Charles Fenno Hoffman (1806 - 1884)

Born 7 Feb 1806 in New York City, New York County, New York, United States

Ancestors

Died 7 Jun 1884 at age 78 in Harrisburg, Charlotte, Virginia

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Biography

Charles Hoffman is Notable.

Charles Fenno Hoffman (1806-1884) - a brother of Ogden Hoffman, the distinguished lawyer—born in New York City, and for thirty-four years, by reason of a mental disorder, living in complete retirement from the world, was perhaps the most generally admired of the group of Knickerbocker authors who flourished in his native city something less than half a century since, and of which he was the last survivor. As a song-writer he stands among Americans second only to Morris, and some writers have asserted that his lyric of "Sparkling and Bright’ is unsurpassed by any similar production in the language. No American martial poem, I think, produced even during the War of the Rebellion surpasses Hoffman's spirited lines in his stanzas on the Mexican battle of. Monterey, which enjoyed the distinction of being admired by both Grant and Sherman. During the war these illustrious soldiers sometimes called on me to repeat them, and also to sing my friend Bayard Taylor’s "Song of the Camp," at Vicksburg and elsewhere:

" We were not many - we who stood

Before the iron sleet that day ;

Yet many a gallant spirit would

Give half his years if but he could

Have been with us at Monterey.

" Now here, now there, the shot it hailed

In deadly drifts of fiery spray ;

Yet not a single soldier quailed

When wounded comrades round them wailed

Their dying shout at Monterey,

" And on, still on our column kept

Through walls of flame its withering way ;

Where fell the dead the living stept,

Still charging on the guns which swept

The slippery streets of Monterey.

" The foe himself recoiled aghast,

When, striking where he strongest lay,

We swooped the flanking batteries past,

And braving full their murderous blast,

Stormed home the towers of Monterey.

" Our banners on those turrets wave,

And there our evening bugles play ;

Where orange boughs above their grave

Keep green the memory of the brave

Who fought and fell at Monterey.

" We are not many—we who pressed

Beside the brave who fell that day ;

But who of us has not confessed

He’d rather share their warrior rest

Than not have been at Monterey?"

Charles Fenno at the age of eleven was with some boyish companions one day seated on the Cortlandt Street dock, with his legs hanging over the wharf as the ferry-boat came in, which caught one of his limbs and crushed it so badly as to render amputation above the knee necessary. At fifteen he entered Columbia College, having previously pursued his studies at the Poughkeepsie Academy, and six years later was admitted to the bar. Abandoning the law, he associated himself with Charles King in the editorship of the Mew York American, and three years later established the Avickerbocker Magazine. To its columns he contributed a series of letters descriptive of a tour in the Northwest, which were collected and published in 1834, entitled "A Winter in the West." This work was followed by "Wild Scenes in the Forest and Prairie," and in 1840 by the romance of " Grayslaer," founded on the celebrated criminal trial of Beauchampe for the murder of Colonel Sharpe, of Kentucky, which also furnished the theme of Simms’s novel of "Beauchampe." Mr. Hoffman also issued several volumes of poetry, and it is as a lyric poet that he is best known to the world. In this field he is unquestionably entitled to take very high rank. Among the favorites which made his name so widely known, may be mentioned, "Rosalie Clare," "'Tis Hard to Share her Smiles with Many," "The Myrtle and Steel," "Room, Boys, Room," and "Rio Bravo, a Mexican Lament."

Of the large number of literary men who were present at the famous dinner given to authors at the City Hotel, March 30, 1837, by the booksellers of New York, Hoffman was the last survivor. During forty-seven years that he survived that memorable evening, he saw pass away, among others who were present, Chancellor Kent, Colonel Trumbull, Albert Gallatin, Washington Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck, James K. Paulding, William Cullen Bryant, George P. Morris, William L. Stone, Edgar A. Poe, Dr. John W. Francis, Rev. Orville Dewey, Matthew L. Davis, Charles King, and Lewis Gaylord Clark.

Hoffman, said a leading London literary journal some twoscore years ago, "belongs to the front rank of American authors ;" adding, "his plume waved above the heads of all the literary men of America a cubit clear." While filling a Government position at Washington, he was in 1850 attacked by a mental disorder, from which he unfortunately never recovered. He died in the Harrisburg Asylum, of which he had been an inmate for thirty-four years, June 7, 1884. He was not a graduate of Columbia College, which he left in his junior year ; but at the semi-centennial celebration of its incorporation he received the honorary degree of A.M., conferred on him in company with Washington Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck, and William Cullen Bryant. According to my youthful recollection, Hoffman had a military bearing, was above the average height, with broad shoulders, on which was set a fine head, with dark- brown hair, and eyes hidden behind glasses made necessary by his near sight. He had about him the hearty, breezy atmosphere that characterized Christopher North, and he possessed all the Professor’s love of manly sports.

Sources

• The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, New York, January 1893, Vol XXIV, No 1; Paulding, Irving, Halleck, Cooper, Bryant, and Other New York Authors, Pgs 13-15 (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSHM-S7QW-6?i=14)

• Wikipedia: Charles Fenno Hoffman

• https://archive.org/stream/ogdenfamilyiname00whee#page/186/mode/2up