I’ve been digging back into our family history for the last few years—something my dad was passionate about, but that didn’t particularly interest me until after I had kids of my own.
What piqued my interest was a photo I came across of my great grandfather and his wife and kids. I received it as part of a packet from the current pastor of a church where he’d served back in the early years of the 20th century. I’d come across a reference to the place online and, on a whim, sent a note asking if they had any info about and maybe a photo of my great-great-grandfather, Gotthilf F. Luebker.
I’d never seen a picture of the guy because there weren’t any hanging on the wall when I was a kid, as there were some other ancestors. I later discovered that my dad had many pictures of him in his files, but when I got that photo from the church, I felt like I was I “meeting” him for the first time.
It had a particularly strong impact because it showed him surrounded by his wife and kids—as a husband and a father—like me. And standing to his right was my grandfather—whom I recalled only as a white-haired old man holding me on his lap and letting me play with his pocket watch—here, as skinny teenager, with his whole life still ahead of him!
Anyhow, something clicked, and suddenly these people became real to me, more than just names or dusty, disconnected relics (like Gotthilf’s hat) that my dad kept in his study when I was growing up.
The only problem was that Dad had been gone for 15 years, so I couldn’t go ask him to repeat all of the stories I’d half-listened to when he was still alive. His family history records were scattered around the old house up in Pine City where he’d been living when he died, but not organized or even consolidated in any significant way. I felt bad about that: I’d made him a promise during his final months that I’d gather up that stuff and take care of it, but moving around as much as we have, I never quite got around to it. It remained in what I came to call “the Dad Museum.”
Then, last November, my daughter and I went up to Minnesota to do a college visit and were able to spend a couple of days at the old place, where I packed up and shipped as much as I could back to Arizona. There were some things I couldn’t locate—files that supposedly had info that tracked our family tree back into the 1600s, and some old photo albums that belonged to my great aunt—but in talking to my brother and my nephew, it sounded as though those might already be in the care of my sister, who also has been researching family history.
Among the stuff I shipped to Arizona were a number of framed family photos I’d never seen before, including one of Johann Hoefler, my great-great-grandfather, my Grandma Luebker’s immigrant ancestor. I scanned the photo, posted it on Ancestry, and didn’t think much more about it. (That's him, below.) There was just one thing that seemed odd—I couldn’t find a date of death for him, and he didn't seem to be buried alongside his wife in Pine City.
Flash forward to this year. I’m up in Pine City again, helping my other daughter get set up in the house up there, and I get in touch with Jerry Hoefler. His grandfather and my great grandfather were brothers, which makes him my second cousin once removed, if you’re keeping score.
I asked Jerry about Johann, and it turns out that Johann was the ancestor my dad often described to me as having been “assassinated.”
The story—or one version of it—was that a Hoefler ancestor sold the family linen mill back in Bavaria and used the proceeds to kind of tom-cat around for a while, maybe fathering an illegitimate child or two. Eventually he emigrated to the United States where, in dad’s story, one of this ancestor’s “bastard” off-spring from Germany tracked him down years later and shot him to death on the porch of a whorehouse near where the St. Paul Civic Center eventually would be built.
My problem was that I hadn’t associated Johann with that story or as being that guy. I hadn’t made the connection that the guy who’d settled in Pine City, the guy who had six kids with Catherine Wölfinger (with whom he’d arrived in the United States along with a pair of daughters—Barbara, two years old, and Margaret, only six months—in 1866, when he was 28 years old) was the same wastrel who’d met the colorful end in my dad’s story.
Jerry had some different information. It seemed that Johann actually had started another family back in Bavaria, then abandoned them to start the second family with whom he came to America. So that would mean we're the “bastards,” and the family he left behind back in Germany would be his "real" family. And as Jerry had it—apparently from my dad, as well—it was the youngest son of that left-behind family who’d been sent over here to—well, I’m not exactly sure—to avenge the family’s honor, I guess.
Jerry also shared a couple of letters with me that my dad had sent starting back in 1953 when Dad was stationed in Germany.
One was asking his aunt for more info about whether any of the older generation of Hoeflers recalled a visit by a German relative circa 1898 or 1899—he’d been in touch with the German Hoeflers, and one of them mentioned traveling to visit relatives in the States around that time.
Apparently none of the surviving American Hoeflers recalled such a visit, leading dad to formulate the hypothesis that there may have been a visitor who came to visit just one person: Johann, to shoot him dead.
