Maria Dee Salmonson

Thank you to Aurora Pribram-Jones, who submitted this post about her great-grandmother, Dee.

I did not see this picture of my great-grandmother, Maria Dee Salmonson (standing, right), until I was a senior chemistry major at Harvey Mudd College, after which point I kept it framed over my desk.  My uncle’s guess is that it was taken between 1917 and 1924 in Vienna, at the State Serum Institute.

We don’t know that much about her, but she was born in Semarang in Java sometime around 1889 and was a nurse for the Dutch Red Cross.  She came to the Netherlands as a toddler and ended up in Vienna during World War I, where she met my great grandfather.  In 1927, she joined my great-grandfather in Chicago, with my grandfather in tow.  She enjoyed parties and spoke “a mishmash of several languages,” according to my grandfather, but could always make herself understood.