Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I don’t know too much about my mother, so today I asked Grandfather to tell me about her. Grandfather is the only one in the house who knows anything. Alma knows something, only most of the time she tells me that I will have to wait until I am more grown up to know the answers, but that is too long to wait as I am only eight years old. Grandfather told me that my mother was very sweet and gentle, and she never stamped her feet, or ever yelled or threw people’s presents back at them, especially when they had been so thoughtful to give them to her in the first place.

Like Hilda, I know very little about her mother. According to the 1997 family tree created by the husband of a distant relative, Hilda’s mother was born in 1878 in San Francisco. How sad that no one told Hilda anything about her mother. Presumably it was too painful for her grandparents to talk about their daughter, so she was left with nothing but questions and guilt. It must have been difficult and confusing for her to know little other than to be told that she was the cause of her own mother’s death.