More Homberger Family in Binzikon

More Homberger Family in Binzikon

Jean M. Hoffman, CG

I wrote two years ago about a Canton Zurich index of old marriage records [here]. In them I found that the furthest back Homberger ancestor in the gemeinde of Egg was originally from the gemeinde of Grüningen in the village of Binzikon. He was married twice before the move to Egg, the second wife, Elsbeth Buchmann being the Hoffman ancestor. The Family History Library (FHL) in Salt Lake City has microfilm of church records from Grüningen and viewing them was to be my next step.

Last summer when the FHL announced the end of microfilm lending, I quickly ordered the Grüningen film, no. 996915. It was only last Saturday that I was ready to look at it. First I checked it in the online catalog for details of what I would be seeing. It was a surprise to find it has already been digitized and put online. But it is in a “locked” state allowing viewing only in Family History Centers or affiliate libraries, so I can't view it at home. But I was in an affiliate library and spent time happily locating records of family members.

We now have images of the actual marriage records for Rudolf Homberger. Because he was first married in 1681, I estimated his birth about 25 years earlier. That was quite close. He was born (or probably baptized) on 10 November 1657. His father was Bernhard Homberger and his mother was Elsbeth Maurer. Her first name is a variant of Elisabetha. There were birth records of Rudolf's siblings and cousins. The cousins were the children of his uncle Diethelm Homberger and Elsbeth Hoffman. Later we'll get baptismal records of all his siblings and cousins, and hopefully his parents. The death of his first wife was in 1692 but he did not remarry until 1696. Both wives were from the adjacent gemeinde of Hombrechtikon. At the FamilySearch website in the family tree, this family is present with names even of Rudolf's grandparents who were probably born before 1600. The Homberger part of the Hoffman family tree is going to be growing.

We are also looking into details about Grüningen and Binzikon. One source is an atlas (ortslexikon) of Canton Zurich from 1835. We used to use in on microfiche at a Family History Center but now we can see color images rather than black and white film at Ancestry.com. Wikipedia has a little and the gemeinde has a website.

From his 1657 baptismal record you can see the date of 10 9bris (an abbreviation for November), the place of Binzikon (spelled Bintzicon), father's name, mother's maiden name, child's name (with an annotation we haven't deciphered yet), godfather Rudolf Walder and godmother Klienannlj Walder. The year only appears at the start of each new year.

Memorial Day: Hoffmans in the U.S. Armed Forces

Hoffman Family in the Union Army: The Immigrant Generation

Henry and John Hoffman both served in the Union Army. While their service came at the end of the war, it was not without travail and even fatality as it cost the life of their cousin, Jacob Homberger.

Hoffman Family in World War I: The Next Generation

John Hoffman's youngest son, Rudolph served in the U.S. Army overseas in World War I. Ruth Whalen shared letters he wrote to her family. Both she and Lucille McCue, his nieces, shared photos of him in uniform. This photo from Lucille was taken when he returned home to Illinois.

Hoffman Family in World War I: Grandchildren

John Hoffman's oldest daughter, Margaret or Maggie, had a son, Clarence Rose, who was about the same age as his uncle Rudolph Hoffman. Clarence served in the war, also overseas, in a unit from his home state of Colorado. Ruth Whalen shared this photo of Clarence and his mother.


Regula Hoffman, wife of John Hagie of Elizabeth, Illinois, had three sons. Albert C. Hagie moved to Minnesota and at least one of his children, Albert Frank Hagie, served in World War I. Later he moved to Washington, DC, where he served in the U.S. Navy Band. When he died 14 August 1986, he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Another of Regula's sons, Frederick, stayed in Elizabeth and his son, Franklin Eugene Hagie, was a doctor and served in World War I in that capacity. He moved to Richmond, Indiana, after the war. I believe more family members served in WWI, but these are stories I remember now.

Thanks to these and all the family members who have served over the years.

