Eleanor M. Bowman was born in 1898. She graduated from the Model School in 1916. She worked at the Reference Department of the Trenton Free Public Library. She died in 1981 in Princeton.
Frederic Roe Brace was born in 1878 in New Jersey. He graduated from the Model School in 1896 and wrote the class year song. He served as Mercer County Counsel. He died in 1942 in New Jersey.
Mabel Evelyn Bray was born in Madison, New Jersey on January 3, 1878, to Edward A. Bray, a Presbyterian clergyperson who emigrated from England in the 1870s and Priscilla Sarah Haire, a concert pianist from Michigan. By 1880, the family left New Jersey and were living in Michigan where Bray spent her youth along with her younger siblings, John R. and Eugenia (later Persons).
Bray’s educational background was diverse. She graduated from the Michigan Female Seminary in 1897; studied music in Germany and Italy; and completed courses at the University of Michigan, Detroit Conservatory of Music, and programs through the New School of Methods of Public School Music in various locations.
After traveling in Europe and singing in “small-town opera houses,” she began teaching music at public schools in Moorhead, Minnesota in 1899. Later, she taught at a few other schools in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and St. Louis, Missouri. By 1903, she was head of the Music Department at the State Normal School in Cheney, Washington. Six years later, she returned to New Jersey to teach at the Westfield Public Schools. There, she founded The Supervisors School of Music. In Westfield, she began living with fellow teacher Harriet E. Mann, until Mann’s death in 1944.
According to the September 25, 1979 issue of The Signal, Bray arrived at The New Jersey State Normal School in Trenton in 1918 “to organize and administer a new special music curriculum.” She served as head of the Music Department from 1918 until her retirement in 1948 and earned the rank of full professor in 1935. She improved music instruction throughout the state by organizing high school choral groups. Her music program at what is now The College of New Jersey extended through the 1970s. She authored several music textbooks, including the Music Hour series for teachers and students.
In 1959, she moved to the Royal Oaks Manor retirement home in Duarte, California. There, she taught music appreciation classes to the other residents for fourteen years. She also edited the house newsletter Oak Leaves.
Trenton State College honored her in 1963 by naming the newly built music building “Bray Hall.” It was demolished in 1999 to make way for the new Social Sciences Building.
Mabel Bray died on May 27, 1979, at the age of 101, in Duarte.
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. 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), brother Charles Warren Brewster (1871-1950), sister-in-law (Charles’ wife) Martha “Daisy” Tredick Brewster (1879-1958), and “Black Velvet” the cat. 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. She operated an antiques shop in the home and traveled around New England as a dealer and buyer at antiques fairs and shows. After her sister Edith Brewster died in 1960, she moved to the home of her nephew Charles T. Brewster in Meredith, New Hampshire. She died February 14, 1962 in New Hampshire.
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.
Edith Gilman Brewster was born in 1873. Her brother was Charles Warren Brewster and her sister was Alice Langdon Brewster. She worked as a kindergarten teacher and social worker in New Hampshire. She died in 1960.
Martha “Daisy” Tredick Brewster (1879-1958), was married to Warren Brewster (1871-1950). They had a son, Charles T. Brewster. Later in life Martha lived with her sisters-in-law Edith and Alice Brewster in New Hampshire.
Frankland Briggs was born in 1877 to Frank O. Briggs, Mayor of Trenton and US Senator. He graduated from the Model School in 1894 where he was a Thencanic Society member and critic. He later attended Princeton and Harvard Law School. He died in 1944 in North Carolina.
George Irving Brinkerhoff was born in 1882. He graduated from the Model School in 1901, where he was a member of the Thencanic Society. In 1902, he graduated from the Normal School. He was a teacher and principal at Newark Schools and co-authored the "Safety First Stories", an accident prevention book for children. He died in 1954.
John Kirby Britton was born in 1883. He attended the Model School and was member of the Thencanic Society in the 1890s (class of 1900, but did not graduate with class); later a PAFA graduate and artist. Son of Trenton physician Dr. Charles Britton. He died in 1962 in Pennsylvania.
