Her parents came from west Prussia and all the records were destroyed in the two wars. They were originally from near Danzig (now Gdansk), a town called Brumberg.
She was a Public Health Nurse, and the 23 Jun 1934 edition of the La Crosse Tribune reported that "Miss Beata Karnath, H. N., has gone to Onalaska (WI) where she has employment."
They were living near Minneapolis, MN at the time of her parents 50th Anniversary in 1949.
[Obituary] Star Tribune, Minneapolis, - Saturday, 8 February 1992, pg 18
Beata Karnath Loken, 79; was nurse, Mankato State professor
Beata L. Karnath Loken, 79, a registered nurse and former professor of nursing at Mankato State University, died of cancer Thursday at Colonial Acres Health Care Center in Golden Valley. Loken, of Robbinsdale, grew up in Fountain City, Wis. Her father, Rudolph Karnath, was a Mississippi River steamboat captain. She graduated from the Lutheran Hospital School of Nursing in La Crosse, Wis., and took graduate classes in public health at the University of Minnesota. She worked as a public health nurse in rural Wisconsin counties during the Depression. "Unfortunately she was a couple of generations too early," said her son, Michael, of Los Altos, Calif. "She clearly would have been a physician. Very bright woman, and in some ways frustrated with being a nurse." She married Dr. Elmer Loken, a dentist, in 1938 and moved to Le Sueur, Minn., with him the following year. When her children were in school, she began working in the operating room and the emergency room at the Le Sueur hospital. She returned to college in the 1960s and earned a bachelor's degree at Mankato State University and a master's degree in 1972 from the University of California at San Francisco. She took summer classes at the Royal College of Nursing in London and the University of Oslo in Norway. Loken taught maternal and child health and public health courses at Mankato State until, because of her age, she was forced to retire in 1977. She spent many hours doing volunteer work for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. She ran the Salvation Army unit in Le Sueur and helped start the United Fund there, her son said. She and her husband sold their home in Le Sueur in 1977. They had a summer home in Grand Rapids, Minn. They lived in Oregon City, Ore., for five years and returned to the Twin Cities six years ago. She nursed her husband until his death in 1988. Most recently she worked with the continuing education program at North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale. Loken was a long-term survivor of breast cancer, her son said. She had a radical mastectomy in 1961. She loved the outdoors and continued to swim until recently. Besides her son, she is survived by a daughter, B. Karen Goettsch, of Moorhead, Minn., and four grandchildren. A memorial service will be held at 1:30 p.m. Monday at Brunswick United Methodist Church in Crystal. Memorials will be used for a nursing scholarship at Mankato State University. Arrangements are by the Albin Funeral Chapel.