I was born in Nauvoo, Illinois on August 1, 1926, but the hospital where I was born was across the river in Keokuk, so this puts Iowa on my birth certificate. My baptismal record is from Nauvoo.
We lived in a large two story house with a central hall up and down and a long stairway with marvelous sliding banisters!
–
My grandmother Wilhelmina Beger Krueger – called Mama Minnie – lived on the left side of the house. My aunt Sylvia Krueger (later Martin) was then a spinster schoolteacher who also lived here. My parents (Ruth and Waldo Krueger) lived on the right side of the house along with my four year old brother Richard.
My memories of this house come from our visits in the summer and at Christmas Holidays since we moved to St. Louis when I was six months old. Mama Minnie died when I was about 5 years old.
The house had a wine cellar about the height of a garage built into the hillside separating the small vineyard from the house and garage. It had a stairway from the back bedroom to a real attic. What fun. It had an outhouse and a kitchen pump. Also a dark cellar for food storage.
In 1926 Nauvoo was a town of about 1000. It was on the hilltop while the flats below along the Mississippi had been the home of the Mormons before they were chased away to Utah. It had a Catholic Church and a Lutheran Church. A Catholic Girls Boarding High School was located atop the hill. Farmers from nearby counties would come in to shop and visit and go to church. My Dad’s mother and sisters Sylvia and Thaya were Lutheran. Another sister Valeria became Catholic when she married Roy Radel, so on visits we would go to church with the Radels.
Evidently my mother disliked small town living and persuaded my Dad to move to St. Louis where he bought a dental practice. We lived on Nina Place and my brother attended St. Roch’s Catholic School. I have no memory of our four-plex apartment.
Elaine's Memoirs 