Canton Zurich Marriage Registers Extracted, 1525—1700

Canton Zurich Marriage Registers Extracted, 1525—1700

Jean M. Hoffman, CG^SM

The State Archives of Canton Zurich (Staatsarchivs des Kantons Zürich) provided an extract of passport applications to America or Australia, 1848—1870 that I found in 2007. It was easy to use despite being in German. Eight members of the Hoffman family are listed in those extracts. I recently wanted to review the source and update any page links.

A brief page for genealogists in English has a link to the pdf file of passport applications at http://www.staatsarchiv.zh.ch/internet/justiz_inneres/sta/en/recherche1/themen/genealogie.html. I also found a link to marriage records extracted from parish registers that are housed at the state archives. The link leads to pages and information only in German, but I was able to peruse some of the marriages and found an interesting addition to the Homberger family.

The name of the project is Zürcher Ehedaten des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts (Zurich Marriage Data From the 16^th to the 18^th Century) also defined as 1525—1800 though few parishes kept the records as early as 1525. The reports currently only go to 1700. The marriages are in alphabetical order by surname then first name and chronological within name. Grooms and brides are each indexed. The pdf files of the reports are fairly large (10 to 16 MB,) so prepared in four segments for the men and four segments for the women. Columns contain the names of the couple, comments, marriage date, marriage place, and the archive numbers to locate the page in the register. The numbers link to a chronological list for that parish. Other parish books will be listed as well. The data looks like a real treasure.

I had to look first at grooms named Hoffmann from Oberglatt. The surname was only spelled Hofmann even though both spellings were used and for different families. Other “normalization” of names seems to have been used. For example, where I copied a name as Elsbeth, the list reads Elisabeth. I found other similar changes.

Elisabeth Homberger, widow of Johannes Hoffmann, was the mother of our immigrant Hoffman family and also came to Illinois. Her father was a citizen of the gemeinde (community) of Egg, adjoining Oetwil am See where the family lived after her husband died. It was the home of her mother's family. Elisabeth was the 2nd great-granddaughter of Rudolf Homberger and Elsbeth Buchmann the most distant Homberger ancestors we've found.

Rudolf and Elsbeth had children baptized in Egg beginning in 1701 but had older children by 1697. We estimated they married about 1696 but found no marriage record for them in Egg. Now we know why. Rudolf Homberger was from Binzikon (which is a small place, possibly not a gemeinde) and Elisabeth Buchmann was from nearby Hombrechtikon. They were married 30 June 1696 in the parish of Grüningen, very close to Binzikon. Rudolf was a widower. The preceding record in the list was also for a Rudolf Homberger of Binzikon marrying Elisabeth Hürlimann of Hombrechtikon in Grüningen on 21 June 1681. It is very likely she is the wife who died leaving him a widower fifteen years later. All because of the arrangement of this data we found an actual marriage record we had only guessed at and the new data that Rudolf had a prior marriage. The map shows how close all the communities mentioned are to one another.

There is additional information in the pages of the state archives, but I will need German translation to understand much of it.

Henry Hoffman: Family Stories, Part 1

The Hoffman Family News was usually four pages printed each month from December 1998 through December 2002. Since then I’ve put out two or four pages each year. I have the blog version of the newsletter at http://hoffman-news.blogspot.com/ for updates to research finds and items of interest. News of living family members remains in the print version that only goes to family members.

The newsletter and blog have served as a record of research on this family of Swiss immigrants to Illinois. In 2009 I decided I wanted to begin piecing the story together so we could all see the ancestral family members in a unified way. I wrote a little on the Hoffman line but soon bogged down. Over three years later this is my new start on providing ancestral Hoffman stories. During this February I’ve joined a challenge (http://familyhistorywritingchallenge.blogspot.com/) to write every day. I set a word count goal of 500. That seems rather ambitious, but we’ll see how it goes. Some of the time I will be writing on other projects. I am currently finishing an article on my Williamson family that I plan to submit for publication.

