Matilda Rausch was born to German immigrants George and Margaret Rausch, in Walkerton, Ontario, Canada. Her family moved to Detroit in 1884. She attended public school in Detroit and then attended and graduated from the Gorsline Business College in the same city. In 1902, she began working for the Dodge Motor Company and five years later, she married founder John Dodge.
After Dodge's death in 1920, Matilda inherited his share of the Dodge Brothers Company and became one of the wealthiest women in the United States.[1] Soon thereafter, she met lumber baron Alfred G. Wilson at the First Presbyterian Church in Detroit and they married June 29, 1925.[3] Upon Alfred Wilson's death on April 6, 1962, Matilda again received the bulk of her husband's estate.[4]
Matilda and John Dodge had three children, Frances (1914–1971), Daniel (1917–1938) and Anna Margaret (1919–1924). In addition, she was stepmother to John's three children from his first marriage (one of whom was Isabel Dodge Sloane). Matilda and Alfred Wilson adopted two children, Richard and Barbara.[3]
In 1939, Matilda and Alfred Wilson had constructed a pale granite Art Deco style mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery, designed by New York architect William Henry Deacy.[8] and again, featuring sculpture by Corrado Parducci.[2] It is located near the south wall of the Dodge family mausoleum where her first husband was interred in 1920.
^Wilson, Matilda Rausch Dodge (1998). Patrick, Debbie (ed.). A Place in the Country: Matilda Wilson's Personal Guidebook to Meadow Brook Hall. Oakland University Press. ISBN978-0-9666-9880-0.
