Josephine Plogsted

Parents: Frederich Henrich (Henry) Plogsted, Marie (Mary) Appleman
Birth date: September 14, 1882 (September 25, 1882 according to death certificate)
Marriage: October 29, 1902 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Frank Grupenhoff. Josephine was 20 and Frank was 28. They had six children: Cecilia, Edward H, Rosella Marie, William B, Clara A, and Josephine Agnes.
Death date: March 29, 1919, at age 36

The earliest record I was able to find for Josephine was the 1900 census. She was 17 when it was taken, and from it, you can see that her parents were both born in Germany, had been living in the US for 32 years each, and were naturalized citizens of the US. They rented a house on Colerain Avenue in the city of Cincinnati, and young Josephine worked as a dressmaker. At least half of the families listed on the same page as the Plogsteds were also immigrants, mostly from Germany.

Soon after this small glimpse we get into her life, she married Frank Grupenhoff, also a son of German immigrants. At the time, she was still working as a dressmaker, and from the marriage record, we see that they were married by the Reverend J. M. Felden, a Catholic priest. Josephine was still living at Colerain Avenue -- she was living at 3661 Colerain Avenue, to be exact. That address is in the middle of a street now!

It appears that Josephine spent the rest of her life at a cute little house at 4940 Bouton Street, Cincinnati, Ohio. She and her husband Frank were there for the 1910 census, and it is the address on her death certificate. I found a picture of the house on Google Maps Streetview. Look!

Image from street view on Google Maps

When you look at the house with satellite view, you can see the roof over the porch and room next to the porch is flat. I don't know if these were additions after the Grupenhoff family moved out, but I can just picture Josephine's children playing on the porch and climbing out of the windows to sit on the roof when they could get away with it.

Unfortunately, Josephine had to experience the tragedy of two of her children passing away before she did. Clara, the second youngest, died in 1912 from shock she experienced after receiving severe burns. Her death certificate lists "Shock [for?] multiple burns accidentally received (set fire to clothing with lighter match)" as the cause of death, but family lore says she and the other children were playing by a brush fire and her dress caught fire as she tried to jump over it like the other children (source: my dad). She was only three years old. I can't imagine the agony that Josephine must have felt, and I wonder if she blamed herself for not watching the children more closely.

Rosella Marie, the third oldest, died just three years later of diphtheria, a bacterial infection that is now essentially eradicated in industrialized nations because of vaccines. The doctor visited two days before Rosella passed on, but evidently there was nothing he could do, because she passed away on September 16, 1915. Rosella was only 9 years old. (I had to do some digging to find Rosella Marie's death certificate, and I had a really neat experience after I found it that I wrote about here.)

Josephine Plogsted passed away in 1919 at age 36 of heart failure or "acute myocardial insufficiency," according to the death certificate, and the secondary cause was asthma. She had been doing poorly for at least two days--and probably more--before her death, because the death certificate shows that she had been attended by a physician two days before her passing. Her oldest child Cecilia was only 15, and her youngest--my Granny Jo--was only 9 years old when they lost their mother.


Sources:

1900 Census:

1900 Census

Marriage license (1902):

Marriage license, 1902

1910 Census:

1910 US Ohio Census

1920 Census (to give an idea of where her family was when Josephine passed on):

1920 US Ohio Census