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.

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).

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

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

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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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.



(not so) Wordless Wednesday: Christmas Tree in 1940

Alice Minnie Hoffman, daughter of Henry and Catherine (Hochrein) Hoffman, was born 18 December 1902 in Jackson, Tennessee. She was an older sister of Gladys, the aunt in last week's picture. She married Albert Kaltenstein on 3 November 1934 in Cleveland, Ohio. For a few years they lived in the upstairs of the duplex her mother had built next door to her own house in Cleveland. This Christmas tree was photographed in that upstairs by Al and based on similar pictures was probably in 1940. Not long afterward they moved into their own new house. Though seventy years ago, doesn't that tree still look shiny and bright? It was lacking a bit in branches, but not in spirit.
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(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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Tombstone Tuesday: Freda E. (Hoffman) Grill

Freda's gravestone is the last of those of John Hoffman's children in the Savanna City Cemetery. She was born in Savanna, Illinois, 15 August 1888 and married Otto Grill there on 28 June 1916, Paul Froehlke, a Lutheran minister, officiating. Otto was born in Chicago to Bohemian immigrant parents. They lived their lives in Savanna where Otto worked for the railroad. They lived next door to Freda's sister Tillie and her Bowers family. The Grills had no children.

The cemetery photo is from 19 June 2002. Freda's picture is cropped from a portrait of all five of John Hoffman's daughters copied from an original provided by Ruth Whalen.

Sunday’s Obituary: Irene (Hoffman) Anderson, 1987

Irene Anderson was a special person that it was my misfortune never to know. She was a granddaughter of Caspar and Louise (Schmidt) Hoffman, the daughter of Henry H. and Alice (Houlton) Hoffman. She gathered photos and stories from her family and those of her Uncle Albert and Aunt Suzie. She copied them and compiled them into books for herself and her children. Her children have shared that treasure with the rest of us in the family. The obituaries for Irene and her husband were provided by the San Mateo County Genealogical Society from their Redwood City Tribune files.

Tombstone Tuesday: Mathilda K. (Hoffman) Bowers

Another of the children of John Hoffman buried in the Savanna City Cemetery is his daughter Mathilda K. (Hoffman) Bowers who was known as Tillie. She was married 28 June 1906 to Clarence Elmer Bowers who died 10 April 1951. Tillie passed away 8 September 1973 in Florida but was buried with her husband in Illinois. John and Kunigunda (Schneider) Hoffman had twelve children. Five of them died very young and are buried in the Elizabeth City Cemetery in neighboring Jo Daviess County, one without name or stone. Four of the remaining children are buried in the Savanna City Cemetery as are their parents: Emma, Mathilda (Tillie), Freda, and Rudolph. Margaret (Maggie) is buried in Colorado, Bertha in Wisconsin and Harry in another Carroll County, Illinois, cemetery. (Photographed in June 2002.)

Sunday’s Obituary: Clarence J. Rose, 1977

Clarence John Rose was the first grandson of immigrant John Hoffman. Clarence was born 14 October 1892 in Savanna, Illinois, to Emil and Margaret "Maggie" (Hoffman) Rose. Like his uncle, Rudolph G. Hoffman, and second cousin, Aaron H. Kelly, he served in World War I. He later lived in Denver, Colorado. About 1929 Clarence married Mary M. Spangler. As noted, they had two sons, James Allen Rose and Lawrence J. Rose.
    Funeral Notice of Clarence J. Rose, Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colorado, Aug. 8, 1977.
    Funeral Notice of Mary M. Rose, Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colorado, Jan. 25, 1988.

 

This photograph must have been sent to Clarence's Aunt Bertha. He is with his mother who was by that time married to James Frank Rush and living near Lamar, Colorado.