Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 238, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 October 1910 — Hoffman Family [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Hoffman Family

The immediate predecessors of the Hoffman who first came to this country some time about the middle of seventeenth century are obscure, but for a generation or so there had been men of prominence in the family. The name is of Swedish origin and probably the several notable German and Dutch physicians and philogolists of that name in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries originally came from Sweden. A good many Swedes did emigrate to the German and Dutch countries in the time of Gustavus Adolphus. There are two derivations given for the name Hoffman. One is that the name was originally Hoofdman, which In Dutch means a captain or director or chief man. The other derivation, which is preferred, makes the Dutch form now in general use, Hoffman, a form of the Scandinavian name Hoppman, as It originally appeared in Sweden, meaning a man of hope, and analogous to the Anglo-Saxon Hopekin, now abbreviated into Hopkin, meaning a child of hope. The first Hoffmans in this country settled in Delaware, date unknown, and when Governor Stuyvesant conquered New Sweden he transferred them to New York to keep them from rebelling in favor of Queen Christina of their fatherland, Sweden. There they promptly lost their identity among the Dutch settlers, as the governor hoped they would. The! forefather of the original Hoffman family in this country was born about 1625 at Reval, on the, gulf of Finland, then a part of Sweden, but conquered for Russia by Peter the Great in 1710. His name was Martinus, or Martin, and it is said that he was ritmaster to the king, Gustavus Adolphus. In 1658, a year arter his arrival in this country, Martlnus Joined the other settlers in opposition to the orders of Ensign Smith, in command of the garrison stationed at Kingston, and went out to fight against the Indians. Three years later he is listed in the New York city directory as ah auctioneer, paying big taxes, and living in Broadway. Later he worked in Albany as a saddler. ~~ Nicholas married Jannitie, or Jane, daughter of Antonie Crispell, a French Huguenot, who settled in that region, and who had become one of the first patentees of New Plats, a section of Ulster county. Col. Martlnus Hoffman, named for his grandfather, son at Nicolaes and Jannitie, was born in 1706 and died in 1772. Ha settled near Red Hook,

on the east side of the Hudson river, and is the progenitor of the big New York family of Hoffmans which includes the late Very Rev. Dean Hoffman and Hon. John T. Hoffman, governor of the state from 1869 to 1873. Martlnus was justice of the peace of • Duchess county, and a man of property and Influence. He married twice, the Becond time to Mrs_ Henry Hansen of Haarlem, sister to .William Livingston, governor of New Jersey. His first wife was Tryntie (English, Catherine) Benson. The Hoffman family has spread over the whole country. Some of the

families with which Wnffmana have more recently intermarried are the Roosevelts, the Tlffanys, the Buncos, the Reynoldses, the Strongs, the Kisaams, the Astons, the McVlckers and the Millers. Among the more noted living members of the family are Horace Addison Hoffman, professor of Greek and dean of the University of Indiana; Richard Hoffman, the musician; Ralph Hoffman, ornithologist, and Frank S. Hoffman, professor 1885 hUOIOgy ’ at Un,on college sUxc * The arms are blazoned: Argent, on amount vert three pine trees proper, west: A oock proper. Motto: Carp* utem.