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This scrapbook includes photographs, illustrations, commencement and class day booklets, correspondence, report cards, and ephemera collected by Emma R. Kerns, Model School Class of 1916. It offers insight into the daily lives and school careers of the Model students throughout the school's final years before its closure after the 1917 academic year. Later annotations also appear; some are perhaps by Miss Kerns before her death in 1977, but others most likely were added by past Trentoniana librarians following the book's donation ca. 1977. Any additions in a clearly different hand have been rendered in italics. Some of these italicized annotations simply read "index," probably referring to Trentoniana's card catalogue.

Due to the volume's bulky nature, it was not possible to digitize without disbinding the entire volume and scanning pages individually. Two photos of the book before this process are included at the end of the PDF. Pages have been scanned in order, skipping any blank sections; as a result, page numbers may appear to jump. Kerns also pasted many booklets and folded items into these pages, and these items sometimes required multiple scans to entirely capture. Finally, note that file size limits have required a significant amount of compression to host this PDF, and may negatively affect the quality of the images. An unaltered version is available through Trentoniana upon request.

A partial transcription of the handwritten sections is included.

Content warning: While the vast majority of this work contains no harmful content, one "joke" on page 141 includes insulting language about African-Americans.

This scrapbook includes photographs, illustrations, commencement and class day booklets, correspondence, ephemera, and manuscript materials collected by Grace B. Fletcher, Model School Class of 1907. It offers insight into the daily lives and school careers of the Model students throughout the first decade of the 20th century. While the bulk of the items pasted into the work date to around 1907, some date to as early as 1901. In addition, some annotations must have been added later, at least as early as 1916.

Due to the volume's bulky nature, it was not possible to digitize without disbinding the entire volume and scanning pages individually. Two photos of the book before this process are included at the end of the PDF. Pages have been scanned in order, skipping any blank sections; as a result, page numbers may appear to jump. Fletcher also pasted many booklets and folded items into these pages, and these items sometimes required multiple scans to entirely capture. Finally, note that file size limits have required a significant amount of compression to host this PDF, and may negatively affect the quality of the images. An unaltered version is available through Trentoniana upon request.

A partial transcription of the handwritten sections is included.

The following notes relate to specific pages of the document:

• The Class Day booklet on page 121 has not been scanned, as it is identical to one on page 87.
• The clippings found on pages 136-139 were not pasted into the book and may have originally been placed elsewhere.

The Clara Wolverton Papers contain materials from her early education beginning in 1892, through Normal School, and her earliest teaching years ending in 1903. It comprises personal items such as her grades book, greeting cards, and notes of affection from her students, as well as professional items such as her teaching contracts and letters of recommendation, and also printed commencement programs and tickets and clippings. There are only a few items after this time period, and they document her involvement in the Red Cross and Botanical Society of Pennsylvania.

There are no materials related to teaching at Trenton Public Schools or attending University of Pennsylvania.

Her collection also initially contained six books, four of which were cataloged and added to the Historical Textbooks and General Collections of Gitenstein Library, and two were deaccessioned due to duplication.

Edward Leefeldt, who was about 28 years old in 1905, seems to have written this notebook as part of a Latin class he taught for the State Normal School at Trenton in September of that year. It includes intermediate elements of Latin grammar, related mostly to the use of the indicative and subjunctive moods, using Julius Caesar and Cicero as example texts. The volume also contained a note giving some provenance. Transcription included.

The bulk of the collection pertains to Mildred’s time at the New Jersey State Normal School at Trenton from 1913-1915. Of special note is her diary, which begins with a daily account of camping in Shawmont, Pennsylvania (now Roxborough, Northwest Philadelphia) before going off to Normal where she writes of her classroom and social activities. Her copy of the Seal yearbook is heavily signed and annotated with alumni information up to 1980. Her photograph collection documents students in their everyday lives on campus including in their dorm rooms, wearing gym uniforms, performing a Japanese Tea ceremony, and a possible inside joke of her and her friends enacting characters based on their teacher William N. Mumper (the yearbook is inscribed to indicate “Mumpers” characters). There also are several photographs of faculty members (before they were pictured in the yearbooks).

There are some additional materials from the late 1970s including Normal School alumni lists and photographs of her paintings from her post-retirement career as an artist.

Content warning: Gasn’s diary refers to students in special education classes in derogatory terms.

These four diaries describe the lives and activities of women at the New Jersey State Normal School. They also document their first teaching experiences from the school’s earliest days in 1855 to 1920, when the enrollment and curriculum had significantly expanded and the school would soon become a college.

It is not known whether or not, or where, Ida Totten might have attended a Normal School or received teacher training, but in the fall term of 1883, she began a diary to record her first experience of teaching in Greenville (now called Greendell) School, in Sussex County. She described her frustrations with named children in her class and the challenges of disciplining them, as well as her activities at home on the weekends including attending temperance meetings and church. The final pages of the diary are from May 1884 and contain notes from Page’s Theory and Practice of Teaching, so perhaps she was continuing her teaching education, or had not yet graduated (if she did).

The format of Reba Gasn’s diary has two years on a single page: entries for 1919 are written on the top of the page, and 1920 is on the bottom; the two years are often also delineated by black and blue ink. She documented her day-to-day life in school, her hobbies, social life, meals enjoyed (and not), and activities with family and friends on breaks at home near the shore. She also writes of anti-semitism she experienced in Trenton, as well as her many illnesses.

The diary of Mary Jane Sergeant Larison has a typewritten transcription from 1955 (at the time of the school’s Centennial) and is currently being re-transcribed in digital format. The transcript of the diary of Rosena Craig Foster Whitlock was written and annotated by her granddaughter Susan Whitlock in 2008. Transcripts of the Totten and Gasn diaries will be available in the coming years.

This small booklet unfolds to a long program detailing the staff and students involved in this production of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet." Based on the credited names, Normal School students worked on nearly every aspect of the production, under the supervision of several teachers. No transcription.

This booklet, which was originally pasted into an unknown scrapbook and at an unknown point removed, details the Normal School's Thanksgiving Festival in November 1917. The original production seems to have dressed students as various Thanksgiving foods in the first act, and as allegorical figures in the second. The top portion of the list for Act 3 is covered by the remains of the scrapbook, but the list of names is clear. No transcription.

Content warning: This yearbook uses a swastika motif as a border for its pages. Although the book dates to the period when this symbol was in fashion in the West and before its adoption by the Nazi Party, it nevertheless appears prominently throughout the work.

This yearbook for the Model Class of 1915, one of the last before the school's closure in 1917, is one of the few known extant Model School yearbooks. Aside from the normal items in a yearbook--class photos, a list of officers, a class history--this volume includes an account of the "Class Horse" and advertisements for Trenton area businesses. A partial transcript of the annotations by the original owner is included.

Please note that one corner of page is torn, affecting Isabel Clark's photograph and part of Hortense Daily's biography.

The method by which this booklet was printed, particularly the photographs, means that scanning does not accurately capture the images. Furthermore, the size of this PDF file has been reduced for uploading. A full-sized version of the scanned booklet is available by request of Trentoniana.