Hockersville
In a ceremony where our family was putting to rest the ashes of my mother and father, a number of the next generation was asking about our family ancestry. Looking around, I had somehow become the family patriarch. I shared what I knew and remembered but many holes existed in our history that I really should know.
I started researching the family name, visiting graveyards in Lancaster, Hershey, and Hummelstown, Pennsylvania. Additionally, I reached out to “locals” who had the same last name. I found a wealth of well documented history and was able to track our ancestry from current day to the original Hocker coming over from Germany in 1748. It was a very rewarding journey, and I met a number of local Hocker relatives where we share common family lineage.
This painting (called Hockersville) recognizes the Hocker family and its presence in Lancaster and Dauphin Counties in Pennsylvania since the early 1700s.
Hockersville painting is a whimsical and imaginative snapshot of a single day of the Hocker family during its first annual reunion on September 7th, 1911. Over 200 local family members attended, most from around Penbrook (Eastern Harrisburg), PA.
Hockersville town is named in honor of Martin Hocker whose house is a brownstone at the southeast corner of Hockersville and Governor roads built 1806 by Martin Hocker (1768-1862).
The center image of the painting is a 1909 Ford Model T delivery truck for the Butter Bretzel Baking Company owned by David Elmer (D.E.) Hocker (born 1881). Bretzel is the German name for pretzel.
The truck driver, reportedly Alfred E. Hocker, had a flat tire en route and never delivered the beloved bretzels to the reunion. This shame caused him to change his last name to Newman and he never worried about it again.