Transcript of Diary of Rosena Craig Foster Whitlock by her granddaughter Susan Whitlock

Rosena Craig Foster was born September 2, 1890, to Samuel P. Foster, founder of a local bank and editor of the Elmer Times Newspaper, and Fannie Bateman Foster, in Elmer, Salem County, New Jersey. She attended Bridgeton High School, then New Jersey State Normal School in Trenton where she studied Music and Manual Training. According to the school’s Grade Books and Reports, Volume III, her grades were favorable and her final evaluation read: “Has teaching power. Individualizes well and manages a primary grade well. Lacks ease in speaking, but has a sweet voice.” In the spring of 1910, she completed her student teaching in Millville, New Jersey, and graduated in June 1910. According to family history provided by her granddaughter, she was assigned to work at Lafayette Elementary School (to teach music, dressmaking, and shop), in Highland Park, New Jersey, along with her Normal School classmate Mary Celia Whitlock (1891-1977), with whom she shared an apartment. During this time, she met Mary’s brother Frank Boudinot Whitlock, a banker, whom she married on May 28, 1913, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. They had four children and made their home in Highland Park, where Rosena lived for over 70 years. After her marriage, she stopped teaching, but volunteered through much of her life, including for the Red Cross during WWII and local and national chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She died at age 99 on March 5, 1990.