|
Maria and Wilhelmina Gendelmeyer came to
America in 1881 aboard
the Australia from Hamburg, Germany with
their parents, watchmaker George Carl Gendelmeyer (1840-1918) and Catherina
Bislenberg (sp?) (1846-1924) Gendelmeyer.
Maria, who went by her middle name,
Clara, was four years old, and
Wilhelmina, nicknamed Minnie, was six.
Over the next twenty-two years the girls
married, Minnie to Henry F. Gudehus Jr,
with whom she had one child, Sophie, and
Clara to William Graves in the summer of
1903.*
On December 30, 1903, six months after
her wedding, Clara, age twenty-six, took
her niece, six-year-old Sophie Gudehus,
to an afternoon matinee of the
much-promoted Mr. Bluebeard at Chicago's
newest playhouse, the Iroquois Theater.
Hours later, their bodies were found by
family members at two different undertakers.
On Sunday after the fire there was a
double funeral with services conducted
by the Lutheran pastor who had baptized
Sophie. He may have been pastor of the
Trinity Lutheran Evangelical church that
was founded in the living room of
Sophie's great grandfather, Heinrich F.
Gudehus.† Interment was at
Waldheim Cemetery (today's Forest Home).
|