Today the first Hoffman immigrant takes center stage. Heinrich Hoffmann was a citizen of the community of Oberglatt in Canton Zurich even though he never lived there. Oberglatt is still a small town a little north of the runways of Zurich International Airport. Dick has translated some historical information on their website (http://www.oetwil.ch/de/) including some interesting tidbits about the bridge over the River Glatt.

In Illinois Heinrich gradually changed to the English version of Henry and dropped the second “n” at the end of his surname. Two sources told of the location of the family before they Switzerland. Henry’s youngest brother, John Hoffman, has a biographical sketch in a Carroll County history. In it he named the place from which he came. He came to the U.S. in 1864 with other family members included his widowed mother. She is buried in a rural cemetery where Henry and some of his sons were later buried. Her tombstone, engraved in German, also tells the place she was born: Oetweil, Ct. Zurich, Schweiz. The current spelling of the name of the community is Oetwil am See. That was all that was needed to begin finding the family in Swiss records.

The Family History Library of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) has microfilmed records all over the world. They have an extensive collection of Swiss church books. They loan copies of the films to the many Family History Centers around the world. We spent many hours pouring over church records hand-written in old German script, some of them over 400 years old. Most are the registers in which pastors recorded baptisms, marriages, burials, and sometimes confirmations. The Reformed Church in Canton Zurich was the protestant denomination founded on the teachings of Ulrich Zwingli and governed by the Zurich Synod. The synod required additional records that are of enormous genealogical value. One type, haushaltungsrodel (household list), had a listing for every family in a parish and included ages or birth dates for a man, his wife and his children. Earlier population records (1633-1767) have briefer entries, but with family units together. Today digital versions of the microfilms are created and put online with free access.

Finding Henry (actually Heinrich Hoffmann) in records of Oetwil am See was easy. They also pointed to his place of citizenship where many more records were of great help. The location of his family between the marriage of his parents and the births of some of the younger siblings in Maur, a little north of Oetwil, is still a mystery. Tomorrow will bring more details about Henry Hoffman.

Follow Friday: The Register of Swiss Surnames

I recently learned from a post by Wolf Seelentag that the Register of Swiss Surnames is available online. This is an extremely important resource for Swiss genealogical research and the very first place to check when starting out on a name.  A search engine, guidelines and a table of abbreviations are presented in English (here) and in German, French, Italian and Romansh, Switzerland’s four official languages.

In the early days of our Swiss research I got look-ups or used the three-volume set at the library of the Western Reserve Historical Society. Titled Swiss Surnames: a Complete Register, it was edited by Emil Meier and published by Picton Press in 1995. Its original German name is Familiennamenbuch der Schweiz. This is a list of all surnames with Swiss citizenship in 1962 for each community in which citizenship was held. When you don’t know the community from which your Swiss family originated, finding records is nearly futile.

We first learned that our Hoffman immigrants came from Oetwil am See in Canton Zurich. Church records there included members of the family because they did live there. However, they were always noted as “von Oberglatt” (of Oberglatt) the community in which they were citizens – even though our branch hadn’t lived there since about 1750. If you look for Hoffmann or Hofmann in Canton Zurich, you will find that HOFFMANN (2 Fs) is listed for Oberglatt from before 1800. Our immigrants included the widowed mother of seven. Her maiden name was Homberger. The listing for Egg, a community just north of Oetwil am See was one of the places that name appeared before 1800. Her father was a citizen of Egg (remember that’s German and sounds a little like “eck” not that thing you scrambled for breakfast). Her mother’s family were the ones who were citizens of Oetwil am See. Their surname was Muschg. A potential problem with the list shows here. Older church records show the family as citizens in that location, but the register does not have them as citizens before 1800. The reason is that eventually all the descendants I could trace were daughters and the family surnames changed to that of the husbands. In other words, the name “daughtered out.”

It is a big advantage to have this list so handy now. If you have, or may have, Swiss family to research, be sure to check their surnames in the register.

