Back in the 1880’s, there was a teacher at Immanuel Lutheran Church in New Wells named George Sohn. During his time at that congregation, he and his wife had 3 daughters whose baptism records are found in that church’s books. It is somewhat humorous that a teacher with the name, Sohn, which means “son” in German, had 3 daughters In the past, a story on this blog has been written about one of those girls. That post was titled, One of Teacher Sohn’s Daughters from New Wells. Today, you will read about another one of the Sohn daughters who was baptized in New Wells. She is also today’s birthday girl.

Margarethe Emma Auguste Sohn was born on July 16, 1886, thus making today her 140th birthday. Margarethe was the daughter of George and Anna (Hubinger) Sohn. Another interesting fact about this family is that both of these parents were born and raised in Frankenmuth, Michigan, another important historic place in Missouri Synod history. As said before, Margarethe was baptized at Immanuel Lutheran Church in New Wells. We can view her baptism record below.

The last daughter born in New Wells was born in 1888. The Sohn’s next child was born in 1891 in Michigan, so between 1888 and 1891, the Sohn family moved to Detroit where Teacher Sohn would become an educator at Zion Lutheran Church. For a while, the school at Zion was one of the largest ones in the Missouri Synod. Another thing happened before we find Margarethe in her first census in 1900. Her mother died in 1896, and Teacher Sohn then married Carlina Bieske in 1897. In the census entry below, we find Margarethe at the age of 13. There were 5 children in the Sohn household. After 4 daughters, a son was born to Teacher Sohn in 1894. George was called a teacher.

The last census in which we find Margarethe prior to her marriage is the one taken in 1910. Margarethe was 23 years old, and her father was still a parochial school teacher. The 3 oldest daughters were all part of the work force, with Margaretha working as a seamstress at a shirt factory. Another daughter had been born in the previous decade to George and his second wife.

Now, we will take a look at the man who would become Margarethe’s husband. His name was Frederick William Hoffman, who was born on September 2, 1887. Frederick was a junior. He was the son of Frederick William and Mathilde (Kietzke) Hoffman. He was born in Springwells, Michigan, which is a municipality in the Detroit Metropolitan Area. When the 1900 census was taken, Fred was 12 years old. His father was a planer in Detroit.

In the 1910 census, Fred, Jr. was 22 years old. It says Fred was a clerk for MRRR, which is probably a railroad.

On June 28, 1911, Fred Hoffman married Margarethe Sohn. We can take a look at a Michigan marriage record for this wedding. It says they were married by a pastor. I have to think that Margarethe would have arranged to have her wedding at the church where her father was a teacher…Zion Lutheran Church.

Here is an old photo of Zion Lutheran Church which was probably where Margarethe was married.

Fred had his World War I draft registration completed in 1917. It said that he was a welder for the Kelsey Wheel Company in Detroit.

This couple’s entry on Family Search says that they had 6 children, but 2 of them had the name, George, with years of birth just one year apart. I think there may have been only one George. When the 1920 census was taken, there were 3 children in their household, one of them a baby girl. Fred was called a candy maker at a candy factory.

Next, we find the Hoffman’s in the 1930 census. One more son, George, had been born during the previous decade. You can also see that there was only one George in this entry. Fred’s parents were also living with him. This time, Fred was called a tool maker at an auto factory.

In the 1940 census, Fred and Margarethe had 4 remaining children living with them. Fred was a pattern maker at an auto shop. Three of their children were also part of the work force.

Fred had his World War II draft card completed when America entered that war. Fred’s employer was the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn.

Fred Hoffman died in 1950. His Michigan death record says he died on January 8th at the age of 62.

Fred died too early in 1950 to make it into that year’s census. We do find Margarethe as a widow in her census entry for that year. She was living with her single daughter, also called Margarethe.

Margarethe Hoffman died in 1972 at the age of 85. She died on a leap year day.

I was unable to locate any burial locations for either Fred or Margarethe Hoffman. I will say this. I have often had difficulty locating the grave sites for people who die in larger cities like Detroit. The website, Findagrave.com, is a crowdsourcing site. I think it is more difficult for larger cemeteries in big cities to be crowdsourced because they have so many grave sites. A person like our friend, Diane Anderson, can go into a cemetery like ours here for Trinity, Altenburg, and identify a large percentage of the grave sites, do some research on them, and place them on Findagrave.com. For someone going into a cemetery with thousands of grave sites, such a task would be pretty daunting. Therefore, I think those cemeteries have a much smaller percentage of sites that have been documented as being located there. Also, since Michigan death certificates are not found on Ancestry.com, one cannot look at those documents to find a place of burial.

Now, two out of the three Sohn daughters born in New Wells have had their stories told. After a quick look at the third daughter, I have to admit that her story might not be written on this blog. She also spent most of her life in Detroit, but it was spent as a lifelong single person. I am not likely to find much information on her to lead me to write her story. In her case, I was able to locate a gravestone in a Detroit cemetery. She is buried in the Glen Eden Memorial Park in that city. Glen Eden has more than 30,000 memorials and only 72% of them are identified on Findagrave.com. Trinity, Altenburg’s cemetery has 91% of their memorials identified on Findagrave.com. A lot of those are not identified because they are unreadable.