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 MINNA, FAMED AS COSTUMER; IS DEAD AT 95

Mrs. Schmidt Noted for Figurines
Minna M; Schmidt, whose earnings as a, seamstress in Germany paid her passage to America 75 years ago and who made a place for herself in Chicago's life and history is dead. Mrs. Schmidt lived for the last five years in St. Mary's hospital, where she died Friday. She formerly lived at Holy Family academy. 1444 Division St., where a room named for her contains one of her famed collections of figurines.
Fairy Tale Start
The fairy tale of Snow White and the Seven dwarfs, which she heard when, she was 5 year old, started Minna Moscherosch on the road to costuming and a career that saw her hailed by college presidents, artists, and people everywhere who remained young in heart. Minna went home from her kindergarten in a small city in southern Germany -and made a Snow White doll. Her mother was too busy to help her make the Seven Dwarfs, but her grandmother encouraged her and helped her in the project.
The oldest child in a family of 17, she learned early in life that the way to get what she wanted was to work for it. With needle and thread, she helped support the family and saved enough for passage to the United States, where she first worked as a governess. She married Julius Schmidt, her teen-age sweetheart, When he followed her from Germany, and immersed herself in the job of having and raising a family. Chicago' s Columbian Exposition of 1893 enlarged her horizon and she opened a school.
Concentrates on Costumes
In this school she taught dancing and dramatics, The rehearsing of amateur plays and the translating of fairy tales left her little time for making costumes, and eventually she let an assistant take over the teaching while she concentrated on costumes. From a modest start - she designed and made the costumes in an 8 by 10 foot attic room-her costuming business flourished and became a Chicago institution. In 1915 she and her husband erected a building at 920 N. Clark St. that became one of the first in the country devoted entirely to the costume business. Thru her costumes, Mrs. Schmidt became known as a fairy godmother to thousands of Chicagoans.
Many Remember Windows
Thousands of Chicagoans also remember her shop windows, which displayed costumes of many eras in ! history., She made and costumed more than 1,000 figurines, and her collections won her fame everywhere.
The Century of Progress Exposition of 1933 and 1934 in Chicago featured her display of figurines showing "400 outstanding women of the world." She presented one collection of the dolls to the Chicago Historical Society and a collection of 129 figurines depicting famous Illinois women to the Illinois State Historical library.
Mrs. Schmidt retired in 1943 because of poor health, but the women and children to whom she had been a fairy godmother never forgot her. She leaves a son, Edward.
Services will be held at 2:30 p. m. tomorrow in the chapel at 2114 Irving Park rd.
Chicago Daily Tribune
Dec 10, 1961
p. A19