Aunt Elsie in North Carolina

Dick spent so much time working on the index to the 1940 U.S. census that he is quite comfortable working with it. He remembers his Aunt Elsie and her husband Art Makk visiting when they moved from North Carolina to Arizona. It seemed likely they lived in North Carolina at the time of the 1940 census. He found them in Guilford County in the piedmont city of Greensboro.

Art & Elsie after their move to Arizona

Arthur J. Makk gave his occupation as sign painter which is what he did, but in reality he was an artist designing signs. Both Art and Elsie are listed with a birthplace of Ohio. Elsie Elizabeth Hoffman was apparently born in Brooklyn, Ohio, even though her parents lived in Tennessee. Her mother must have stayed with her cousin Elizabeth Hückmann for the birth of her first child 4 April 1901. There is no Cuyahoga County record of the birth, but family records seem to be reliable.

Art is the first family member we have found who was also recorded in the supplemental questions at the bottom of the page. Since Elsie's line is marked with the circled x, she gave the information to the enumerator. She did not give accurate birthplaces for Art and his parents. His 1930 census entry when he was living with his mother showed both of them born in "Hungary." If you click on the image below you'll be able to read all the information on the Makk household.

This is what the entire page looks like:

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1940 U. S. Census, Guilford County, North Carolina, population schedule, Morehead Township, Greensboro, enumeration district (ED) 41-48, sheet 14B, dwelling 243, Arthur J. Makk household; digital images, FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 5 September 2012), NARA digital publication T627, roll 2920.

1940: Colorado Roses

John Hoffman's oldest daughter, Maggie (Margaret K.) moved with her children Clarence and Alma Rose and her second husband Frank Rush from Illinois to Colorado. They lived in farm country of eastern Colorado, first in Lamar, Prowers County by 1913, then in McClave Township, Bent County by 1920. Maggie died there in 1924. Colorado was one of the first states in the 1940 U.S. census to be searchable on the FamilySearch.org website. Maggie's family was there.

Her son, Clarence John Rose, served in World War I and after became an electrical engineer. About 1929 he married Mary M. Spangler. In 1930 they lived in Iowa where their sons James Allen and Lawrence J. Rose were born. In 1935-36 Clarence worked for Otis Elevator in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The 1940 census finds them in Denver where they remained. Clarence was a salesman for an elevator company. James A. and Lawrence J. were nine and seven respectively. Their address was 2844 Dahlia St., a three-bedroom house in the Park Hill District built in 1925.

In 1930 Frank Rush lived with his stepdaughter Alma and her husband Hugh Jenkins and children Margaret Rose Jenkins and Hugh L. Jenkins, Jr. in rural Prowers County. Hugh, Alma and Hugh, Jr. were still on the farm in 1940. They had survived the dust bowl and depression years there. Their daughter Margaret lived in nearby Lamar with her husband Cleo Thompson and his parents. Cleo was a grocery store clerk. I still regret finding Margaret (known as Marge) almost too late. She and Ruth Whalen had a nice phone conversation catching up on the many years since they had corresponded as children. Marge died soon after, her daughter notifying both Ruth and me. Ruth had happy memories of her and we wished we could have had more time getting to know her.
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1940 U. S. Census, Denver County, Colorado, population schedule, Tract 41, Denver, Election District Z, enumeration district (ED) 16-298A, page 310 (stamped), sheet 62A, dwelling 48, Clarence J. Rose household; digital images, FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 27 April 2012).

1940 U. S. Census, Prowers County, Colorado, population schedule, Election District 6, enumeration district (ED) 50-9, page 146 (stamped), sheet 8A, dwelling 138, Hugh L. Jenkins household; digital images, FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 27 April 2012).

1940 U. S. Census, Prowers County, Colorado, population schedule, Ward 1, Lamar, Election Precinct 1, enumeration district (ED) 50-1, page 52 (stamped), sheet 11A, dwelling 252, Elmer Thompson household; digital images, FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 27 April 2012).

