Wordless Wednesday: Daughters of John Hoffman

The text about these daughters of John Hoffman, youngest of the immigrant family, is in the scrapbook page. Click on the image to see it larger and read the text. All photos were shared by John's granddaughter, Ruth Whalen.

Wordless Wednesday: John Hoffman plays accordion

Youngest of the immigrant Hoffman generation, John Hoffman enjoyed music and in this photo is playing accordion with a friend at a gathering in Savanna, Illinois. John is the bearded one on the left. The photo was shared by John's granddaughter Ruth Whalen.

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: Family of John Hoffman

Maggie was the oldest daughter of John Hoffman, Bertha Kjarsgaard one of her younger sisters and Alma Rose was her daughter. Maggie was named Margaret and was first married to a Rose and then to Frank Rush.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Hoffman Family Timeline

Randy Seaver in his post Genea-Musings: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - a Family Timeline got me interested in creating a similar timeline for the immigrant generation of the Hoffman family. I've included the parents Johannes and Elisabeth (Homberger) Hoffmann though he died in Switzerland and only she came to Illinois. All of their children and their spouses fill the rest of the chart which is sorted by birthdate. That seems to have excluded Regula's husband John Hagie for whom I do not show a birthdate. Interesting that the younger people seem to have lived longer to some extent. Click on the chart to see full size!

Honored to be "Ancestor Approved"

I am surprised/honored/humbled/pleased to be the recipient of the Ancestor Approved Award from Laura Ann of Dreaming About Home, a fellow GeneaBlogger on 7 April (sorry for the delay.)

My thanks goes to her and the group for designing and sharing this award with me.

The Ancestor Approved Award asks that the recipient list ten things you have learned about any of your ancestors that has surprised, humbled, or enlightened you and pass the award along to ten other bloggers who you feel are doing their ancestors proud.
Here are the 10 things I have learned from my ancestors (and my husband's.)

1. Humbled: by the daring of Henry Hoffman to leave everything familiar in Switzerland and travel alone to America on a sailing ship in 1854.
2. Surprised: by the way Henry enabled/encouraged all the rest of the family to follow him to Illinois over the years.
3. Enlightened: by contact with a granddaughter of Henry's youngest brother John. Ruth Whalen was a treasure both for the knowledge and documents she shared and for the pure joy of knowing her.
4. Surprised: to learn that cousin Jacob Homberger, who died in the Union Army in Texas after the Civil War, would have a pension file created when his mother in Switzerland successfully applied for a pension based on his service.
5. Surprised: to find her home village in Switzerland engraved on the gravestone of Henry's mother Elisabeth Homberger Hoffman.
6. Humbled: to learn of the many hardships so many of our ancestors faced and often overcame.
7. Surprised: to find divorce and suicide among our ancestors was not as uncommon as expected.
8. Surprised: to find a record of the death of Christian Hoffman in Toledo, Ohio, on his journey from Switzerland to Illinois.
9. Enlightened: to learn how much employment by the railroads sustained families and led to migrations.
10. Enlightened: by realizing how much of our ancestors is still present in us, especially apparent in some of the words and sayings we retain.

I salute my fellow genealogy bloggers by passing along the "Ancestor Approved" award to them for what they have taught me and how they encourage me.

1. Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog
2. The Slovak Yankee
3. What's Past is Prologue
4. Kinexxions
5. Nick Gombash's Genealogy Blog
6. Shades of the Departed
7. Random Relatives
8. ThinkGenealogy
9. The Chart Chick
10. Bluebonnet Country Genealogy

Of course there are many more wonderful blogs, but some of my other favorites have already been given this award!