WI BIO - Dane Co - SENDT, Peter
Biographical Review of Dane County, WI. Chicago: Biographical Review Pub. Co. 
1893, Vol I, pp 204-205

Peter SENDT, an old, well-known and prosperous passenger engineer of the 
Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad, whose location is on the western end 
and is known as the Madison & Prairie du Chien division, has been so 
connected for the past eleven years, having been engineer on this road since 
1864, and is now able to assert that he has never, in all that time, had an 
accident that proved either serious to himself or to the company. [The first 
train from Milwaukee to Prairie du Chien, Grant County, Wisconsin, ran in 
1857, but could have run from Madison to Prairie du Chien earlier.] Mr. 
SENDT is a member of the Madison Division of the Brotherhood, No. 73, having 
been so connected since 1863, and is now treasurer of that order, and is a 
charter member of this division. The confidence of the order in our subject 
has been shown by his election as a delegate to two national conventions, one 
in Louisville, Kentucky, and the other in San Francisco. For four years he 
acted as engineer on the Illinois Central railroad, from Chicago to 
Champaign, Illinois, and it was on this railroad that he began work as a 
fireman when but nineteen years of age, becoming an engineer when but 
twenty-one.

Our subject [Peter SENDT] was born in Lutzenburg, Germany, 27 May 1837. He 
was but ten years of age when he accompanied his parents to America, sailing 
from Antwerp to Boston in 1847, in a sailing ship, thence to Washington 
County, Wisconsin [Territory of WI if before 29 May 1848], where the father 
entered 160 acres of Government land near Hartford, where the family were 
among the first settlers of the place. Henry SENDT [father of Peter SENDT] 
improved [p 205] a good farm and later sold the old home and retired to the 
village of Hartford [Washington County, WI], and died there in 1884. He had 
been born in 1800, was a hardworking and successful farmer, and a substantial 
citizen. He was a member of the Roman Catholic Church and had always been a 
consistent Christian and a good neighbor. In his political life he had been 
a Democrat.

The mother of our subject [Henry SENDT's wife] had died on the old farm, in 
1856. She had been born in 1797, was fifty-nine years of age when she died, 
a good wife, a kind mother, neighbor and friend, and was a member of the same 
religious denomination as her husband. Her maiden name was Susan WILHELM, 
and she had been the mother of three children, who grew to maturity and are 
still living. A brother of our subject, Quiren, is a blacksmith foreman in 
the shops of the Chicago, Alton & St. Louis Railroad, at Chicago [Cook 
County, IL]. He [Quiren SENDT] is married and pleasantly located. The 
sister of Mr. SENDT is Mrs. Lena SCHMIDT, the widow of Mr. RINEWOLD, who was 
killed by the premature explosion of a cannon on 04 July 1854 or 1855, and 
also of Jacob SCHMIDT, who died twenty years ago [biography published 1893, 
thus Jacob SCHMIDT died about 1873]. She [Mrs. Lena SCHMIDT] now lives in 
Kenosha, Kenosha County, Wisconsin.

The marriage of our subject [Peter SENDT] too place in Chicago [Cook County], 
Illinois, 09 December 1859, to Miss Mary HOFFMAN, born in Bavaria, Germany, 
29 March 1837, a daughter of William and Lena (ENGEL) HOFFMAN, natives of 
Bavaria, who came to America after the birth of all their children. Mrs. 
[Peter] SENDT had come to Chicago all alone in 1859, and the parents joined 
her in Madison [Dane County, WI] in 1868. Until her marriage she had lived 
in Chicago, and her aged parents are now living in comfort in Middleton [Dane 
County, WI], the father aged eighty-seven and the mother eighty-five, the 
father being a member of the Congregational Church and the mother of the 
Catholic. Mrs. [Peter] SENDT is one of three sisters, the others being, 
Barbara, widow of Peter HEDLER, who died after his return from the war, from 
some army trouble. The younger sister, Catherine, is now the wife of William 
HOFFMAN, a miller of Middleton, Dane County, Wisconsin. [Thus both the 
maiden and married names of Catherine was "HOFFMAN," and both her father and 
her husband were named "William HOFFMAN."]

Mr. and Mrs. SENDT [Peter and Mary (HOFFMAN) SENDT] are the parents of two 
children: Lena, who is at home; and Anna, who is the wife of James 
CAVENAUGH, a railroad passenger conductor on the St. Paul, who resides in 
Madison [Dane County, WI], and she has two children, Leslie P. and James.

Submitted by Cathy Kubly