Report Card, 1909-10

After the sixth grade with two teachers, Minnie Rossow spent the seventh grade in the classroom of Sena Borger.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images above and immediately below courtesy of Eldon Harms.



Sena Borger, born in 1886, was the elder daughter of Charles and Henrietta (Batterman) Borger. Her only sibling, Edna, was born six years later.

The Hobart Historical Society has a photograph of Sena, nearly hidden in the back row of Hobart High School's graduating class of 1904:


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.
Back row, L to R: Sena Borger, Ann Fleck, Cora Saxton, Frank Reissig.
Middle row: Blanche Quinnell, Bess Hayward, Howard Carlson, Ellen Malone, Lena Michelson.
Front row: Hartley Mundell, Cora Maybaum (Regon), William Warches, Paulina Marquardt.


Sena went into teaching early, but I have just recently come across a little information about her later career, in the Hobart Gazette of Oct. 7, 1921:



She appears in Indianapolis city directories* for 1922 through 1926. I can't find her in the 1930 census, but in 1940 she was back in Hobart, living with her parents and her married sister and selling insurance for a living. In 1945, according to a Gary city directory,* she was living in Hobart and working as a "welfare visitor" for the Lake County Dept. of Public Welfare. She had moved to Gary by 1955,* and continued with her welfare work into 1958.* Sometime during that year, it appears, she moved to California,* and spent her remaining years there. She died in California in 1968, and her ashes were brought back to Indiana for burial.

Here is her obituary, dated July 18, 1968:**

News was received by Hobart friends late last week that Miss Sena M. Borger had passed away July 2nd in her apartment at Arcadia, California. Miss Borger was a native of Hobart, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Borger and sister of Mrs. Edna Borger Lenz. She has been a resident of Arcadia for the past nine years living in an apartment near Mrs. Lenz.

Miss Borger was a native of Hobart, attending schools here and graduating from Hobart High School in 1904. She taught school here for a short time following her graduation. She became active in social service working in Hammond and later became the director of the family Welfare Program in Racine, Wis.

Because of illness in the late thirties she went to Albuquerque, N. Mex., where she regained her health. In the early 1940's she returned to the Borger home on East 3rd Street. She was active in the Red Cross and other civil affairs.

Later she became a member of the staff of the Lake County Department of Public Welfare. Upon her retirement from the Department she moved to Arcadia, Calif. where her sister and huer husband and young daughter had taken up residence.

She was a member of the Unitarian Church of Hobart and the Order of the Eastern Star of Hobart.

Cremation followed the funeral services and Mrs. Lenz has written that Miss Borger's ashes will be sent to Brunswick in the south Lake County to be buried beside those of her mother and father in the cemetery there.

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*Per city directories on Ancestry.com.
**Exact source unclear; apparently a Hobart newspaper.