A man and a woman who were part of the original immigrants to arrive in Perry County in 1839 would be celebrating a special wedding anniversary today, and I will be telling their story. Both the bride and the groom had been married prior to their wedding, but their first spouses had died. I will begin with the groom.

Friedrich (or Gottfried) Benjamin Hoffmann was born on October 21, 1803 in Frankenburg, Germany. Benjamin was the son of Christian Gottlob and Johanna Rosina (Richter) Hoffmann. Benjamin’s first wife was Johanna Dorothea Agsten. According to his Family Search entry, Benjamin married Johanna on August 25, 1836, but there is no documentation on Family Search for that wedding. I did find a birth record for a child named Friedrich Herman Hoffmann who was born in 1837 to Benjamin and Johanna.

I suspect that not only did this child die as an infant, but also that Benjamin’s wife died at that time also. In 1839, Benjamin came to America aboard the ship, Johann Georg, that arrived in this country in January of 1839. He came with other members of the Hoffmann family, but I have to think that he came as a widower. We see his name on the passenger list of that ship along with several other Hoffmann’s. He is called 34 years old on this list.

Benjamin is found in the 1850 census at the age of 46. However, he was not living in Perry County. He was living in St. Louis in the Robert Woods household and working as a gardener.

Benjamin would get married not long after that census was taken, so we will now take a look at the woman who would become his second wife. Her maiden name was Maria Hopfer, who was born on January 19, 1809 in Heukewalde, Germany. She was the daughter of Michael and Rosina (Brauer) Hopfer. I located this baptism record for Maria from the books of the parish in Nischwitz.

On January 19, 1837, Maria Hopfer married Michael Jacob, so it looks as if she got married on her 28th birthday. That couple’s marriage record from the Ruest parish is displayed below.

According to her entry on Family Search, this couple had 6 children, some born in Germany and some in America. The Jacob’s came to the United States in November of 1839 aboard the same ship that Benjamin had traveled on. After delivering passengers in New Orleans in Janaury of that year, that ship went back to Germany and brought the Gruber Group to New Orleans. The Jacob’s are found on the passenger list shown here. They brought 2 children from Germany.

Maria’s first husband, Michael Jacob, died in 1846, so when the 1850 census was taken, we see that the widow, Maria, was the head of the household. There were 5 children in her family.

Benjamin Hoffmann married Maria Jacob on March 11, 1851, thus making today this couple’s special 175th wedding anniversary. These two were married at Grace Lutheran Church in Uniontown. The church marriage record for this event is pictured below.

We can also take a look at a civil record for this wedding from Perry County.

There were no more children that came from this marriage. In the 1860 census, we find Benjamin farming in the Cinque Hommes Township. The 3 children in this household were actually Jacob’s from Maria’s first marriage.

Next, we find the Hoffmann’s in the 1870 census, Joseph Jacob, Maria’s son, was working on his stepfather’s farm.

The 1880 census is the last one in which we find either Benjamin or Maria. They had an empty nest at that time.

Benjamin Hoffmann died in 1881 at the age of 77. He has a death record in the books of Grace Lutheran Church in Uniontown.

I have to assume that Benjamin was buried in one of Grace Lutheran’s three cemeteries, but there are no entries for him in any of those cemeteries on Findagrave.com.

Maria Hoffmann died in 1886 at the age of 77. A Missouri death record for her is shown below. It says she was buried at Salem Lutheran Cemetery in Farrar.

We can view her gravestone found in the Salem Lutheran Cemetery in Farrar shown below.

Maria Hopfer was the younger sister of Michael Hopfer, who was the patriarch of a rather large Hopfer family that is mostly found in the church books of Grace Lutheran Church in Uniontown. Maria’s connection to the Hopfer family led her and her family to also be members of that congregation during her life in America. Many of Benjamin Hoffmann’s family members have records in the books of Trinity Lutheran Church in St. Louis, but his marriage to Maria led him to be a part of the church in Uniontown.