THE WAUPACA COUNTY POST

September 12, 1991

 

WHEN THEN WAS NOW

By Wayne A. Guyant

 

            Charles R. Hoffmann, Waupaca’s optometrist for 57 years, passed away November 12, 1938, due to a fatal heart attack.

            Charles Hoffmann, his grandfather, was a citizen of Prussia, Germany, and reared a family of five children.  Their eldest son, also Charles, served an apprenticeship to a jeweler in Germany.

            After he had mastered the trade he came to America.  In New York he was married and remained ther for a few years before moving on to Chicago, becoming one of that city’s early settlers.  It was in Chicago that his first wife died, leaving two small children, Charles R., the subject of this sketch, and his sister, Laura.  Charles R. Hoffmann had been born in Chicago, March 10, 1858.

            At the time of the great Chicago fire, October 9, 1871, Mr. Hoffmann had one of the largest jewelry establishments in Chicago, at 88 North Clark Street, and was among those who lost everything in the big fire.  He began all over again and was successful enough to save enough money to enable him to live in comfort for the remaining years of his life.

            He remarried again when young Charles was only 12 years of age and the boy was sent to a military school for the next two years.  After he attended the Academy at Lake Forest, near Chicago, he spent another three years at a school in Kankakee, IL. After he had enough schooling he was apprenticed to a watch maker, paying a tuition fee of $200 per year for the next three years.

            After he completed his apprenticeship he joined the large jewelry establishment of Giles Bros. in Chicago, until he decided to come to Waupaca in June 1881.

            It seems as if prior to 1881, Charles R. Hoffmann had been suffering from a sinus complaint, then called by the old-fashioned name “Catarrh.”

            He was advised by his physician to leave Chicago and move to a clean northern climate.  He had heard that a Mr. Chady had a jewelry and notions store in Waupaca, and had a position open for a clerk and jeweler.  This brought him to Waupaca and he worked for Mr. Chady for a year and then went into business for himself.

            On January 23, 1883, he was united in marriage to Anna Lea, who was a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Lea, one of Waupaca’s early clothing store operators.

            In 1911 the jewelry stock was sold out, and now special training was required for Mr. Hoffmann’s new-found profession of making and fitting eye glasses.  A new business with new termin-ology was born.

            Four children were born to the Charles R. Hoffmann family, and one son, Ralph, eventually worked with is father, starting in 1933.

            Ralph L. Hoffmann had been born in Waupaca on March 12, 1894, and graduated from the Waupaca High School and from the Chicago School of Optometry in 1916.

            Dr. Hoffmann was a World War I combat veteran in France; following his army service he married Lucille Czeskleba in Waupaca on January 15, 1920.  They were the parents of two children, another Charles and Beverly.

            He retired due to ill health in 1962.

            I can still see the long metal stairway leading up the north side of the old Farmer’s State Bank building to the Hoffmann office on the second floor.