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Note: She was listed in Michael's 1910 Ellis Island file as being left behind in Polje, Bosnia.
She arrived in the US on 01 APR 1912 with her young sons Leo and George via Bremen, Germany aboard the North German Lloyd ship SS Kronprinz Friedrich Wilhelm.
SS Kronprinz Friedrich Wilhelm was a world-record-holding passenger liner, becoming an auxiliary warship from 1914-1915 for the Imperial German Navy and sailing as a commerce raider for a year. It was interned in the United States when she ran out of supplies. When the U.S. entered World War I, she was seized and served as a United States Navy troop transport until she was decommissioned and turned over to the United States Shipping Board, where she remained in service until she was scrapped in 1923
Mary arrived with $25 in her possession. According to the The Record of Detained Aliens she was detained at Ellis Island on 02 APR (the cause was listed as "husband" in Bartlesville) and discharged from there at 3 pm on 05 APR 1912 under the name of Marya Hoffmann. Her previous residence was Mariahilf, Galicia. She listed as her nearest relative in the country she immigrated from as her mother, Ludwina MÜLLER in Mariahilf. She intended to go to her husband's home at 403 Warren St., Brooklyn, NY.
According to Jean Ann HOFFMAN, she once told her on her porch in Collinsville that the boat was quarantined for a week, and her husband had to return to KS (OK?). When she got released, she took her two boys on the train and because she was mad at her husband for leaving, she let her boys buy whatever they wanted on the train. She was well-known around Collinsville for her homemade whiskey. People continued to come by her house for several years after her death wanting to buy some. She worked as Frank Phillip's housekeeper at Woolaroc where the clothes had to be washed and bleached twice before the Phillips would wear them. She dressed her little girls in the Phillips girls hand-me-downs.
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Her daughter-in-law Betty BROWN relates the following stories:
1. Betty (who lived next door) had an old 30s pickup truck that she would drive Mary to town with to buy groceries (and beer-making supplies). The truck always seemed to flood when Mary would buy ice cream, but it would be fine other times. Mary would say "How does this stupid thing know I bought ice cream?"
2. When Mary and her family lived in the immigration camp near Bartlesville a pregnant woman there looked at a certain animal (not known what kind), and when the baby was born it had some features that resembled this animal. Mary would tell Betty this story when Betty was pregnant and tell her to learn from it and not watch any scary movies or look at animals.
3. Betty remembers when Mary's sisters came for a visit how amazed she was that Mary could talk to them while quickly and accurately slicing apples with a knife paper-thin to make apple strudel.
4. Once, Mary and her friend Mrs. Smalyge ("smie-lee-go" she was possibly a friend from the Old Country - likely Eva SMALYGE) wanted to walk into the field to get walnuts. Her son Frank had an electric fence there that she decided she would cut with a pair of pliers. When the fence "bit" her she and Mrs. Smalyge proceeded to beat it with sticks. Betty saw this and sent Joe running to help her because she thought they were beating a snake.
5. Mary had a brother left in the "Old Country" that wrote to her as late as the 1960s, wanting to come over for a visit. Mary's daughters would not let her send the money because they thought he would come over and stay. I do not know what his name was.
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I remember her very well. Near the end of her life, she lost her command of English and reverted to her native German, and that's all she ever spoke to me with. She taught me quite a few German words and phrases. She was "mein grossmutter" and she would make me the big NABISCO shredded wheat cereal with sugar whenever I walked across the garden to her house. She had a rain barrel by her front door, with a tin scoop hanging on it that we used to drink from.
According to her death certificate, she died at 9:50 PM of "ventricular fibrillation" brought on by "cardiac decompensation."
1920 OK, Osage, ED 97, (15)
1930 OK, Tulsa, Collinsville, ED10, (06)
SSN: 448-30-4838
The names of her parents are from Frank HOFFMAN'S family bible.
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