Kate (Nunn) Preiss (21 December 1893 – 29 April 1928)

The next step in the story of Kate (Nunn) Preiss was to verify her date of death. My second cousin Nicholas said she was married in 1927 and died in childbirth in April 1928. His memory is like a steel vault, but I had to verify that information for myself. Thanks to Reclaim the Records, I verified that Kate married Carl Preiss on 17 September 1927.

Several weeks ago I checked the public trees on Ancestry.com. There was a tree for the Preiss family and Carl was listed with spouses, but not Kate. I contacted the person who had put up the Preiss tree. She replied with information on Carl, but she didn’t know about his first marriage to Kate Nunn.

She wrote again to say she found a Jersey Journal headline from 30 April 1928 that read: Mrs. Preiss and Babe Die in Hospital.

I contacted the Jersey City Free Public Library and asked if they could locate this article for me. In early evening I received a nice note from a librarian there with a scan of the page I needed.

The article was short, but it told me what I needed to know. Kate and her baby did indeed die in childbirth at the North Hudson Hospital in Weehawen, New Jersey on 29 April 1928. The article also told me she and Carl were living in West New York, New Jersey.

This information saved me from paying someone to visit the New York City Municipal Archives for a death certificate. She didn’t die in New York; she died in New Jersey. Kate is buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery, Queens, New York alongside her sister, Elizabeth.

Although there was no charge for this information from the library, I plan on sending a donation in support of their digitization project.

I love librarians!  And Nicholas was correct once again!