Author: Martha Lavinia Hoffman
Alternate names: Martha L. Hoffman
Born: July 21,1865
Died: 1900
Bio: "Martha Lavinia Hoffman was born in Jackson Valley, Amador County, California, July 21, 1865. When three years of age her parents moved to Ukiah, California, where her girlhood and young womanhood were spent, and where she received inspiration from the beauties of nature in that, and adjacent valleys, for many of her poems.
From childhood she evinced an unusual love for the true and the beautiful.
When fourteen years of age she was stricken with a severe case of inflammatory rheumatism which left her in frail health and terminated in her death, from consumption, at the age of thirty-five; but her spirit rose above the sufferings of the frail body and made her the joy and the life of the family.
To her mother she was devoted and the two were the closest companions and intimate friends.
One thought seemed at time to burden her mind and cast a shadow over her otherwise sunny nature and that was, that she was hindered by frail health from doing the good that her heart prompted her to.
A short time before her death she said to her mother and sister: "I want my poems collected and printed, they may do some good, and you know it is the only way I have of doing good in the world.""
--Written in the preface of the book of her collected poems by her sister; Nellie Frances (Hoffman) Sanford. Nellie was my great-grandmother. Nellie was obviously proud of her sister; Martha. Nellie did collect her poetry, and paid to have it privately published in 1907, by Whitaker & Ray Co.. I realize that most of us cannot imagine make the sacrifices necessary for the expense of publishing a sister's book post-humously. Nellie died, and her son, Francis Manley Sanford; took the remainder of the copies of this book and put them away for grandchildren in his attic. With the decline of his health, his daughter saved some of them for the grandchildren and gave the rest away, and moved her father out of state. I am one of those grandchildren, but unfortunately; no one thought to save a copy for each of the children I would have. Please feel fortunate if you ever so much as hold a copy of the original edition in hardback that was published in 1907; there is alot of love from the history of my family within the covers of the book. -- Mary Thomas-Vickery; great-grandniece, great-granddaughter, granddaughter, daughter, mother (of some of the next generation) and grandmother(at this point in time I have just experienced the birth of my sixth grandchild)