May 7, 1839, Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania.
November 25, 1929, Chicago, Illinois.
Oak Woods Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois.
A minister’s son, Hoffman attended Union Seminary in New Berlin, Pennsylvania, and was ordained in 1868. Afterward, he worked with the Evangelical Association’s publishing arm in Cleveland, Ohio for 11 years. He pastored in Cleveland and Grafton, Ohio, in the 1880s; at the First Presbyterian Church in Benton Harbor, Michigan, around the turn of the century; and in Cabery, Illinois (1911-22). In his lifetime, he wrote over 2,000 Gospel songs. The 50 song books he edited include:
- The Evergreen, 1873
- Spiritual Songs for Gospel Meetings and the Sunday School, 1878
- Temperance Jewels, with John Tenney (Boston, Massachusetts: Oliver Ditson & Company, 1879)
- Sunday School Songs (Cleveland, Ohio: Publishing House of the Evangelical Association, 1880)
- Bells of Victory, with John Tenney (Boston, Massachusetts: Oliver Ditson & Company, 1888)
- Pentecostal Hymns No. 1 (Chicago, Illinois: Hope Publishing Company, 1894)
- Favorite Gospel Songs: A Tune Book, with Grace Davis (Jersey City, New Jersey: J. N. Davis, 1894)
- Pentecostal Hymns No. 3, with Warren Bentley & Tullius O’Kane (Hope Publishing Company, 1902)
- Jubilant Voices, with Howard Doane et al. (Chicago, Illinois: Hope Publishing Company, 1907)