"A song which encourages us to honor Christ based on the account of the angels' appearance to the shepherds of Bethlehem after the birth of Christ is "Come, All Ye Shepherds." The text is a Bohemian folk song. The translation was made by Mari (or Marie) Reuf Hofer, who was born on July 18, 1858, at Littleport, IA, the oldest of five daughters of Andreas Franz and Marianna Ruef Hofer, … Her father had participated in an 1848 revolution to secure a more democratic government for the German states, and when the movement was crushed fled, with several others, to America. Marie grew up in McGregor, IA, receiving her education at Mt. Carrol, IL, Seminary and the University of Chicago. After teaching music in the public schools of La Crosse, WI; Chicago, IL; and Rochester, MN, she taught at Pestalozzi-Froebel Teacher's College (Chicago), Columbia, Chautauqua, Berkeley, University of California, University of Georgia, and University of Tennessee. In 1893, she managed the musical programs at the Chicago World's Fair. Her works include Idealized Childhood: Image from Children's Singing Games from 1901, The Teaching of Elementary Music: The Defining of Music in Relation to its Expressive Use from 1904, Popular Folk Games and Dances from 1907, Polite and Social Dances: A Collection of Historic Dances from 1917, All the World A-Dancing: A Collection of Folk Dances from 1925, and Camp Recreations and Pageants from 1927. This translation is dated 1912 and was probably used in a nativity play The Story of Bethlehem.
"… Hofer had a biography in the 1914 Woman's Who's Who. After directing a pageant one night in Nov., 1929, at Los Angeles, CA, she boarded a train the next morning for Portland, OR, and while on this trip died from a severe pulmonary hemorrhage attack before reaching her destination. Her body was taken off the train at Bakersville, OR [sic]…"
[Note: the California Death Index gives her death location as Kern County, which indicates that she was probably taken off the train at Bakersfield, CA - the seat of Kern County]
Per California Death Index, died December 31, 1929, death certificate #62633; age: 71.
Sources
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Steve Stumpp for creating WikiTree profile Hofer-216 through the import of Johann Hofer.ged on Nov 23, 2013. Click to the Changes page for the details of edits by Steve and others.
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DNA Connections
It may be possible to confirm family relationships with Mari Ruef by comparing test results with other carriers of her ancestors' mitochondrial DNA.
However, there are no known mtDNA test-takers in her direct maternal line.
It is likely that these autosomal DNA test-takers will share some percentage of DNA with Mari Ruef: