Page "Charles Fenno Hoffman" Paragraph 7

Under the strain of work, he went insane in 1849, supposedly after a servant used his manuscripts to start a fire.

He was hospitalized briefly in April 1849 and, after his release, he accepted a position with the Department of State in Washington, D. C. By autumn, however, he was declared permanently insane.

He spent the last 35 years of his life in the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum, then a state asylum in Pennsylvania, now part of Columbia University.

It was at this state hospital in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania that Hoffman died on June 7, 1884.