In a later letter, Dad transcribed the newspaper accounts from the St. Paul Dispatch and St. Paul Pioneer Press that indicated Johann had shot himself. But Dad discovered what he believed was a significant discrepancy: one article said the pistol was found in Johann’s right hand, but the wound was below his left ear.
That seems to have been the genesis of the “assassinated ancestor” story. That it was a shooting is certain. But Dad’s question was, “Who actually pulled the trigger?”
The answers came as a result of another letter Jerry shared with me, from another cousin who’s been researching family history. In it she mentioned another article about the shooting in the St. Paul Daily Globe, a newspaper I’d only recently discovered on the Library of Congress’s “Chronicling America” website. Turned out there are two articles. Here’s what they say:
From the Saint Paul Daily Globe, Tuesday Morning, December 30, 1890:
THROUGH HIS HEAD.
———
John Hoeffer Lies at the Hospital, His Head Horribly Mutilated.
———
Tired of Life, He Attempts an Exit by the Well-Worn Pistol Route.
———
He Cannot Possibly Recover From the Self-Inflicted Injuries.
———
John Hoeffler lies the city hospital with a bullet hole through his brain. He will die. Last night at 9:30 o'clock Mrs. Ryder, of 122 West Sixth Street, was engaged in household duties in the rear of the house, when she was startled by a flash, followed by the report of a pistol just outside the kitchen window. The report was also heard Amelia Ryder, daughter of the lady mentioned, and a roomer in the house named George Regelsberger. The latter ran out to the spot from which the flash had seemed to proceed and there found the prostrate body of a man. Blood was flowing from a wound in his head. He was unconscious. Mr. Regelsberger at once hurried to police headquarters, a block away, and gave information of the facts. Lieut. Schweitzer proceeded to the scene, and found the man as described. Mrs. Ryder. having recovered from her fright, identified the man as John Hoeffler, formerly a roomer at the house, and latterly fireman at the Ryan Hotel. He had shot himself near the base of the brain with a .44 caliber navy revolver. The ball had penetrated the brain. Hoeffler’s hat, a black slouch hat of Stetson manufacture, was bespattered with the brains of the suicide. Hoeffler was removed to the city hospital after a brief examination of his wound by Dr. Ancker. An operation was postponed on him there, but it is impossible that he can survive.
In one of the man’s pockets was found a memorandum book. On one of the pages was written in German: John Hoeffler, Dec. 29. Did he shoot himself?
Hoeffler came to St. Paul nine years ago from Pine City. Mrs. Ryder, on whose premises the shooting occurred, also came from Pine City about that time. The Hoeffler and Ryder families were neighbors there. Mrs. Hoeffler died in Pine City eleven years ago, and since that time Hoeffler has made threats against his own life, which, however, were regarded as meaningless until the affair of last night occured. Hoefler leaves six children. One of them is Mrs. Henry Kruse, of Pine City, who has charge of three younger children. A son, John Hoeffler, resides in St. Paul on Canada street, and a daughter, Henrietta Hoeffler, is employed as a domestic by a Summit avenue family. Hoeffler is addicted to drink. He was discharged from his position at the Hotel Ryan nearly a month ago. It is thought his action was due to despondency.
From the St. Paul Daily Globe, Friday Morning, January 2, 1891:
A DELICATE OPERATION,
———
But It Failed to Give John Hoeffler His Life
John Hoeffler, the man who shot himself in the head last Tuesday evening in the yard of Mrs. Ryder’s residence, at 122 West Sixth street, died at the city hospital yesterday. That death has ensued in his case is less surprising than that he survived for so long the injuries of such a nature. The revolver with which Hoeffler shot himself was a forty-four-caliber, navy pattern. The ball entered his skull at the base of the brain, made a circuit of the inside of the cranium, and lodged just above the ear on the left side. Dr. Ancker probed for the bullet, but was unable for some time to trace its course. Having at length located it, a piece of the man’s skull was cut away from the region of the bullet, and it was removed. Hoeffler was unconscious during the operation but rallied, subsequently regaining his senses, and discussed with the attendants his chances for life. These up to yesterday morning seemed tolerably good, despite the nature of the wounds and the intricacy of the operation performed. From that time, however, the man became rapidly worse, and he died at 3:30 in the afternoon.
DATES: The first thing I noticed is that the actual year of the shooting doesn’t match up with the supposed dates of the travel by the German relative that made my dad curious in the first place. Back in 1953, he was looking at the years 1898 and 1899. Turns out Johann’s death was nearly a decade earlier.
