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.
Thencanic Society member, ca. 1890s; Vice-President, 1895. Later a lawyer, banker, and politician in Middlesex County who led the initiative to create Plainsboro Township. His family home in Plainsboro houses the local historical society. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/46273554/john-van_buren-wicoff https://wicoffhouseplainsboro.com/
Model School Class of 1896 (class censor); Thencanic Society member. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/272885716/walter-w-williamson
Model School student, ca. 1890s. Vice-President of the Thencanic Society in 1897. Eventually became a Trenton lawyer. His obituary (in Trentoniana) states he was buried in Riverview Cemetery, Trenton, but FindAGrave does not have his marker.
Clara Johnson Wolverton was born on December 3, 1879, in Stockton, Hunterdon County, New Jersey, to Sarah Catherine Cole and Gabriel Wolverton. (Note: Wolverton is also sometimes spelled Woolverton in some sources). At the time of her birth, her parents were in their 40s and had two other surviving children - brothers Harry and Gabriel Jr. Some time in the 1880s, the family moved to Trenton, NJ where her father and brother worked as harness makers. Her earliest schooling is unknown, but she began keeping a meticulous record of her grades and teachers’ names while attending Centennial Grammar School from 1892 to 1894 (the current equivalent of middle school), then Trenton High School from 1894 to 1898, where she majored in English.
In the fall of 1898, she enrolled in New Jersey State Normal School. She was given the nickname “Toddie” by her peers and her favorite occupation was “performing experiments.” According to the school’s Grade and Report Book, she does well academically and is “Quick to understand a child’s point of view and to help, yet her manner seems unsympathetic, due to lack of facial expression. Ernest and shows some good ideas of teaching.” Despite the negative evaluation of her manner and expression, she was immediately placed in a teaching position at Bound Brook Public School just before her graduation in February 1901. For the next two years, she was well-reviewed by her superiors and admired by her students in Passaic County Public Schools in Manchester Township and Haledon Borough. Finally, In 1904, she accepted a permanent position in Trenton Public Schools.
She continued to live with her family in Trenton, which, at times, included her brother Harry and nephew Austin Wolverton. Her brother Gabriel Jr. worked in the insurance business as did Austin. Her father died in the early 1900s, and by 1910, she was living with her widowed mother at 248 Pearl Street in Trenton where she continued to live for several decades. In the 1920s, while teaching, she also attended the University of Pennsylvania and received a degree in education.
According to her obituary, she spent 50 years teaching science at Trenton Junior High School No. 1, which opened in 1916, and was later renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School (closed in 2007). She died May 8, 1964, and was buried in Riverview Cemetery, Trenton, New Jersey.
Instructor in Kindergarten Practice at New Jersey State Normal School in Trenton.
Model School class of ca. 1894; Thencanic President 1893-1894. Possible FamilySearch ID: LR5N-C96
Model School Class of 1916; no known relation to Clara Wolverton (one "o"); relationship with Samuel unknown. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/72236218/maria-w-plough
Model School student and Thencanic Society member, ca. 1880s-1890s? Name may have been spelled "Sameul." No further information; relation with Clara Wolverton and Maria Woolverton, if any, unknown.