Catherine America (Hopkins) Hoffman
Born: Botecourt County, Virginia, March 16, 1855. Married: Chistian Balzac Hoffman, January 16, 1873. Divorced: 1910. Died: Battle Creek, Calhoun County, Michigan, on June 2, 1920.
Catherine America Hopkins was born to Samuel Wilson and Nancy Rollin (Brough) Hopkins, in Botecourt County, Virginia, on March 16, 1855. The family moved west when she was three and settled at Warrenton, Missouri. There she attended Central Wesleyan College where she met Christian Balzac Hoffman on January 16, 1873. Hoffman became an officer in the Enterprise Town Company, in Dickinson County, Kansas. They had six children, four lived to adulthood; they were divorced in 1910. Samuel Hopkins was an operator at the Enterprise Mill.
Hoffman was elected director of the general Federation of Women’s Clubs, twice president of the district federation, and represented Kansas as the district secretary. She served as president of the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association when the amendment was approved in 1911 to go to voters the following year. She resigned from the position at the time so she could launch a car parade campaign to span the state and elicit support for the initiative. Hoffman drove her own car to rural regions and towns speaking directly to voters to persuade them to support woman’s suffrage. She wrote personal letters to 870 editors of Kansas asking them their attitude towards suffrage and received unfavorable replies from but five. She believed that “practically all newspaper editors in the state favored the amendment in 1912. The need for this part of the campaign is to secure a newspaper woman to prepare bulletins to send to the papers. The great part of the news sent in by county press women has been consigned to the editor’s waste-paper basket.”
As president of the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association in 1914 Hoffman reminded women to register to vote at the primaries. “. . .the same person can mind the baby who did it when you went to the church fair, the festival, the sewing club or the card club.” She was elected president of the Kansas League of Women Voters, formed from the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association after passage of the woman’s suffrage amendment.
A heart condition prompted her to seek medical treatment in Battle Creek, Michigan. There she died two weeks later on June 2, 1920.
Entry: Catherine America (Hopkins) Hoffman
Author: Kansas Historical Society
Author information: The Kansas Historical Society is a state agency charged with actively safeguarding and sharing the state's history.
Date Created: December 2024
Date Modified: December 2024
The author of this article is solely responsible for its content.
