Wilhelm Grabenstein was born on 24 June 1857. We know from family documents that he was a descendant of Friedrich Christoph Andreas Grabenstein and Katherine Marie Dorothe Jordan, but there is a 1-generation gap in our family tree so we don’t know who Wilhelm’s parents were.

What we do know about Wilhelm is that he worked as a roofer in Edemissen, Germany. His first wife was Christine Meyer from Uetze. The couple had four children between 1886 and 1895. After Christine’s death in 1904, Wilhelm married Minna “Luise” Santelmann, a widow that was 13 years younger than him. Luise had at least one child from her previous marriage to Karl Heinrich Weber; she would have six more children with Wilhelm between 1907 and 1914.

Wilhelm Grabenstein passed away on 17 June 1941.