The Hyphen Family Lineage

Note: The family of Jacob W. Huffman

In the text Christian Metzger: Founder of an American Family 1682-1942 (p178), the passage for Jacob Hoffman only gives his birthdate and his wife's name (Eliza Jay), along with stating that he had a large family and "moved to Seattle, Washington." No other vital dates were given, and none of his children were named or enumerated in the text.

Tracing his family has proved somewhat difficult owing to several interstate moves he made with this family - some of them apparently back-and-forth, based on the reported birthplaces for his many children and on their subsequent residences and marriage places. Some of the information I have stems from the research I have done, and some is anecdotal and unverified but appears to stem from research done by one of his descendants and posted to the FindaGrave.com website and similar. (One of those pieces of information is that he served in the Civil War, in the 93rd Illinois Infantry, Company B; this information is also present on his headstone, seeming to corroborate that piece of information.)

Jacob and Eliza appear to have married sometime in the early-to-mid 1860s, after his military service presumably ended, and lived first in Bureau Cty, Illinois, where their first three children were born. Afterwards, they appear to have moved to Kansas briefly - long enough for their fourth child to be born - before moving back to Illinois for a handful of years (and the birth of two more children). Around 1875, they had moved to Kansas again, stayed long enough for the birth of their seventh child, and then returned once more to Illinois for the birth of at least two more children.

Whether there were more moves in between the reported birthplaces of their children, and not necessarily captured in federal or state censuses, is not clear at this time, though I suspect this is so. The birthplace of their youngest known daughter (Edna, b. about 1883) is unknown to me at this time, though I would expect she was born in Illinois. Ultimately, the family would settle in the area around Seattle in King Cty, Washington, anecdotally given as 1888. Their oldest daughter, Alice, married in central Iowa in 1887, so it seems reasonable to assume that the migration was slow enough to perhaps have a few temporary residences along the way.

Also complicating research into the history of Jacob's family is the large number of early and tragic deaths that occurred in a short span of years. In late 1890, within a span of several days, teenaged son Harry and young daughter Edna both died, presumably of illness. Four years later, in late 1894, his oldest daughter ("Allie") came to visit from Iowa with her three young daughters, and on the last night of their stay in Seattle they were joined by Eliza, Allie's mother and Jacob's wife. The five of them died in a fire that occurred overnight in the hotel. A year after the fire, his son Delphus married, only to lose his wife after not much more than a year of marriage at her death on Christmas Eve of 1896.

Between these deaths and others of his children who led normal-length lives but had no children, his progeny is much more sparse than one might expect of a father of ten.

- Oldest son Frank appears to have married sometime after 1880, though I have not found a marriage date, place, or record for him as of yet, nor any specific information about his wife. The two of them were counted living with Jacob in the 1910 US Census in Fall City, King Cty, Washington, but without any children listed in the household. The next record I have successfully found for Frank is his death record form 1942 in Globe, Gila Cty, Arizona, naming his wife (Emma) but without other information. I suspect he had no children, but have not confirmed this.

- "Allie," the second oldest (and first daughter), married John Hancher in Iowa in 1887, and, as mentioned above, died in Seattle with all three of her children. John would eventually remarry at least once, but it is unknown if he had any further children after Allie's death.

- George Edwin, third oldest, is last counted in the 1880 US Census for his father's household. I have not found confirmed records for him after that, though there are several candidates found in records in Illinois, Kansas, and elsewhere.

- Ardilla, fourth oldest, married David S. Miller, and had at least two daughters and a son.

- Delphus, fifth oldest, is mentioned above; his first wife died young, and he appears not to have remarried until he was in his late forties. His second wife was nearly his age and appears to have been unmarried and without children prior to their marriage, and the census records that follow do not show any children counted in their household.

- Celia, sixth oldest, married Harvey Norton and had at least seven children (six daughters and one son). I have found no record for her thus far after the 1910 US Census, and have had varying degrees of luck researching her children.

- Harry, seventh oldest, is noted above as dying at the age of fifteen.

- Charles Emmett, eighth oldest, married first to Belva Gertrude Keith and had two sons and two daughters prior to her death. He remarried many years later, but does not appear to have had any further children.

- Leroy Henderson, ninth oldest, is the youngest child documented in a US Census record prior to the family's migration to the Pacific Northwest (listed as an infant in the 1880 record), and appears to have married and had one son prior to the death of his first wife.

- Edna, the youngest known child of Jacob's, is believed to have been the tenth child in the family. She died just days after Harry, at the age of seven; the only record or reference I have for for her so far is a listing on the FindaGrave.com website, which links her to her parents and displays a photo of her headstone which seems to support this link.

I do not have information at this time to state whether Jacob and Eliza had any other children, though it is possible - Eliza was about thirty-eight at the time of Edna's birth, and might still have had more child-bearing years after that, depending upon health and circumstances. Thus far, I have not found any birth records or other indications that any further children were born to the family. Had there been, they would have been no older than about ten at the time of Eliza's death in 1894, and might well have been young enough to join her during her fateful overnight stay at the hotel, but no mention seems to have been made of such children and no additional, unaccounted-for burial listings for the family appear in the information I have for the cemetery the family used at the time (Fall City Cemetery, Fall City, King Cty). If there were younger children that survived their mother, they would have been no older than mid-teens at the time of the 1900 US Census, but I have found no record of such children living with immediate family at that time.

At the time of his death in 1912, at the age of seventy-four, Jacob was survived by at least five of his ten children, and at least nine grandchildren; he had survived at least three grandchildren (specifically those three that died in the same fire that killed his wife and daughter), and at least two more grandchildren were born after his death.