Posts in June 8, 2026

My aunt Wilhelmina (Trautvetter) Kraft died in Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois, in the latter part of the 19th century. She died without enough of an estate to warrant a probate, had no obituary, and did not leave any other record in the area where she died suggesting that she had children. The name of her Kraft husband was known and it was assumed that they had been married at least twenty years when she died. I knew she was my aunt because she was listed as a sister when her bachelor brother died a few years before she did. For many years I only knew details of the last twenty or so years of her life. It was as if she just appeared out of thin air as […]