Ida Frances Totten was born on February 21, 1861, to Benjamin Totten and Harriet Monks Totten in Sussex County, New Jersey. She attended Andover Academy and received several county teachers certificates. According to her diary, in the autumn of 1883, she was placed in a teaching position in Greenville (now called Greendell) School, in Green Township, Sussex County, about 5 miles from her home in Andover. On April 4, 1894, she married Fred Mortimer Hunt, who served as one of the first editors of the Signal newspaper and graduated from the New Jersey State Normal School in Trenton in 1889. They had several children, though only two lived to adulthood (Leroy and Helen). They lived in Spring Lake, New Jersey, where Fred taught before becoming a clerk. Ida died in her mid-40s on October 27, 1907, and was buried in Andover alongside Fred who died in 1928.
Instructor in Music at New Jersey State Normal School in Trenton.
Instructor of Speech at New Jersey State Normal School in Trenton.
Mildred Eleanor Bard was born on May 11, 1895, to Elmer Bard, a glassblower, and Ella V. Boogar, in Millville, Cumberland County, New Jersey. She had three siblings: Leon, Helen, and Ethel (1891-1980) who also attended New Jersey State Normal School at Trenton and graduated in June 1911. Ethel taught at South 4th Street Elementary School in Millville and later in a private kindergarten. She married Lloyd Cassell, lived in various locations in the Northeast, and died in Massachusetts.
Mildred graduated from Millville High School then began Normal School in the fall of 1913, where she had an active social life with friends and fellow students from Millville. She participated in school and social clubs including “The Fates.” She was Vice-President of Theta Phi, a literary society, and helped to win one of their debates against the Shakespeare Society with her short story “Death’s Hill,” which she described in her diary as about “camp life in Shawmont with an adventure mixed in.” She studied the Domestic Science course and graduated in June 1915, with her final assessment in Grade Books and Reports, volume III, reading: “Bright and a good student but conceited. Always self-conscious and self-centered. State report very good.”
In 1918, Mildred married Harry M. Charlesworth, who was approximately 20 years her senior and worked as a glass mold maker in the Whitall Tatum glass company in Millville. They had a son Kenneth, in 1920. Harry died in 1953.
She began teaching in Millville schools, but she continued her education in Home Economics and received a bachelor's degree with a Phi Alpha Phi award in 1941 from Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University) in Philadelphia. She also completed a masters degree at Drexel, with the thesis “A Study to Determine the Nutritional Background and Needs of Students in Order to Plan a Functional Unit at the Senior High School Level” in 1947.
For nearly 41 years until her retirement in 1957, Mildred taught Home Economics at Millville High School, later becoming a supervisor of that department. Shortly before her retirement she took up painting and quickly became a prolific artist who created over 500 paintings during her lifetime.
In June of 1960, she married George Vernon Pepper (1896-1979), who worked for the New Jersey Employment Service and also was a real estate broker and author. Prior to Mildred, George was married to Dorothy Adams (1901-1949), with whom he had two daughters. George and Mildred began to travel extensively after they both reached age 65. He wrote the book: Help There’s an Artist in my Cabin, about their world travels via freighter ship. Mildred painted throughout despite the challenges of traveling with wet canvases and palettes. Throughout her career and after, she also was active as a participant and volunteer in community service clubs and local arts organizations. She died on August 12, 1985, in Millville, New Jersey.
Gertrude Scudder Bodine (1894-1978) was a graduate of 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.
Charles Warren Brewster was born in 1871 and was the brother of Alice Langdon Brewster and Edith Brewster. He worked as a banker in New Hampshire. He married Martha “Daisy” Tredick Brewster (1879-1958) and had a son, Charles T. Brewster. He died in 1950.
Principal of New Jersey State Normal School from 1871 to 1876.
Clayton Roy Brower was born in 1922 in Kingston, New York. He earned a Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Syracuse University, served in the army, and later earned a Doctorate from Columbia University. He began teaching in 1948 in Pulaski, New York, was the assistant superintendent of Plainfield Public Schools in 1955, then became professor and Chair of the Education Department at Trenton State College in 1962. In 1970, he became Interim chief executive, then president from 1971 to 1979. He died at the age of 99 on June 30, 2022.
President of The College of New Jersey from 1979 to 1998.
Charles A. Krauch was a Trenton photographer who captured many of the early class photos of the New Jersey State Normal School at Trenton. He was active in Trenton at several successive addresses from 1890 to 1898. He opened his own gallery in 1890. He later moved to California, where he exhibited at L.A. Photographic Salon in 1902.