1940: Hoffman’s Derinda Farm in the U.S. Census

The 1940 U.S. census was released to the public on April 2^nd. There still isn’t a complete index to it, but rural areas like Derinda Township in Jo Daviess County, Illinois, have a small number of pages that are easy to read through. The Hoffman farm family was counted on 12 April 1940. The household begins on the third sheet and continues onto the fourth.[i] The pages list many familiar names: Wurster, Endriss, Teichler, Dittmar, Krug, and Klopf.

Youngest in the family, John Hoffman (age 60) was the primary force in the family and was listed as head of household and person supplying the information. Next is oldest brother Henry (66) who only is listed as a laborer while William (64) is a brother and Minnie (62) is a sister and housekeeper. All were born in Illinois and lived in the same house five years earlier in 1935. The farm is reported with a value of only $1000 (perhaps that is just the house?) All reported fifth as the highest grade completed in school. None of them were on one of the two lines in each page for which supplemental questions were asked. Click on the image to see a larger version of some of the information.

Combined parts of the two census pages, left side

Missing from the family are brothers Charles and Fred. Fred died in 1934 and Charles had for many years lived in Rockford, Illinois. He will be easier to find in the 1940 census once the index for Illinois is completed.

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[i] 1940 U. S. Census, Jo Daviess County, Illinois, population schedule, Derinda Township, enumeration district (ED) 43-5, sheets 2A-B, dwelling 28, John Hoffman household; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 27 May 2012).

Merry Christmas to All

The rather belated holiday issue of the (print) Hoffman Family newsletter has been published. We want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a wonderful new year. I've drawn a greeting for you.

Together in San Francisco: Children of Caspar Hoffman

Caspar Hoffman’s four children appear to have been in California together in 1892. That was not clear before but newly available California voter registrations, 1866–1898, at Ancestry.com add a piece to the puzzle. Thanks to Randy Seaver for his Genea-Musings blog entry on these records!

Caspar had four children, all with his first wife Louisa Schmid. The children were:

1. Susanna (Suzie, Suzetta), born 5 September 1863 in Canton Thurgau, Switzerland
2. Heinrich (Henry H.), born 25 December 1865 in Canton Thurgau, Switzerland
3. Albert, born 26 October 1868 in Carroll County, Illinois
4. Louise, born 12 March 1870 in Carroll County, Illinois.

After Caspar’s death in 1877 with an insolvent estate, the children lived with various relatives or connections. Henry worked at the Hanover, Illinois, hotel of his uncle John Hoffman in 1880. He and Albert may have become experienced waiters working for their uncle as that was their later occupation.

In 1881 Suzie married Ohio native Jerry D. Thompson (or Jeremiah) in Carroll County, Illinois. Their daughter Maybelle Alice was born there in 1882. The first California record lists Jerry in the 1889 San Francisco city directory as a plasterer living at 1523 Mission. Henry H. Hoffman was still in Carroll County, Illinois, where he was naturalized on 14 March 1890.

Jerry moved to 534 Ivy Avenue by 1892 when his San Francisco city directory entry lists him as a painter. He is the only resident of that address listed in the directory. In 1895 both he and Henry Hoffman are listed there. A Henry Hoffman is listed in 1892 at 404 Broadway as a waiter, and is probably Henry H. Hoffman.

Louise Hoffman married John B. D. Kelly in Seattle, Washington, 2 November 1892. Her residence on the license is San Francisco. The mystery remains of how she met this Canadian immigrant who homesteaded land north of Seattle, but the marriage license shows she came from San Francisco.

The missing sibling at that time was Albert Hoffman. He married an Irish girl, Katie Nevins, in New York City 1 November 1897. He was a waiter in Manhattan but went to San Francisco with his young daughter after the death of his wife around 1903.

Albert was in San Francisco in 1892! 

