the bottom left hand corner there is a faint date that appears to be 1906 drawn on with blue pen. This writing is only legible in a very-high overexposed 1200 DPI scan. A blue pen-written date is also present on the 1907 collage along with names written in that we have independently confirmed match the class of 1907. This makes it seem that the anonymous "blue pen" author had knowledge of these years.

We have class lists for the graduating years between 1901 and 1925 - and by 1924 the style of these collages had noticeably changed from this simple cardboard mounting. In all of those years, 1906 is the only year where there are six female names and three male names. The next closest years were 1921 (seven females, four males) and 1923 (six females and five males). It is possible there were more graduates than are pictured on this card, or that this was one of several cards for a single year and only one survived. But between the pen writing appearing to be 1906 and the match on the gender breakdown, we're going with 1906 until additional evidence surfaces.

1907:

Note about 1907, above: Thankfully, someone wrote "1907" on this photo, and partial names like "Herbig" and "Ayer" under each portrait. We were able to compare these name fragments to a 1907 class list and rediscover the full names of these students:

Top row, left to right:
- Edna Packard (married J. Lidral, and later lived in Winslow Washington.)
- Selma Herbig (later lived in Madison.)
Middle row, left to right:
- Gooding Packard (later a Lieutenant who lived in Corrigidor, Philippian Islands.)
- John Beat (later lived in Mt. Horeb, WI.)
Bottom row, left to right:
- Mary Ayer (married E. Trumpf, Madison.)
- Catherine Donkle (later lived in Milwaukee.)