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Anna Gohr Glawe (left) and her twin sister Wilhelmine (Minnie) Gohr, Chicago, Illinois

Year: 1930 • Collection: Gohr

Anna and Minnie were indeed fraternal twins, born in 1882 in Chicago, the first daughters of Wilhelm Gohr and Laura Kramp. Anna married John Walter Gohr but Minnie, who was hearing-impaired and thus non-verbal, never married. Instead she was educated at the Illinois Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb. This institution housed educable hard-of-hearing students throughout the state at no cost to their families. Later Minnie lived off and on with her sisters and cousins, working as a dressmaker and seamstress, living eventually at the Northern Illinois Hospital and Asylum for the Insane at Elgin, Illinois (she was not insane but it was a safe place for her to live). Her sisters and brother Rudy visited her often. This snapshot was taken on one of those outings.

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