William Jacob Hoffman

Thanks to a very generous trade with collector Charles Joyce I was able to recently add this excellent Berdan’s Sharpshooter image to my collection. When Charles first shared this several years ago on a few Facebook collector pages I was immediately drawn to it. The intense sun-burnt look of the subject as well as his rifle and formidable knife were really interesting. At first I thought the knife was a saber bayonet but I was mistaken; it is a German “fascinenmesser” (basically a machete popularly used by German/Saxon/Prussian soldiers, primarily artillerymen, to clear brush and to be used as a tool in fashioning defensive obstacles). The rifle is a breech-loading 1859 Sharps but at the time there was no way to determine if it was an infantry model or the special “Berdan contract” made for the 1^st and 2^nd U.S. Sharpshooters. After some discussion with Charles I learned that the backdrop was used by a photographer at Fort Monroe, Virginia, in 1862. In fact Charles had doggedly run down up to 30 images with the same backdrop, two of which were identified to units who were at or near Fort Monroe before the middle of the war. In all of those images Charles had never seen the fascine knife in any of them which we felt ruled it out as a photography studio prop.

Armed with those few clues we began to dig further but Charles soon discovered a post-war tintype with hastily-scrawled names and dates behind the wartime view; William J. Major (1869 – 1920) and Catherine Hoffman McKay. Using that information I dove into digitized census records and learned that Catherine was the granddaughter of one William Jacob Hoffman, a 40-year old comb maker born in Baden, Germany and residing in Essex County, New Jersey, according to the 1860 Census. William’s wife, ten years his junior, was also named Catherine, as was their daughter. After checking for a William Hoffman who may have been 40+ years old in 1862, served in the east, and might have had access to a German fascine knife and also a Sharps rifle I found one single possibility. My guy from the census, German-born William Jacob Hoffman, was in fact the only man by that name to fit the bill and he was one of the original enlistees of the Swiss/German Company A, Berdan’s 1^st U.S. Sharpshooters.

Like those of so many other soldiers, details of Hoffman’s life are very sparse. Captain Rudolph Aschmann, a long-serving officer in Company A, and the author of an 1865 memoir, did not mention Hoffman by name. He only appears in some census records and on the muster roll of the 1^st U.S. Sharpshooters. Fortunately though the muster roll “abstract” shows that Hoffman was absent for a length of time between two rolls taken on July 8^th 1862 and April 30^th, 1863. Judging from the battered condition of the sharpshooters following the July 1^st 1862 battle of Malvern Hill, and their subsequent illnesses while in camp at Harrison’s Landing, it’s highly likely that Hoffman was hospitalized away from his regiment during that period. The most likely scenario is that he embarked on a ship at Harrison’s Landing then later landed at Fort Monroe where he would have been examined by doctors at nearby Camp Hamilton. Malaria, typhoid, dysentery, and even extreme physical exhaustion were plagues to even the survivors of that spring’s campaigns who were untouched by shot or shell. Hoffman, among scores of other recuperated soldiers, would have been given a final examination and been ruled fit or unfit for duty. It’s entirely possible that his recovery took until the spring of 1863 when, faced with a new campaign, able-bodied soldiers in hospitals and convalescent camps were ordered back to their regiments in the field.

Whatever the case, Hoffman was a “stayer” once he returned to the regiment. He would survive the war unscathed (apart from his presumed/unknown illness) and mustered out in the field at Petersburg, Virginia, with a severely wounded Capt. Aschmann and roughly a dozen other men left of the original company. The image seen here likely depicts Hoffman soon after arriving at Fort Monroe sometime in the summer of 1862. It’s unusual that a soldier would bring his rifle and equipment with him to a hospital but the company commanders of the U.S. Sharpshooters played fairly loose with that rule, placing their men in personal responsibility for their government-owned “ordnance.” The new-looking uniform coat could also be a clue to when Hoffman departed the regiment. New clothing, including green frock coats, were issued to the men in mid to late July, 1862, to replace the threadbare sacks coats they marched and fought in all spring and summer.

As for the fascine knife I can only speculate as to where Hoffman acquired it. I am not aware of imported German fascine knives coming to the United States before or during the war. Before coming to America Hoffman did, however, have six years of mandatory service in the army of the Grand Dutchy of Baden followed by a reenlistment as a sergeant and instructor that garnered him an additional ten years of service. In both cases he served in the artillery, a branch whose members were required to carry fascine knives in order to clear brush for their artillery pieces and to aide in construction blinds, gabions, fascines, and other field obstructions. If Hoffman did not acquire the blade in America before or during the war it’s possible that it is a personal memento of his military career in Germany that he brought with him to America.