JOHN STOFFER
On July 24, 1893, John Stoffer received his homestead certificate patent and ownership of 80 acres. In current-day Federal Heights his land was in the approximate area of Federal Boulevard on the west, Camenisch Street on the east, 88th Avenue on the south and 92nd Avenue on the north.
Stoffer was born on December 6, 1843 in Germany to Conrad and Anne Maria Stoffer. His family came to America in 1858, settling first in Pennsylvania and then in Ohio. On September 21, 1861, the 17-year-old Stoffer enlisted in the Union army, Company A, 64th Regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry. The 64th went to Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia fighting in many major battles at Shiloh, Stone’s River, Springhill, Franklin, and the Siege of Atlanta. Stoffer mustered out at Nashville, Tennessee as a private on December 10, 1864 after serving 39 months.
After returning from the war, he lived with his mother in Ohio until 1871 when he moved to Illinois. In 1872, 30 year-old John Stoffer moved to Indiana and married Alice Maria Waikel, 19, on May 15, 1873.
In March 1874, the couple moved nine miles north of Abilene, Kansas on their 87.59 acre homestead where they raised nine boys. In 1892, Stoffer applied for an additional 80-acre homestead, in current day Federal Heights, under the Soldiers’ Additional Homestead Right Act. Though Stoffer’s entry was approved and he received his patent in 1893, it appears that he never lived in Colorado. In 1899, the couple adopted a 10 year-old girl, Lula, who was living with the family in the 1900 Federal census. John and Alice moved into Abilene in 1920 where they lived for the rest of their lives.
John Stoffer died on January 6, 1923 in Abilene. Three of his sons had preceded him in death, Daniel Carry, Henry Walter and George Washington. Stoffer, an active member of the Abilene Post No. 63, Department of Kansas Grand Army of the Republic, is buried in Union Cemetery in Buckeye, Kansas. John's wife Alice died in 1943.