Statewide County IL Archives Obituaries.....Von Trapp, Maria Augusta (Kutschera) March 28, 1987
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Kathy Stinson findingthepast@comcast.net December 23, 2013, 3:58 am

Chicago Sun-Times - March 29, 1987
STOWE, Vt. - Maria von Trapp, whose singing family's flight from Nazi-occupied 
Austria inspired the stage and screen musical "The Sound of Music," died last 
night in a Vermont hospital.

Mrs. Trapp , 82, surrounded by family members, died at Copley Hospital in 
Morrisville, about five miles from the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe. She 
underwent surgery Wednesday for gangrene of the small intestine. The family 
lodge, an Austrian chalet-style resort set on an 800-acre estate, was opened in 
1962 and was rebuilt after a fire destroyed it in 1980. The lodge is run by the 
youngest of the Trapp children and their nephew.

At age 20, Mrs. Trapp emerged from a Salzburg convent to teach the seven 
motherless children of Baron Georg von Trapp , a stern naval officer 25 years 
her senior. They married a year later, in 1927, and she bore him three more 
children.
"I was frightened when the Mother Abbess sent me to the baron," she said in a 
1970s interview. "He was a World War I submarine commander. I'm a girl from the 
Austrian mountains."

In 1938, Mrs. Trapp and her husband led the family from Austria. They arrived in 
New York with only $4 to their name, and for the next 15 years the Trapp Family 
Singers made a living through concerts around the United States.
The family bought property in Vermont's Green Mountains in the 1940s and started 
a music camp in the central Vermont town of Stowe.

The baron died in 1947 and was buried in the family plot in Stowe.

In 1959, their story was told to the world when "The Sound of Music," with music 
by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, opened on Broadway to 
rave reviews. Mary Martin played the role of Maria.  

Additional Comments:
Buried in the Trapp Family Lodge Grounds Cemetery, Stowe, Lamoille County, Vermont

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