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Writer's pictureKristin Lindstrom

Episode 51: A Life of Making Music

The von Trapp Family Singers arrived in New York City in October of 1938. Within a week, they started their American tour in a chartered bus, going first to Easton, Pennsylvania.

Many of the sights in the United States were wholly alien to them. Lots of roads, though not all, were paved, unlike in Austria. All around them were strange things they had never seen before like giant Saguaro cactus in Arizona or a huge milk bottle advertisement by the side of the highway.

The family bought a farm where they began to shape the Trapp Family Lodge near Stowe, Vermont in 1942. Over time they held music camps here to supplement their income from touring.

The von Trapp Family Lodge in winter.


In 1947, the captain died of lung cancer. Maria held the family together and they soldiered on. For 20 years, the family toured all over the world, including Europe, New Zealand and Australia, South America, and every state in the U.S. except Alaska. By then, the strings holding the group of singers together were beginning to unravel and several of the children left the group. They then had to hire some additional singer to keep touring, which diminished their earnings. On January of 1956, they sang their last concert.

This way of life was expensive anyway, once travel, meals, and hotels were paid for. Agathe tole me that the family never cleared more than $1,200 a concert.

In 1956, Maria sold the rights to the von Trapp's Family Singers story for $9,000, without the knowledge of the family. American director Victor Donahue pursued the idea of turning the story into a musical for actress for Mary Martin. They wanted to use the music the family actually sang with one addition by Rodgers and Hammerstein. But songwriters envisioned a completely new score and that idea was accepted.

Agathe was 43 when the family stopped touring. She had never used a telephone or handled cash. As children in Austria, it was considered inappropriate for them to handle money or use the communications equipment. When on tour, they had to ask the manager for money even if they wanted to buy a soda.

Agathe and her friend, Mary Lou Kane, who worked for the family at the Lodge, started a kindergarten together, first in Stowe then later in Baltimore, Maryland.

In 1980, another tragedy: the Lodge burnt to the ground. Once again the family came together and by 1983, the new, more beautiful Lodge was opened for business.

Agathe died in 2010 at the age of 97.

The von Trapp family earned only a small allotment from the SoM franchise.

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