Gertrude W. Hoffmann - Family

Family

Eliza Gertrude Wesselhoeft was born on May 17, 1871, at Heidelberg (German Empire), the daughter of Walter and Mary Sara Silver (née Fraser) Wesselhoeft. Her father was a German-born doctor who at the time of her birth had left his medical practice in Halifax, Nova Scotia behind to volunteer his services after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. He returned to North America in the early 1870s and opened up a general practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts where Gertrude was raised along with her six siblings.

Though German by birth, Dr. Wesselhoeft was raised in Cambridge where a number of his relatives had established themselves in the medical community there. He received his medical degree from Harvard University in 1859 and upon graduation began his practice in Halifax. In time he became associated with the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital and a frequent lecturer at Boston University Medical School. At the time of his death in 1918, aged 80, Dr. Wesselhoeft was Emeritus Professor of Clinical Medicine in the School of Medicine, a position he had held since 1908. Mary Fraser was a native of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and died in 1886, around the age of 40. Dr. Wesselhoeft remarried in 1893 to Mary Leavitt, a native of Lowell, Massachusetts, and only a few years older than his eldest child. Gertrude's younger sister, Eleanor Wesselhoeft (1882–1945), was a stage actress and playwright who also found some success late in life as a character actor in Hollywood. Eleanor was married to Albert Christian Henderson von Tornow (1867–1938), a Shakespearean actor who performed under the stage name Albert Henderson.