Wilhelmina Salewski was born March 2, 1893, in Germany. She was born to parents who were both also German natives, and she was given what amounted to an eighth grade education.
In 1940 she was living in Scarsdale, New York, where she worked as a cook for the family of Norman Arons, a wholesale men's clothing manufacturer. The Arons family had four children, and there was also a Swiss-born "chauffeur/butler" in the household, and another female servant, an immigrant from Ireland, working presumably as a maid or housekeeper.
The career of being a cook in this household was very time consuming... Wilhelmina stated that in the week prior to the recording of the 1940 US Federal Census she had worked for seventy hours. In 1939 she had only worked for 43 weeks out of the year, and made $800. She did acknowledge that she had some income from other sources, but this still averages out to $18.60 a week, for a job that was essentially a ten-hour workday, seven days a week.
Wilhelmina became a naturalized citizen of the United States on November 21, 1944 at the US District Court in Brooklyn. She was then living at 347 Beach Street in Far Rockaway, New York. She remained in that community for the rest of her life.
Wilhelmina Salewski died, aged 91, June 6, 1984, at St. John's Episcopal Hospital, and was buried on Hart Island.
Sources: US Social Security Death Index; US Naturalization Records Indexes, 1794-1995; 1940 US Federal Census.