In your 13 April 2006 edition I found the notice that retired Virginia Baptist pastor Charles Herbert Morris, husband of Erica Hofmann Morris, passed away in Richmond on March 27, 2006, at age 83. Pastor Morris was the son-in-law of German immigrant Heinrich (Henry) Hofmann and his German immigrant wife Elizabeth Hofmann, parents of Erica Hofmann (married Morris). The Hofmann family (Henry, Elizabeth and Erica) had arrived in New York on Dec. 23, 1924. Heinrich (Henry) Hofmann from Ober-Seemen (Upper Hesse) was a brother of my aunt Karoline Peppel (maiden name Hofmann). All my paternal Peppel ancestors also came from the Ober-Seemen.
Several Hofmann descendants of the generations after Heinrich Hofmann are still alive in Ober-Seemen. They have lost contact with their U.S. Hofmann relatives since about the 1970s or 1980s.
I am sending you this mail to inquire as to the possibility that my present message can be passed on to any known surviving member of late pastor Morris’s family in order for the latter to communicate with me, if they wish to do so. For documentation purposes in connection with the Ober-Seemen village history/chronicle covering families having emigrated to the U.S. during the first half of the 20th century and earlier, I would be interested in obtaining some specific information from the family concerned.
Ernst Peppel, Dieburger Strasse 17, 60386 Frankfurt, Germany