I find today’s story fascinating. Today’s birthday girl, Martha Boxdorfer, can be a role model for nurses everywhere. Based on the information I found in her records, she spent most of her lifetime caring for people who were not only sick, but could have been a threat to those who were near them. I will attempt to chronicle Martha’s life today.

Martha Anna Boxdorfer was born on July 8, 1887, so today would be her 136th birthday. Martha was the daughter of George and Theresia (Maisel) Boxdorfer. Below is a photograph of Martha’s parents, supposedly taken around 1900.

Martha was baptized at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Perryville. I cannot display that record today, but she was born at the time when Perry County kept birth records, so I can display hers.

At about the time the above photo was taken of her parents, Martha appeared in the 1900 census at the age of 12. It is going to be a theme that gets repeated throughout her life that she was so often living with a lot of other people in quite a few census entries. Already as a child, Martha was part of a very large family. Her father was a farmer in the Bois Brule Township.

Martha was confirmed in 1902. He confirmation record is found in the books of Trinity Lutheran Church in Point Rest.

The 1900 census entry would be the only one in which we find Martha living in Perry County. When the 1910 census was taken, we discover that she became one of those young ladies who went to St. Louis to become a servant in someone else’s family. In the image below, we see that Martha was a maid in the William Ledbetter family.

I noticed that William Ledbetter was called an editor of a newspaper, so my curiosity led me to find out which paper he was with. I discovered that, according to his World War I draft registration, William was an opinion editor for the St. Louis Republic newspaper.

Martha would then become a nurse. I have to wonder whether she attended the Lutheran School of Nursing in St. Louis. Then, when the 1920 census was taken, we find Martha as a 31 year-old nurse working at an institution called the Jewish Home for Chronic Invalids. I discovered that was a place that was largely dealing with people who had tuberculosis. This census page and the one following it are filled with people who were working at this health care facility and others who were patients there. This facility must have been one which provided housing for their employees.

We find Martha at another St. Louis hospital in the next two censuses. She was a nurse at the Robert Koch Hospital which was located in the Lemay neighborhood. That hospital was established in the 1850’s as a place to treat people with cholera, but as time went by, it became one that cared for people afflicted with tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. In the 1930 census, we find Martha listed amongst 15 pages of workers and patients at this hospital.

Martha was still a nurse at that hospital when the 1940 census was taken. This time there were 20 census pages that began with the employees at the hospital followed by many pages of patients. By that time, Martha was in her 50’s.

I located a few photos of the Robert Koch Hospital.

The Koch Hospital closed in 1961, was used for other purposes for a while, and was demolished in 1989. Stories still persist that the hospital building and the property it was on is haunted.

Martha Boxdorfer moved to California at some point in time after 1940. I was unable to find her in the 1950 census, but I did find her in a 1952 city directory for Riverside, California. She is once again called a nurse in a hospital.

Martha must have lived in California for quite a few years. In 1960, we find her in a Pasadena city directory where, at the age of 73, she was still called a nurse.

In 1970, we find Martha, who was in her 80’s, still living at the same address in Pasadena. She is called retired.

After that, it is difficult to follow Martha. She would eventually die in 1993 at the amazing age of 106. A Social Security death index states that her last residence was in Barnstable, Massachusetts.

Martha’s obituary was published in the Belleville News-Democrat, an Illinois newspaper. I do not have a Newspapers.com subscription, so all I can see is this listing of facts that are in that obituary. It says her residence was in Tilden, Illinois, which is located in Randolph County.

What is really puzzling is that this image says that she had a spouse named Jim Heymen. If I could actually read her obituary, I might understand how that name entered Martha’s life history.

Martha Boxdorfer is buried in the St. John’s Lutheran Cemetery in Baldwin, Illinois, also in Randolph County. Her gravestone is the only place where I found a picture of her. In that same cemetery, you will find the graves of her mother and a sister, Philippine Armbruster. Both of them died in the 1930’s, about 60 years before Martha was buried there. You can see her mother’s gravestone in the background of the photo below.

I consider Martha to be a pretty amazing woman. She spent so many years serving as a nurse surrounded by people with infectious diseases. Yet, she managed to live to the age of 106. Wow!