Both he and Jerry D. Thompson registered to vote 19 October 1892. They both resided at 534 Ivy Avenue despite Albert's absence from the city directory. Jerry’s occupation was painter and Albert’s was waiter. Albert was twenty-three, born in Illinois. His height was 5’ 5 ¼”. He had a fair complexion, brown eyes and dark hair. Jerry was forty, six foot tall, a painter and had a fair complexion, green eyes and dark hair. Assuming Suzie and Maybelle lived with Jerry, all four of Caspar Hoffman’s children lived in San Francisco at some point in 1892. (Click on the image to see it at a readable size. Albert's line is highlighted in yellow.)

 Henry H. Hoffman registered to vote in 1896 and 1898 but apparently not in 1892. His occupation was waiter; he was 5’ 7” tall and had a dark complexion, dark or black eyes and hair. He was born in Switzerland and naturalized in the county court in Carroll County, Illinois, on 18 March 1890. (That is four days different from the document I’ve seen, but possibly it took effect then.) In 1896 he lived at 78 Ninth, 2^nd floor, moving to 247 Oak, first floor, by 1898.

Though all of the family lived in San Francisco at one time, questions remain. Not only is Louise’s connection to John Kelly a mystery, but also why Albert moved completely across the country and married in New York.

Wordless Wednesday: Brother and Sister

Dick and his sister Elaine

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This Is the Face of Genealogy

For the inspiration for this post, read “The Face of Genealogy” at Thomas MacEntee’s Geneabloggers blog.

This charming photo is in a small family album. I believe the annotation on the picture was made by its subject, Gladys Louise Hoffman. She appears to be a young teen, so probably in the mid-1920s in Cleveland, Ohio. She was always very photogenic. Her married name was later Davis. Dick's Aunt Gladys was a treasured part of the family.

Military Monday: Mexican Expedition, 1916 - 1917

Rosina Hoffman Eiler's family was located two years ago with details added over time. Rosina, the wife of John Eiler, was the daughter of immigrant Margaret. I have just been entering some 1930 census data for Rosina's children and found something new to me. In the columns for Veterans I have seen more than "WW" which stands for World War and which we now call World War I, but the notation of "Mex" was new. It is on a page in Red Oak, Montgomery County, Iowa, where much of the family still lived in 1930. It was on the line for Henry L. Hixenbaugh, husband of Rosina's daughter Lizzie. That seemed to indicate the Mexican episode in which U.S. troops chased after Pancho Villa. The 1930 Census Enumerator Instructions provide the details.

"Mex" is the abbreviation to be used for the Mexican expedition. Further the instructions state: "Persons are not veterans of an expedition, however, unless they actually took part in the expedition. For example, veterans of the Mexican expedition must have been in Mexico or Mexican waters at the time of the expedition..."


Henry L. Hixenbaugh was not the only person on the page with that notation which might imply that a local unit was sent to the border. A website of the Iowa National Guard has more information and a link to a digital copy of an old publication that contains photos and names of the men in each unit of the guard involved in the Mexican Border Service 1916-1917. The Iowa guard was called up in late June 1916, trained about a month at Fort Dodge in Des Moines, then were transported by train to Brownsville, Texas. Guard units were entrusted with securing the Mexican border while regular troops pursued Villa. In December 1916 and January 1917 the Iowa Battalion consisting of three regiments of infantry and other troops returned home.


Henry served as a cook in Company M, 3rd Infantry, a unit from Red Oak as might be expected. He must have had many interesting stories to tell of his time on the border. Council Bluffs newspaper accounts at Ancestry.com show a Henry Hixenbaugh of Red Oak as interested in fostering a baseball program and politics serving as a councilman during the 1940s and 50s. Probably he was Lizzie's husband.

