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One of my ancestors is Frederick Hoffman.  Frederick died on this day 123 years ago.  On February 25th, 1889 in Indiana Frederick Hoffman died sudden and unexpectedly.  While searching for information the Hoffman's I found an interesting record for Frederick Hoffman.  The record is a type that I had (and still have not seen an other) before, an official Coroner's Inquest.

What is a Coroner's Inquest?

A Coroner’s Inquest is an inquiry into the manner and cause of an individual’s death.  Apparently he died unexpectedly, and there was little concern from his family members.  An obituary in the Greensburg Standard dated March 1, 1889 indicated that:

The post-mortem examination of the body of Frederick Hoffman, who lived about eight miles east of this city, resulted in the finding by Dr. J. Y. Hitt that the deceased came to his death from apoplexy.  There was a small amount of opium salt in the stomach but not sufficient to cause death. The post-mortem was held on account of the peculiar circumstances under which Mr. Hoffman died, the seeming unconcern of his family about him and the openly expressed belief of some of the neighbors that his death had not resulted from natural causes.

The obit mentions a Coroner's inquest, and I was able to find the Inquest in the records at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.  The inquest record that I have are just images, with no transcription provided, so I had to do my own. For the most part it was a fairly straight forward, but there were a few sections that were a little difficult to understand. See my transcription below:

As I mentioned in my last post I purchased a digital copy of the 1876 Baskin and Forster Indiana State Atlas.  The atlas covers Indiana, and has maps of the counties and Cities that were in the state at the time.  In addition to the maps that are specific to the state, there are some maps that are of general interest.  These general interest maps include a world map, a railroad map etc.

One of the general interest maps that I found interesting was a map of the German Population living in the United States.  The map was based of the 1870 US census, but none the less it gives you a good idea about where people of German descent tended to gather.  The map to the left is a view of the entire United States, with German Population's marked in red (click on it to see it larger).  The darker the red the higher the concentration of German's.  As you can see the German population stayed in a pretty tight area, and did not really seem to venture south.  Of note are some of the "Big" German population centers, New Jersey, New York City, Erie PA, Buffalo NY, Chicago, Cincinnatti. 

Last week I talked about VINE, a research tool for those doing research in Indiana. In the post I mentioned that I had found several Towler Obituaries and a few Hoffman’s. Using the information that I gathered in VINE, I sent away for copies of each of the obituaries. One of the Obituaries that I sent for was the Obit of Mrs. Mary Hoffman.