In the last Note, I concluded by asking the question, "Did any members of the First Germanna Colony have experience smelting iron?" We had a reply from Barbara Price to the effect,
"Actually, one of the members of the First Colony, John Hoffman/Huffman, was a smelterer and a furhmann, a travelling dealer in ironware. It is true that he is the only member that we can pin down as actually having experience as a smelterer, but the members of the First Colony were well acquainted with smeltering and ironworking as many of their ancestors were involved in this occupation."
John Hoffman, who came in the First Colony, does not appear to have been skilled in smelting nor was he a Fuhrmann. The best occupational classification for him would probably be a carpenter, as he was hired by the Lutherans to erect a house for the new minister, Johann Caspar Stoever. For this work he was paid two and a half shillings per day. It would seem that he was hired for this work because he was more skilled at that activity than anyone else. Still, John Hoffman had not spent enough time in the study of carpentry to be classified as a Master Carpenter, which require many years of study in which one would advance through the states of apprentice and journeyman before becoming a master. His younger brother Henry, b. 1708, did do this and he did not become a Master Carpenter until he was 27 years of age, to judge by the date on a bottle used in commemoration of the event. John Hoffman was only 21 years of age when he left the Sieg Valley (Eisern).
The Fuhrmann mentioned by Barbara was the occupation of the father of John Hoffman. Fuhrmann is best translated, according to my dictionary as teamster , or one who transported goods from one place to another. B. C. Holtzclaw said that a Fuhrmann was a traveling dealer in iron products. This is not consistent with the meaning of Fuhrmann, as anyone who moved oak bark to a tannery or wood to the charcoal furnaces could be called a Fuhrmann. Probably, the father owned a wagon and horses and was available for hire according the needs of the community.
The grandfather of the 1714 John Hoffman was a member of the Guild of Smelters. He was dead by 1686 when his widow remarried. More about this family, especially about another brother of the 1714 John Hoffman, is in
Beyond Germanna
(page 507), in the form of extracts from the diary of the brother Wilhelm. Nothing in this diary suggests that any member of the family was currently engaged in iron working when the diary was written.
(25 Oct 04)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.