Iowa Troops in Mexican Border Service, 1916-1917, photographed, compiled and published by Dick Dreyer, Iowa City, Iowa

Surname Saturday: MUSCHG in Oetwil am See

The mother of the immigrant Hoffman generation also immigrated to Illinois, arriving in 1864. She was born Elisabetha Homberger, daughter of Johannes Homberger and Barbara Muschg, on 27 August 1797. She was baptized in Oetwil am See, Canton Zurich, on 3 September 1797. Her father was a citizen of the gemeinde (political community) of Egg, which is just northwest of Oetwil am See. Her mother’s family were citizens of Oetwil and lived in the Oetwil village of Bäch. Village might be a generous term as an 1835 gazetteer of Zurich listed it as having only three households. Despite his citizenship in Egg, Johannes Homberger and his family lived in Oetwil and that is where Elisabeth was raised and where she returned as the widow of Johannes Hoffmann, a citizen of Oberglatt, and where she continued to raise her children. The Muschg family must have been the anchor to that community.

Muschg looks very unfamiliar to American eyes. It appears in family name books for Switzerland and Canton Zurich, important tools in genealogical research. They list the places (gemeinde) in which people of those surnames held citizenship. The Zurich book lists detailed records of 1,200 early surnames. A problem with the books is that they give early (pre-1800) citizenship status, but only if the surname was still in the community when they were compiled. Thus Muschg is listed for Hombrechtikon and Maur but not for Oetwil am See. I believe that Barbara Muschg, wife of Johannes Homberger and her sister were among the last of the name in Oetwil. Some sons existed in earlier generations, but either they had daughters or the sons died early or disappeared from the Oetwil records. Following are the family’s Muschg ancestors.

Barbara Muschg: baptized 27 March 1777, apparently died after 1844

            married Johannes Homberger of Egg on 20 September 1777.

Rudolf Muschg: baptized 2 August 1735, died 5 November 1805

            married Barbara Krauer of Adetswil in Bäretswil on 6 June 1758.

Ulrich Muschg: baptized 30 May 1669, died 9 April 1739

            married (1): Susanna Kunz on 10 January 1700

            married (2): Elisabetha Walder on 13 June 1724

            married (3): Küngold Heüsser of Männedorf on 10 August 1734.

Bläsi Muschg: possibly born ca. 1640, died 27 December 1685

            married Barbara Küster prior to birth of a daughter in 1668.

The family information is from FHL microfilm of Oetwil am See and Egg church records of baptism, marriage, burial and family registers.

Family Recipe Friday: Jesse's Lemon Cake

Last week we made a lemon cake from the recipe given to me by cousin Donna that was her mother's recording of how Jesse's mother made the cake that became his birthday favorite. We took the cake to dinner at friends where it was enjoyed by all. The next day Dick again commented on how good it had been. While I've had the recipe for over ten years, this was the first time I tried to make it. So happy to know this family recipe is alive and well! One added note, a friend in Germany says she has a couple of cake recipes similar to this, so it may actually have been a German idea that Catherine brought with her, not something she acquired in Tennessee. I think capturing it in a scrapbook page makes a nice way to pass it along. Remember to click on the image to see it full size.

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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Ancestor #34

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings has another interesting challenge for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (SNGF). This time he's going for ancestral name list roulette. Here is the challenge:

1) How old is one of your grandfathers now, or how old would he be if he had lived? Divide this number by 4 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number."

2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ancestral name list (some people call it an "ahnentafel"). Who is that person?

3) Tell us three facts about that person in your ancestral name list with the "roulette number."

4) Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook note or comment, or as a comment on this blog post.

5) If you do not have a person's name for your "roulette number" then spin the wheel again - pick a grandmother, or yourself, a parent, a favorite aunt or cousin, or even your children!

Using Dick as the base person, here is the result:

Dick's grandfather Henry Hoffman was born in Oct. 1873 making him 137 today. Divided by 4 = 34.25 that rounds to 34.
Dick's Ahnentafel #34 is Johannes Homberger.
He was baptized on 20 January 1771 in Vorder-Radreyh, Hof, Egg, Zurich.
He married Barbara Muschg on 20 September 1795 in Oetwil am See, Zurich which was her home community.
He died on 16 September 1835 in Oetwil am See at the age of sixty-four.

