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Note: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette August 14, 1945 Death Notices - HOFFMAN - On Monday, Aug. 13, 1945, at 11:40 a.m., John P., husband of Mary Seeger. Friends received at his late home, Fort Couch Dr., Beadling, Pa., until Thursday, Aug. 16, at 8:15 a.m. Solemn high mass of requiem, at St. Agatha's R.C. Church, Bridgeville, Pa., at 9 a.m. Interment in St Michael's Cemetery. Please omit flowers. Pittsburgh Press - Thursday October 6, 1983 - Farmhouse yields years of memories The rambling farmhouse where John Peter Hoffman began raising his family nearly a century ago was showing its age in the sharp October sunlight. That made it all the more attractive. Hundreds of visitors came to the weathered Upper St. Clair homestead, positioning their lawn chairs around the back porch and waiting for auctioneer Raymond Patterson to bring forth the treasures from inside. Some were antique dealers, flea market merchants or amateur collectors of "old things." Others were there because they remembered the three elderly Hoffman sisters, the last of whom died in the deteriorating house in August. And everyone wondered who would bid for the house, barn and spring house on the one remaining acre of Hoffman land later in the day. Whether or not they found anything to buy, visitors to the auction left with at least a few chapters of the Hoffman family chronicle. Every book, toy and dusty piece of once-elegant furniture told a bit of the story as Patterson and fellow auctioneer John Magill pointed to them and demanded bids. There were Jack Hoffman's baby shoes, the ones with the buckles, that Bill Rodgers of Castle Shannon bought for $5. There was Jack's miniature iron buggy, horse and driver that brought $150 from E. Stilley of Bethel Park, even with its broken wheel and chipped paint. Jack, now 83, watched the bidding from the kitchen door, seemingly unmoved as the auctioneers sold the memorabilia of his childhood. Didn't he want to keep the horse and buggy, once his favorite toy? "Not at that price," he quipped. But Stilley was proud of his purchase. "This is a collector's item. I'll give it to my son for his collection, after we fix the wheel of course, " he said. The toy, undoubtedly, will be an attractive display. So will the rocking chair and wooden cradle Rodgers bought for his home, along with the ornate grandfather clock and dining room chairs that sat on the back porch awaiting their turns on the auction block. A few other offerings, however, could be referred to politely as conversation pieces. Like the wood and metal cabbage slicer, bought by Al Shaffer of Monongahela. "I paid $20 for it - I'll Get $40. They don't make 'em like this anymore," he said. And the bronze glass orb Jack McKinsey of Scott purchased. "I've seen these things in New England. You put a string in it and hang it from your window to keep witches away. I think I paid $9 for it," he said. Hoffman, strolling through the rooms piled high with boxes of items still to be sold, admitted his sisters Margaret, Emma and Regina seldom threw anything away in the 28 or so years they lived in the house alone. "Sure I'll miss this place some. I grew up here. But me and Henry, we don't have any use for it now," said Hoffman, who moved out 30 years ago. Jack and his wife, Mary, have a farm in Hickory, Washington County. His brother Henry, 87, lives a few miles away in Eighty Four. "There were six kids. Mary was the oldest. She moved away when she got married and she died some years ago. Gene and Emma were school teachers at the old school, down where the church (St. John Capistran on Fort Couch Road) is now," Jack Hoffman said. Several customers at the auction remember learning their ABC's and multiplication tables from one of the Hoffman sisters. "I was one of Emma's students, and we stayed close until she died a couple years ago. She made me an afghan for Christmas a few years ago, and I bought one just like it for my granddaughter at the auction," said Nellie Delach of Cooks School Road in Upper St. Clair. "The Hoffmans were a wonderful farm family. Emma made needlepoint vignettes for the house that showed the family's cows and dogs, their 1913 Model T Ford and some other parts of the family history. Henry is keeping those." Jack said he is keeping few things from the house, other than his memories. "This was the parlor," he said, motioning to a spacious, wallpapered room. "We had to get special permission from mother to go in here. And this was the living room - I remember polishing that bronze horse on the furnace until it shined. "Here's the old stove in the attic. I remember we used to roller skate up here......" Jack and Mary Hoffman insisted they weren't really interested in the fate of the house, located on Fort Couch Road on the fringe of Upper St. Clair's wealthy Trotwood Manor neighborhood. There was speculation at the auction that the remaining acre of the Hoffman land, which once totaled 35 acres, would be subdivided. The homestead would be torn down to make way for new homes, the rumor went. The story was different by the end of the day, after Eugene Brunozzi of Mt. Lebanon bought the property for $77,000. According to auctioneer Patterson, Brunozzi intends to restore the house and move his family there. A letter from Agnes Hoffman to Joseph Lutz in which she sent him the article about the Hoffman auction. Dear Joe, October 24, 1983 I thought you might like to read about the auction they have had five days of the auction. I wasn't up at the last two so I don't know whether they got finished with it or not...they had the coin auction at a different place. One the families that lives across the road from them said that the man has been cleaning some of place cutting bushes and doing different things. Hope you are well as I am we really enjoyed the visit. Agnes
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