Maria Von Trapp, the last of the singing children immortalised in the movie musical 'The Sound of Music', has died at her home in Vermon. She was 99.

Trapp died of natural causes yesterday, her half-brother said. Marianne Dorfer, a family friend who runs the Von Trapp Villa Hotel in Salzburg, Austria, confirmed the news of her death.

"It was a surprise that she was the one in the family to live the longest because ever since she was a child she suffered from a weak heart. "It was the fact that she suffered from this that her father decided to hire Maria von Trapp to teach her and her brothers and sisters. That of course then led to one of the most remarkable musical partnerships of the last century,' Dorfer said.

Maria was born in 1914 and was the second-eldest daughter of Georg Johannes Von Trapp and his first wife, Agathe Whitehead von Trapp.