Last 'Sound of Music' Singer, Maria von Trapp, Dies at 99

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Maria von Trapp, daughter of Austrian Baron Georg von Trapp, points to her father on an old family picture at the Villa Trapp on July 25, 2008 in Salzburg, Austria. Maria is in the house for the first time since her family fled the Nazi regime to the United States in late 1938.

Image: Kerstin Joensson/Associated Press

By Fran Berkman2014-02-24 19:59:17 UTC

The lone surviving member of the family portrayed in the film and Broadway musical The Sound of Music has passed away.

Maria Franziska von Trapp died at age 99 last week at her family's home in Stowe, Vt., the New York Times reports.

See also: Oldest Known Holocaust Survivor, a Prison Camp Pianist, Dies at 110

Von Trapp was the third of seven children born to Baron Georg von Trapp and his first wife Agathe von Trapp. The Sound of Music portrays the story of how the baron fell in love with his children's governess after his wife died of scarlet fever.

Upon her marriage to the baron in 1927, the governess, Maria Augusta Kutschera, who is famously portrayed by Julie Andrews in the film version of the story, also became Maria von Trapp. The fictionalized film and stage adoptions of the von Trapp family's story are based on the elder Maria von Trapp's best-selling 1949 memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers.

The story details how the family fled their home in Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938, and they ultimately settled in Vermont in 1942. Touring as a choir, the seven siblings performed with their father and stepmother across Europe and the United States until 1955.

Maria Franziska von Trapp, who was born on Sept. 28, 1914, spent time as a missionary in Papua New Guinea, after her days as a touring musician. She also a adopted a son she met there, Kikuli Mwanukuzi.

After her missionary work, the younger Maria Von Trapp lived out her days at her family's ski resort in Vermont. She returned to visit their former home in Salzburg, Austria for the first time in 2008, when the building reopened as a hotel and museum.

Von Trapp is survived by her son and her three half-siblings, born to her father and Maria Augusta von Trapp.

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