Washington Irving Society

BY TRACY HOFFMAN

Monday, September 10, 2018

When I mention Washington Irving’s fiancé, who passed while they were engaged, people always ask if I’m related to Matilda Hoffman.

My response is typically something like: “No, but I keep telling my dad to get busy finding some genealogical records. It would improve my stories.”

One of my colleagues says I should roll with the connection. “Yes, we are related. We go way back.”

I’m sure we really are related way back, somehow. However, Matilda’s father, Judge Hoffman, and other New York Hoffmans have no connection with my people, best we can tell.

Some German who called himself Hoffman arrived in Texas in the late 1800s. Our best guesstimate is that my great ancestor immediately went west when he arrived in America. No layover in New York, assuming he passed through New York. I sometimes imagine Galveston welcomed him since Galveston often calls to me.

One of my German grandfathers ended up in Oklahoma for a bit, and married a Native-American woman. Dad has visited the graves in Oklahoma.

Irving traveled through Oklahoma Territory before statehood, so he would have missed my relatives in Oklahoma, too. That would have been another intriguing story to add to my repertoire. “Irving had tea in a wigwam with my ancestors.”

So close, yet so far!