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Honoree

Henrietta Rose
1872-1957

Honored by: La Paloma #96, Order of the Eastern Star

Henrietta Rose was the daughter of Louis Rose, San Diego's first Jewish settler.  Her mother, Matilda (Mathilde) died in 1875  when Henrietta was just 3 years old, and Louis Rose was already 68. After Louis Rose became ill in 1884, dying in 1888, Lizzie Love served as Henrietta's guardian until her 18th birthday in 1890.

After studying at the University of California and San Diego State College, Henrietta became a school teacher.  In 1895 she was appointed as the first teacher at Roseville Elementary School. In a career that lasted 45 years, she taught at Middletown Elementary School, Sherman Elementary School and Roosevelt Junior High School.

In 1901, she served as the worthy matron of Southern Star Chapter #96 of the Order of the Eastern Star, a Masonic organization to which she donated an upright piano fitted with candlestick holders to provide light in the days before electricity. That chapter later was renamed La Paloma #96 in a merger. 

In 1924, Henrietta was involved in an accident that left her walking with a decided limp. 

In their yearbooks, Roosevelt Junior High School students again and again singled out her handwriting as one of the most admirable qualities of teacher Henrietta Rose, who instructed them in both English and Spanish.

After retiring in 1940, Henrietta remained active both in the Order of the Eastern Star and as an officer of the Retired Teachers Club.  A spinster who had outlived the rest of her family and many of her friends, she was buried in an unmarked grave at Mt. Hope Cemetery in 1957.
—Donald H. Harrison, author, Louis Rose: San Diego's First Jewish Settler and Entrepreneur

Writings about Henrietta Rose