WOUND LOCATION: While I don’t reproduce them here, the articles in the Dispatch and Pioneer Press, were the source of the “gun in right hand/wound under left ear” discrepancy. But in the Globe accounts—and one can infer from the detail that the reporter talked to the doctor or the “attendants”—it’s pretty clear that the shot entered at the base of the skull on the right side and the slug traveled around inside the cranium and came to a stop below the left ear.
It seems likely there was trauma to both sides of his head. And even if there was no exit wound on the left, it seems likely there could have been swelling and bleeding (or worse) from the ear that might lead a reporter to assume that’s where the shot entered and that the open wound on the other side was the exit, assuming the reporter actually saw the injured man. Maybe he didn’t. Or maybe he just got it wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time.
WEAPON: There’s also disagreement between the Dispatch and Pioneer Press and Globe accounts on what type of revolver was used. The Dispatch and Pioneer Press say it was a “.44 bull dog revolver” and the Globe says a “.44 caliber navy revolver.”
Here, I tend to believe the Dispatch and Pioneer Press version. The .44 bull dog—based on the British Webley—was a fairly common (and inexpensive, if you bought an American-made version) “pocket gun,” a far more likely weapon for a man in Johann’s circumstance to have and be carrying. A navy colt is much larger—nearly three pounds, and more than a foot long—and actually was a .36 caliber weapon, although the Army version was a .44.
And the navy revolver probably would have done significantly more damage, with a muzzle velocity of about 900 FPS, compared to only about 600 for the bull dog.
REGAINED SENSES: Before reading the Globe article I had no idea that Johann ever woke up after the bullet entered his head. But apparently he did. While not definitive, it seems that he might have told his attendants if someone else had shot him, and the article only mentions his discussion of his chances to live. You could chalk that up to traumatic amnesia, of course. But the rest of the evidence seems to point in another direction.
CIRCUMSTANCES: The articles hint that Johann moved to the St. Paul with Mrs. Ryder, his former neighbor in Pine City. Her husband was still alive at the time of her leaving (and was through 1893) but not living with her in St. Paul. So it’s easy to imagine that after his wife died in 1879, a guy who once sowed wild oats across Bavaria, may have run away to St. Paul with his neighbor's wife.
But in the news account, Mrs. Ryder identifies him as a “former roomer” at her boarding house, indicating that if they’d had a relationship, it most likely had ended and he'd moved out (or been asked to move out).
The article also states that he’d been fired from a job at the Hotel Ryan a month earlier, he had a history of threatening suicide since his wife’s death (the eleventh anniversary of which had passed less than a week before, on Christmas Eve), he was “addicted to drink,” and was suffering from “despondency.”
And it was Christmas time—prime time for depression and suicides. It sounds like his holidays hadn’t been particularly happy.
That he chose the backyard of a woman who probably was his former paramour, a house where he formerly lived, is consistent with the mental state of someone wanting to draw attention to his act and to punish the person he probably felt had done him wrong somehow. One can imagine him looking through the window and making sure she was nearby before he pulled the trigger.
So with all of that, I have a hard time inserting a stealthy assassin into this scene. From the article, it sounds like George Regelsberger was outside within seconds, hardly time for an assailant to put the gun in his victim’s hand and flee.
For me it’s difficult to see anything more than a man whose life had collapsed around him, who thought he had nothing left to live for, who believed a bullet would end his pain.
And the saddest part—for me, anyway—is that if he’d lived a hundred years later, someone probably would have picked up on his symptoms and got him the help he needed, long before he reached this sad end in a cold back yard.
But some questions still remain:
- What was the purpose of the note in his pocket: “John Hoeffler, Dec. 29. Did he shoot himself?” It would be interesting to know whatever happened to that, whether it was in his writing, and why he got the date wrong.
- What was the eventual disposition of the gun, the hat, the memorandum book and the rest?
- Mrs. Ryder’s maiden name turns out to have been Mary Schweitzer. Was the police Lt. Schweitzer who “proceeded to the scene” a relative of hers? Could it have been a murder for different reasons, a murder that was covered up, just not the murder my dad suspected?
- And where is Johann Hoefler buried?
I don't know whether those are questions I'll be able to answer. It would be interesting to try to locate descendants of the Ryders and find out whether any stories have come down through their family about the events of December 30, 1890 in that back yard on Sixth Street.
But that’s a project for another time.
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