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.

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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Designer Credits: Ohana by Biograffiti
fonts: Kristen ITC, Gold Mine, Euromode

(not so) Wordless Wednesday: Aunt Gladys (ready for the holidays)

Gladys Louise Hoffman was born 23 September 1910 in Jackson, Tennessee, daughter of Henry and Catherine (Hochrein) Hoffman and granddaughter of the immigrant Henry Hoffman. Her mother soon moved with the children to Cleveland, Ohio, where her older cousin, Elizabeth (Hochrein) Hückmann lived. Gladys lived most of her life in Cleveland. She was married briefly to George Svec, but had a long marriage to Paul E. Davis from 22 July 1943. She was a special person and dear to us all. She succumbed to complications of cancer treatments on 29 May 1991. Her remains joined those of her husband in the crypt of Lakewood Park Cemetery in Rocky River, Ohio.

This lovely photo was taken by her brother-in-law, Albert Kaltenstein. I thought it would grace this holiday page nicely.
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Scrapbook Designer Credit: kit by Deb Ammerman: Christmas Goodies

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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Scrapbook page credits:
Kit Information: Grandmas Home Cooking (July 2010 Club Deco kit): all contributing designers
Fonts Used: Vintage, Chalk, Tw Cen MT Condensed Extra Bold, Kristen ITC

Wordless Wednesday: Catherine (Hochrein) Hoffman Klich

Donna is also the youngest great grandchild of the immigrant Henry Hoffman as well as the youngest grandchild of his oldest child, also Henry Hoffman

Wordless Wednesday: Catherine (Hochrein) Hoffman Klich

A summer gathering along Lake Erie in Ohio probably in the 1930s. Catherine's second husband, Charley Klich, is the one in the photo.

Jesse Hoffman's High School Record

Jesse Ralph Hoffman, son of Henry and Catherine (Hochrein) Hoffman and grandson of the immigrant Henry Hoffman, graduated from West Commerce High School in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1924. He was nineteen then. That September he enrolled in Wittenberg College in the southwestern Ohio city of Springfield. That Lutheran-based school is now Wittenberg University. When Dick notified Jesse's alumni association of his death, we learned that he had been in college later than we expected. It took a while to locate the right source of records, but eventually the school sent Dick his father's college records. One page was the high school transcript in the scrapbook page below.

There is another page listing the courses Jesse took each year in college. It has no record for the 1925-26 school year and the last session listed is the first semester of 1928-29. Although we always thought that he had graduated, it seems that he did not. He took three courses in Business Administration and had the best grades in one of them. The photos above are possibly from high school and later, after college. The later photo was taken in the upstairs of the house where he lived next door to his mother. The photographer was his brother-in-law, Albert Kaltenstein.

After college Jesse had a job as a bookkeeper where he was an office worker among a group of laborers at the C. O. Bartlett & Snow Co., a structural iron works. He told us that they called him the professor. He said it was in part because of the glasses he wore. It seemed to have both pleased and embarrassed him, but he did like to tell the story. Most of his working life was as a painting contractor, first with his step-father, Charles Klich, and later as head of his own business.

Wordless Wednesday: Catherine (Hochrein) Hoffman & family

Well, maybe not wordless, but the text is part of this scrapbook page image.