Three facts about Johannes Homberger:

1. He was a citizen of Hof, Gemeinde of Egg in Canton Zurich, Switzerland, but the family lived in the home gemeinde of his wife's family in neighboring Oetwil am See which is near Lake Zurich (the "See") on its east side.

2. Johannes and Barbara had at least eight children although the records were not totally legible. Marriages were recorded for three of the children, Elizabeth to Johannes Hoffmann, Jakob to Susanna Kunz, and Heinrich to A. Barbara Weber. Daughter Elizabeth was the mother of the immigrant generation of Hoffmans. She also came to Illinois where she died in 1870.

3. His occupation or trade was "meisterzimmerman" or master carpenter. I speculate that it was this occupation that brought Johannes Hoffman, zimmerman, into the Homberger family.

Mappy Monday: Hoffman Land in Woodland Township

The first land owned by Henry and Jacob Hoffman in Illinois was in Derinda Township in southern Jo Daviess County, the northwest corner of the state. Jacob later moved just south to Woodland Township, Carroll County. I wrote earlier about Jacob and the likelihood that he died between 1900 and 1903 when his grandsons, Henry and Jacob Benz, filed paperwork on his land. The Hoffman's brother-in-law, Jacob Blumhardt, husband of their sister Margaret, bought neighboring land in part mortgaged to Henry. When Blumhardt disappeared, Henry eventually got it through a sheriff's sale. I like a pair of landownership maps available from books published in 1893 when the Hoffmans were alive and later in 1908 after their deaths. Jacob Hoffman's land is then owned by Henry Benz, et al. Blumhardt's land that went to Henry Hoffman is then owned by David Burke who was in the process of buying it when Henry died. Also, David is the person with whom widower Jacob Hoffman was enumerated in the 1900 census. The maps tie all these facts together in a nice visual package. The maps were located in libraries, but these digital versions are courtesy of Ancestry.com. Click on any of the maps to see larger versions.

NW Woodland Township - 1893

NW Woodland Township - 1908

Good Wishes for 2011

While the family saved lots of postcards over the years, I sometimes browse antique malls for old postcards. This is one I found last fall at a shop in Missouri on our way to Tulsa. As it says, good wishes for the New Year.

Designer Credits: Bohemian August by Miss Crow's Magickal Emporium

Greetings from Christmas 1970

I did this page last December with a photograph of Dick and me opening a Christmas present in 1970. Hard to believe that was forty years ago!

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Designer Credits:
-papers, frame, bow, lace, clocks, green deco: Retro Designs - Pretty Shabby
-gold designs, pine cones: Ptitesouris - Les Tres Ors de Laura
-tree: Chili Designz - Holiday Blog Train
-alpha: Retro Designs - 2 Elegant Art Deco Alphas
font: Kristen ITC

Mappy Monday: Snohomish County, Washington, homestead of John B. Kelly

I think I could get to really like this Monday map theme as I really love maps and also find they can shed much light on our families and their past. I wrote earlier about Aaron H. Kelly, son of John B. and Louise (Hoffman) Kelly. John B D. Kelly was born in New Brunswick, Canada about 1851. I've found him recently at the FamilySearch Beta site in the 1851 and 1871 census of Canada. In 1886 he was in the state of Washington, a long way from the Canadian Maritimes. He filed his Declaration of Intent to become a U.S. citizen and days later filed a homestead claim on 160 acres on the southern edge of Snohomish County. His son Aaron apparently kept the property, running it as a dairy farm. By 1947 Aaron was a deputy sheriff and his address was Woodinville according to the Everett city directory that year. Everett is the county seat and where he must have worked. A current search for Woodinville shows it as a town in King County, home of Seattle and Redmond. It borders the land of the homestead. That land in a current map looks totally developed. The post office there must have been his mailing address. Here is a map showing the homestead location and modern boundaries and towns.

This is a composite of two maps, one from Snohomish County and another of the town of Woodinville in King County, Washington. I have colored in the section where the homestead was located and further colored its parts. The map has the land description written on it. Be sure to click on the map to see it larger.