Margaret Holl was born April 15, 1867 in Brown County, WI .  She was the sixth child of Jacob and Margaret Dollar Holl and the second to be a daughter. Her baptism was at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Cathedral in Green Bay, Brown County, WI.  Witnesses to the Baptism of Maggie were Joseph Dollar and Margaret Kaster. Joseph was the brother of her mother, Margaret Dollar Holl, and Margaret Kaster was a relative of her maternal grandmother whose maiden name was Gertrude Kaster. Both the Dollar and Kaster families owned large homesteads in east DePere. All the families had come from the same area in the Rheinland near Mörsdorf.

The fur trading days of long before Wisconsin statehood were nearly over. Logging had taken the place of fur trading and now farming was taking hold in the stump dotted logged off land.   She was just over 4 years old when the Great Peshtigo Fire of October 8, 1871, forced the family to flee it's flames. All survived. Maggie later attended the little one room public schoolhouse which her parents helped build. It stood little more than a half mile west from their home.

In 1874 her older sister Gertrude, died. She attended the births of her two younger sisters, Catherine and Anna in 1872 and 1875. Mathew joined the children in 1877. She was age 10 when her father, Jacob, went out into the freezing February weather and was lowered down the family pit well in a successful effort to rescue a fallen milk ox with block and tackle. Her father died a few days later of pneumonia. She was there seven weeks later when her youngest brother, Edward, was born.
 

Tintype Photo, actual size, of Maggie Holl standing between her sister-in-law- law, new mother Veronica Kurz Holl, and her brother, new father John Holl. Maggie was baptismal sponsor for baby Margaret seated in her mother's lap. March 15, 1886. Winkler Collection

Enlarged Tintype Photo of Maggie Holl taken during a visit to Oconto County in March,, 1886. Rita Neustifter Collection

In her late teens Maggie worked for a family as a domestic in the city of Marinette, Wisconsin. She would occasionally visit her older brothers and their families at their homesteads in town of How, Oconto County. During one of her trips "up north", she was asked to be the the baptismal sponsor for newborn Margaret Holl first born child of her oldest brother John and his wife Veronica.  Margaret was born March 14 1886 and the baptism was March 15, 1886. A tintype photograph of Margaret and John's family documented the happy event. She posed alone for a second tintype at the same time.

Family history relates it was during this visit that she met a young local man named Nick Ehlinger. He was a son of neighbors on the Ehlinger homestead in town of How. Nic and Maggie became attached to each other and a wedding date was set.  They posed for an engagement tintype photograph the following year just before the wedding. Then Maggie left for one final trip to Marinette to pick up her wedding dress. 

Tintype Engagement Photo of Maggie Holl standing beside her fiancé Nic Ehlinger taken in early Spring, 1887. Winkler Collection

She became gravely ill while in Marinette and died there March 28, 1887, just before the scheduled wedding.  Maggie Holl was brought back to the Holl homestead and buried in Holy Martyrs of Gorcum Catholic Church, Preble, Brown County, WI. on March 30, 1887. She was listed as a 20 year old Servant Girl on death records. Her cause of death was "Typhoid Fever" in Marinette where she was working for the Thyure family.   J. Kuegbel is listed as the person returning the death certificate.  As children, senior members of the Holl family, who grew up in Brown County, remember visiting her grave when it had a gravestone, but it is no longer visible and the location of her grave has been lost to time. The church does not have locations of the early buirals.

Ehlinger family history relates that, some time later, Nic married a friend of Maggie and they named his first born daughter after Margaret.