I don’t know much about Stanley Hoffman Jr. He was my great grandmother’s brother and he died at 19.

I don’t want his untimely death to define him, but that is probably the most I know about him. 

On October 25, 1931, Stanley (19) was in a Ford Convertible with his step-brother Clark (14) and friend Elmer Parkinson (20). I have no indication of who was driving. Coming around a curve of the main road in the village of Chance, just north of Wenona where the family lived, the boys lost control of the vehicle. Stanley was thrown from his seat and killed from the convertible rolling on him. 

The Ford could have looked something like one of these:

In some paper notes I have, my grandpa writes: “Accident happened in Chance on Deal Island Road at curve into field (still there in 4/97) at Roland Parks Road (NW side of road).” 

Both Elmer and the young Clark survived with Clark sustaining head injuries.  

But what else can we know about him? 

I had only ever heard about “MomMom Scroggs’ brother who died in a car accident”. I would have loved to find notes about who he was and what his 19 years were like. 

Born sometime in 1912, Stanley Jr. would have most likely gone to the Deal Island school in Wenona with his sisters and brothers. He was in the 1920 census which indicated he was in school and could read and write. He and his siblings lost their mother, Helen, to Tuberculosis in 1923. Sent to a sanitarium near the end of her life, she was allowed to return to pass away in her own home. 

In the 1930 census, Stanley Jr. listed as a Crabber so we know he went into the family business—the business that most of the island communities were tied to. I’m sure like many on the island he grew up around sailing, water, swimming, working, some baseball, and sweating buckets in the humid and mosquito ridden marshland. But on the days where the waves were calm and the Eastern Shore enjoyed beautiful weather, I bet being out on the water was also such an identity marker that most of them wouldn’t have wanted to do anything else. Crabbing, dredging for oysters, and fishing for a living was in their DNA and was also extremely hard work having its own set of dangers. Drownings, other accidents, and bad weather were all a part of this life.  

I wonder what life would have been like had Stanley survived. 

Would he have stayed on the Island working with his father and uncle in the seafood business? 

Would he have married and had children? 

How would my great grandma (Mava) have been different or what stories could she had told had Stanley Jr. survived? 

How did his father, Stanley Sr. handle the death of his oldest son? Or Roger, who was so very close in age with his older brother?

In 1887, Stanley Sr. was the first born of his parents. And just like his future first born child—daughter Mava (MomMom Scroggs, my great grandmother), he would experience the early death of his sibling (and 2nd born of their parents). Three years younger than he, his sister, Mava Beatrice, died in April of 1909 when she was just shy of turning 19. Stanley was 21. He and his wife Helen would have their first child in December of that same year and name her Mava Beatrice as a namesake of his late sister. I’m not sure if she was sick or there was an accident, I have yet to find a death record other than her headstone and a family record.

And sadly her namesake would grow up to then go through the same experience of losing a sibling 3 years younger, our main character in this post, Stanley Jr. With my great grandmother Mava having had her son Harry Stanley (Stanley #3) just the year before in 1930, I wonder if any superstitious thoughts crossed her mind that maybe she ought to be careful about having another baby, three years later in case it’s a girl and not to name her Mava—just in case. 

Grandpa remained an only child.

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