Family Recipe Friday: Grandma's Coffee Cake

I don't think anyone has tried to follow this recipe since I found it, but it seems to elicit memories in Dick's family and that is the important part. He says he didn't like it because it was too much like bread, but he does recall his grandmother holding a loaf in the crook of her elbow and slicing off pieces. His brother remembered the flavor when he saw this. Their cousin is the one who told me about it originally. Grandmother was Catherine (Hochrein) Hoffman Klich. She came to the U.S. from Bavaria in 1894 to live with her Uncle Michael Keller in Massbach, Illinois. She cared for his ailing wife until her death. The Hoffman family lived close by.
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Mary Donner, First Wife of Henry Hoffman

The immigrant Henry Hoffman apparently lived in Jo Daviess County, Illinois after his arrival in the state in 1854. He did work on the early railroads and that may be how he came to know a Bavarian woman living in more central Illinois in the town of Peru in LaSalle County. He went to the LaSalle County courthouse in Ottawa on 2 April 1858 where he obtained his naturalization papers and a marriage license for himself and Mary Donner (see the license in this post.) They were married two days later. In the 1860 census they were both recorded in Derinda Township, Jo Daviess County. They had no children and Mary died of heart trouble on 11 September 1872. Her funeral is recorded in the German language records of the nearby St. John's Lutheran Church in Massbach (that Henry did not attend) but she was buried in the Elizabeth City Cemetery. The age on the tombstone allows calculation of her birth date as 22 April 1819, making her almost nine years older than Henry.

The cousin who has this photograph says that it depicts Henry's first wife. She claims they developed a close relationship that was evidenced by their correspondence during the time in 1865-66 that Henry spent away in the Union Army. There is no sign today of their letters, however. Henry remarried and had children, but it appears that was not the happiest of unions, at least according to his widow's comments to a pension claims examiner.
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Tombstone Tuesday: St. John's Lutheran Cemetery, Massbach, IL

Henry Hoffman did not agree with the local Lutheran Church but apparently attended a German language church that may have been a Methodist offshoot. His second wife and mother of his children was Eva Barbara Eberhardt. She was a devout German Lutheran and attended the St. John's Lutheran Church of Massbach, Illinois. It was close to their home. She and their daughter, Wilhelmine, were both buried at the cemetery of that church while Henry and three of their sons were buried elsewhere as shown last week.


Eva B. Eberhardt Hoffman
Feb. 5, 1850 - Dec. 9, 1927
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Her Daughter
Minnie Hoffman
Apr. 29, 1877 - Apr. 13, 1943