Rev. Michael T. Hoffman is pastor of the Church of the Holy Cross at Emmett. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1908 and practically his entire service had been given in Kansas. He is a devoted and zealous churchman and had done much in a constructive way for the upbuilding of Catholic influence in Kansas.
Father Hoffman was born in Alsace-Lorraine, Germany, June 4, 1885, but had lived in the United States since he was five years of age. His father, John Hoffman, was a native of the same border country but then under the Dominion of France, born in 1836. He grew up and married a native of the same province, Elizabeth Emmerich, who was born in 1844. John Hoffman had eight years of active military experience in Europe, and was discharged from the army just before the Franco-Prussian war. In 1890 he brought his family to New York City and was engaged in the wholesale tea and coffec business in that city until his death in 1909. As an American citizen he was a democrat in politics. Both he and his wife were faithful members of the Catholic Church. His wife died in New York in 1908. Father Hoffman was the youngest of a large family of twelve children. The oldest, also Michael by name, died at the age of six years. John is a florist in New York City. Margaret died when four years old. Elizabeth is married and living in New York City. Phillipins is the wife of Otto Paul, a baker living in New York City. Peter is in the wholesale coal business at New York. Louisa. is married and living in New York. Philip is a musician of New York City. Catherine married Valentine Groben, who is a musician and also a gold and silver worker. Mary, unmarried and now living in New York City, was until recently a member of the household of her brother, Father Hoffman. Joseph is an attorney by profession and is now bookkeeper for the Bush Terminal Company at New York.
Father Hoffman attended the parochial schools of Brooklyn and for seven years was a student in St. Francis Xavier College in New York City, taking the academic and college course. He graduated in 1904. He soon afterward began his preparation for the priesthood as a student in St. Francis Seminary at Milwaukes, Wisconsin, where he spent one year in the philosophic course and three years in theology. He was graduated in 1908 and in June of the same year was ordained and said his first mass in St. Aloysius Church of Brooklyn. A few days later he arrived in Topeka, Kansas, and for a year was assistant to Father Hayden in the Assumption Church of the capital city. He was then given his first charge as pastor of the Church of the Holy Family at Summerfield, and was there five and a half years.
Father Hoffman took charge of the Church of the Holy Cross at Emmett on November 1, 1914. This church was ostablished in 1881, and it is now a large and prosperous parish of 500 members. Father Hoffman is a member of Frankfort Council of the Knights of Columbus.