The topic for this week is “Last One Standing”.

For the purpose of this exercise (only), I chose to interpret this as “The last person with a particular surname descended from a specific ancestor”. Which excludes daughters who marry and change their surname although of course they would still be blood descendants.

My daughter Nicole Hoffmann was the last Hoffmann-of-that-surname descended from her 3xG Grandfather Gottfried Hoffmann (born about 1829 in Saxony) and his wife Karoline.

Gottfried and Karoline had one known son, Friedrich Hoffmann 1862-1933. There may have been other children but none can be found.

Friedrich Hoffmann was born in Friedrichsdorf in the Duchy of Anhalt, Saxony. He married Louisa Berger 1865-1952 In about 1885 in Pfalz, Bayern.

Friedrich and Louisa had 3 sons and a daughter. The eldest son, another Frederick 1886-1975, the only child born in Germany, went to the USA where he married Maude Estelle Jones and had a son and daughter but their son did not marry. So there are no more American Hoffmanns of this particular line with the Hoffmann surname (but plenty of female descendants!)

Another son of Friedrich and Louisa, Charles Hoffmann 1892-abt 1959 married and lived in England but did not have any children.

However, Friedrich and Louisa’s second son William Hoffmann 1889-1955 married Margaret Louisa Darragh in 1912 in Belfast and they had a son to carry on the Hoffmann surname, and also a daughter.

William and Margaret Louisa’s son William Frederick Hoffmann 1914-1953 married Joyce Attrill in 1940 in Kent and they in turn had a son, Geoffrey Kendall Hoffmann, 19444-1983. Geoff married Nancy Johnston (me) in Sydney, Australia and we had one daughter, Nicole Hoffmann.

Nicole’s surname is no longer Hoffmann. Until her marriage she was the Last Hoffmann Standing. Of course there are many, many other Hoffman/n families but none as far as can be ascertained with blood ties to our line descended from Gottfried and Karoline.

(A fuller account of the Hoffmann family is at https://nancyvada.me/genealogy/the-hoffmanns-of-belfast/ – it needs updating).