Will-DuPage-Lee County IL Archives Biographies.....Hoffert, Antoine August 17, 1825 - September 11, 1897
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Richard Gehling GehlingR@aol.com February 20, 2010, 3:18 pm

Source: Memories of Genevieve Reinart Gehling, 1980
Author: Richard Gehling

     Antoine (Anton) Hoffert, Sr. was born on 17 August 1825 in the town of
Walbach, province of Alsace, France.  He was the son of Francois Antoine Hoffert
(b. 1799) and Anne Marie Umdenstock (b. 1790), who had been married in April of
1823 in Ostheim, Alsace.  Anne Marie was nine years older than her husband.  She
was the daughter of Nicholas Umdenstock.  Francois was the son of Jean Hoffert
and Madelaine Batten, whose families seem to have lived in Alsace for many
generations. 

     Antoine grew up in the French farming community of Walbach with his six
siblings.  Three of them were boys: Jean, Nicholas and Joseph.  The other three
were girls, each named Anne Marie in turn after the preceding one died in
infancy.  Sometime in the late 1840's or early 1850's, Antoine seems to have
left his family members behind and emigrated by himself to the United States. 
He settled near the town of Naperville on the Illinois prairie, just west of
Chicago. 

     At Naperville, 28-year-old Antoine Hoffert married a young girl named Mary
Forstoge.  Mary was only sixteen at the time of their wedding.  By October of
1854 she had given birth to a son, whom she named Anton in honor of his father.
 But the family unit was soon shattered.  Mary died sometime in 1855, perhaps
during the labors of childbirth.  She had not yet reached her 18th birthday.

     Two years later, Antoine remarried.  His second wife was named Mary
Mathers.  She had been born in 1838 in the city of Ostheim, France.  Mary took
over the care of young Anton.  She and Antoine also began a new family of their
own.  One source says that over a period of 23 years Mary Mathers gave birth to
a dozen additional children.  Genevieve Reinart remembered only three: John
Hoffert of Minnesota, Joe Hoffert of Illinois, and Mary Hoffert Luft of Rolfe,
Iowa.

     Antoine Hoffert and his second wife, Mary Mathers, seem to have lived in
northern Illinois the remainder of their lives.  It is not known exactly when
his second wife passed away, but Antoine himself lived into his 72nd year.  He
died on 11 September 1897 in Lee County, Illinois.  He was buried in St. Mary's
Cemetery, Sublette, Illinois.


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