Gertrude Scudder Bodine Collection of Alice Brewster Letters

.5 linear feet, 1 document box

The Gertrude Scudder Bodine Collection of Alice Brewster Letters predominantly contains handwritten personal letters on personal stationery documenting the activities and thoughts of Alice Brewster. They were written to her former student and friend Gertrude Scudder Bodine and sometimes included Gertrude’s sister-in-law Elizabeth “Lizzie” Bodine, from 1939 to 1959.
The letters describe Brewster’s life in Portsmouth and North Woodstock, New Hampshire. She describes travel and family interactions, participating in antique fairs, and attending the Trenton State College centennial celebration in 1955, among other topics.
Some of the letters and envelopes have been annotated by Gertrude Bodine who indicated in her donation letter that she withheld certain letters and portions of others due to their personal content. The annotations highlight topics and humor written by Alice Brewster and appear to have been written and compiled for a posthumous 100th birthday event in 1968.
The papers also include two poetry booklets written by Brewster, Bodine’s correspondence planning Brewster’s 1958 birthday fund (financial support to assist Brewster as she struggled with failing eyesight and took on the care of her sister-in-law after her brother’s death), ephemera for the 1968 event, and a photograph of Brewster and an individual noted as Wilmer at the summer cottage.

The letters are arranged chronologically followed by the poetry books, birthday fund correspondence and list, posthumous event ephemera, and photograph.

This collection is open for research.

The items in this collection may be used by patrons who abide by the Archives and Special Collections Use Policy of the R. Barbara Gitenstein Library at TCNJ.

Copyright restrictions apply. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from, or otherwise use collection materials must be submitted in writing to the College Archivist and Special Collections Librarian,Archives and Special Collections, R. Barbara Gitenstein Library, The College of New Jersey, PO Box 7718, Ewing, NJ 08628-0718, email: Ask a Librarian via the library’s website https://library.tcnj.edu/

• English

Abstract: The Gertrude Scudder Bodine Collection of Alice Brewster Letters primarily contains handwritten correspondence from New Jersey State Normal School in Trenton and Model School English teacher Alice Brewster to her former Model School pupils Gertrude Scudder Bodine and Elizabeth Bodine. Some of Brewster’s poetry and ephemera related to honorary events also are included.

Biographical information:
The materials in this collection were collected by Gertrude Scudder Bodine (1894-1978), Model School class of 1911. She was born at the “Cherry Grove” estate in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, the only child to the later in life marriage of Joseph Rue Scudder (1851-1895), and Gertrude Mae McCully (1860-1944), an organist and librarian at Princeton University. After graduating from the Model School, she attended Mount Holyoke College and graduated in 1915. She taught English and Latin in Junior High School No. 1 in Trenton. In 1918, she married Joseph Lamb Bodine (1883-1950), who also attended the Model School a decade earlier. Joseph Bodine served as U.S. District Attorney for New Jersey, Judge of the U.S. District Court for New Jersey, Associate Justice of the New Jersey State Supreme Court, and later Superior Court Judge. They had one son, John W. Bodine.

After her marriage, Gertrude served extensively as a volunteer in civic, cultural, and historical organizations in the Trenton area. She served on the board and later as president of the historic William Trent House museum for 35 years. She was also very active in, and served several years as president of, the Junior League of Trenton, First Presbyterian Church of Trenton, and the Trenton YWCA.

The Bodine household also included Gertrude McCully Scudder, Gertrude Bodine’s mother, and Elizabeth Davis Bodine, her sister-in-law (an older sister of Joseph Bodine). Elizabeth Bodine (1880-1964) was a graduate of the Model School Class of 1898 and Bryn Mawr College. She taught at Trenton Junior High School No. 3 and was an English teacher at Trenton High School. After retiring from teaching, she became a librarian at Trenton Public Library. She was a founding member and honoree of the Trenton College Club (which later became a branch of the American Association of University Women) and served in a variety of civic, cultural, and historical organizations around Trenton. She lived with Gertrude and Joseph throughout their marriage, and then moved with Gertrude to Morrisville, Pennsylvania after Joseph’s death in 1950. Elizabeth died on January 14, 1964. Gertrude died on March 25, 1978.

Alice Langdon Brewster was born January 25, 1868 to Charles Gilman Brewster (1832-1880), a taxidermist and proprietor of a natural history store in Boston, and Mary Ann Hill (1840-1924), in Roxbury, Massachusetts. After Charles’ death in the shipwreck of the steamboat S.S. Narragansett in 1880, the family joined his sister’s family in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Alice attended high school in Portsmouth and later graduated from Wellesley College in 1889. After teaching at Westbury High School in Massachusetts for two years, she moved to Trenton to teach literature and history at the Model School of the New Jersey State Normal School where she served from 1891 to 1917. She was well-liked by her students and maintained decades long friendships with several of them including Elizabeth Bodine and Gertrude Scudder Bodine. After the Model School closed in 1917, Brewster taught English at the New Jersey State Normal School in Trenton until her retirement in 1933. Shortly after, the Brewster House dormitory was opened on the new Hillwood Lakes campus. It was the first campus building named for a living person.

After her retirement, Brewster returned to her family home in Portsmouth, where she lived with her sister Edith Gilman Brewster (1873-1960), a kindergarten teacher and social worker; brother Charles Warren Brewster (1871-1950), a banker; sister-in-law (Charles’ wife) Martha “Daisy” Tredick Brewster (1879-1958); and “Black Velvet” the cat. Charles and Martha had a son, Charles T. Brewster, who served as pastor of the Meredith, New Hampshire Congregational Church as well as a church in South Dakota for a time. The Brewster family also had a cottage in the White Mountains in North Woodstock, New Hampshire where they would spend a few weeks in the summers.

Alice Brewster was an active writer and self-published several small poetry books (two of which are included in this collection). She operated an antiques shop in the home and traveled around New England as a dealer and buyer at antiques fairs and shows. In honor of her 90th birthday in 1958, Gertrude Bodine and other alumni arranged a “birthday fund” for her with over 300 contributors donating just over $1,600. After her sister Edith Brewster died in 1960, she moved to the home of her nephew Charles T. Brewster in Meredith. She died February 14, 1962 in New Hampshire.

DACS

Deb Schiff, Archivist and Special Collections Librarian, 2021.
With additional research by Kerin Shellenbarger, Project Archivist, 2024