Hoen

the mission was closed in 1839; and Father
Hoecken, after a brief stay at the Novitiate,
turned to the Potawatomi Mission, which had
been established by Father Pierre-Jean De Smet
[q.v.] near Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1838. Here,
also, drunkenness was the main obstacle to mak-
ing converts. In August 1841, Council Bluffs
was abandoned by the missionaries, and Hoecken
took charge of the large band of Catholic Pota-
watomis, on the headquarters of the Osage River
in Kansas. A temporary chapel was raised on
Potawatomi Creek, but on May 10 the entire
multitude of the faithful removed to the river
called Sugar Creek. Father Hoecken on three
occasions visited Council Bluffs, 1842, 1844,
1846; but in 1848 all the Catholic Potawatomi
were brought together in the Mission of St.
Mary's, Kan. Three years later, in 1851, while
on a journey with Father De Smet to the Indians
at the headwaters of the Missouri, Hoecken was
taken with cholera and died. His remains were
buried on the Nebraska shore of the river, near
the mouth of the Platte, but after a short while
were taken to St. Charles and reinterred in the
cemetery of St. Stanislaus Novitiate, Florissant.
Archbishop Kenrick wrote of Hoecken: "The
qualities that most distinguished him amid his
labors and privations were his admirable frank-
ness, his simplicity, his sound judgment and ever
joyous and peaceful disposition of mind and
heart, and an imperturbable contentment, which
the author of this notice has never found to the
same degree in any individual" (De Smet, post,
pp. 67-68). Hoecken has to his credit a series
of prayerbooks and catechisms in the Potawat-
omi language (published at Cincinnati, 1844;
and Baltimore, 1846), a Peoria and Potawatomi
Prayerbook (Baltimore, 1846) and the Abece-
darium Potawatomicum (St. Louis, n.d.).

[Four letters of Christian Hoecken appeared in the
Precis Historiques (Brussels, 1853-58), and were given
in English by Father De Smet in his Western Missions
and Missionaries (copyright 1859), pp. 262-73. The
Woodstock Letters, vol. XXVI, No. 3 (Nov. 1897),
contains a sketch of Hoecken by Father Walter H. Hill,
SJJ J.E.R.

HOEN, AUGUST (Dec. 28, i8i;-Sept. 20,
1886), lithographer and map-printer, was born
in Hohn, Duchy of Nassau, Germany, the son
of Martin and Eliza (Schmidt) Hoen. His fa-
ther, who was a farmer and the burgomaster of
the village, had fought under Bliicher against
Napoleon at Waterloo. August attended the
higher school at Dillenburg, the local center. In
1835 his family, consisting of his father and
mother (who died on the way over) and eight
younger brothers and sisters, emigrated to the
United States. With them went his mother's

Hoen

family, the Schmidts, and that of his cousin, Ed-
ward Weber. As a young man Weber had ac-
quired a good knowledge of the then new art of
lithography, and he took with him the equipment
necessary for its practice. Soon after his arrival
in Baltimore he established a lithographic busi-
ness on a small scale under the name of E. Weber
& Company, and associated young Hoen with
himself. In 1839 the firm produced what are
said to be the first show cards printed in colors
in the United States. In the forties came their
first major cartographic undertaking. They lith-
ographed the maps illustrating Fremont's expe-
ditions to the West, among which noteworthy
achievements are: the "Map of an Exploring
Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year
1842 and to Oregon and North California in the
Years 1843-44," on the scale of 112,000,000, ac-
companying Fremont's report (1845) with a
similar title (Senate Executive Document 174,
28 Cong., 2 Sess.); the "Map of Oregon and
Upper California," 1:3,000,000, accompanying
his Geographical Memoir upon Upper Califor-
nia (1848; Senate Miscellaneous Document 148j
30 Cong., i Sess.) ; and the detailed, seven-sheet
Topographical Map of the Road from Missouri
to Oregon Commencing at the Mouth of the
Kansas in the Missouri River and Ending at the
Mouth of the Wallah Wallah in the Columbia,
1:633,600, separately published in 1846. These
maps and the other plates in the Fremont reports
represent a very early, if not the earliest, appli-
cation of lithography to the reproduction of il-
lustrations in congressional and government-bu-
reau reports, a field which was henceforth to
comprise the major activity of the firm and in
which they were soon and for many years to
share the laurels with the firm established in the
fifties in New York by Julius Bien [q.v.].

In 1848 Weber died, and the firm's name was
changed to A. Hoen & Company. Among those
associated with August Hoen was his younger
brother, Ernest, but it was August who was pri-
marily the expert in technical matters. While
not trained as a chemist he had a practical
knowledge of the application of chemistry to
lithography. His appreciation of the value to his
business of scientific groundwork led him to pro-
vide his establishment with a small research lab-
oratory and photographic process rooms. During
his long tenure as head of the firm he perfected
and introduced a number of important improve-
ments and new processes in the industry. Among
his improvements in reproduction processes was
the method, patented Apr. 24, 1860, under the
name of "Lithokaustic," whereby the tone effects
were produced by etching, more or less deeply,

107