BIOGRAPHY: Rev. Michael HOFMAYR, O. S. B., Cambria County, PA 

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From Wiley, Samuel T., ed. Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Cambria 
County, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Union Publishing Co., 1896, p. 109-10
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REV. MICHAEL HOFMAYR, O.S.B., a courteous and scholarly gentleman, and prior of 
St. Benedict's, at Carrolltown, was born in Toelz, Bavaria, January 2, 1838, and 
is a son of Joseph and Mary Frances (Petz) Hofmayr. He was reared in his native 
country, and after taking the full classical course of Ludwig's gymnasium of 
Munich, Bavaria, came, April 29, 1861 to Pennsylvania, where he pursued advanced 
studies at St. Vincent's college, an abbey in Westmoreland county, which noble 
institution of learning had been founded in 1846, by Rt. Rev. Boniface Wimmer, 
who thus revived in America the grand institutions of the Benedictine abbeys of 
the middle ages for the wider spreading of the glad tidings of Christianity. 
After five years of close and successful study he completed the work, and on May 
30, 1866, was ordained priest, at Covington, Kentucky, by Rt. Rev. A Carell.
     After his ordination he was made assistant to the church at Covington, 
where he remained acceptably until September, 1868, when he was transferred by 
his ecclesiastical superiors to St. Boniface's and St. Lawrence churches, near 
Carrolltown, where he remained in charge one year. At the end of that time he 
became the first resident priest at Lincoln, Nebraska, and in the winter of 1871 
returned to Carrolltown, where his pastoral labors continued from February, 
1871, to February, 1877.
     During the spring of the last-named year he was at St. Vincent's abbey and 
college, and then went to St. Mary's German Catholic church of Allegheny city, 
where he remained as assistant pastor to St. Vincent's, where he served for five 
and a-half years. He then served as prior at Covington, Kentucky, from April, 
1888, to October, 1889; as assistant pastor of St. Mary's, Allegheny city, from 
1889, to September, 1892, and as professor of moral theology at St. Vincent's 
college from September, 1862, to August, 1894. In the last-named month he 
returned to Carrolltown, where he has since served as prior.
     Father Hofmayr has always proved to be an efficient, careful, and 
successful pastor, accomplishing much in the mental and spiritual interests of 
his people in the different cities and towns where he had churches, and winning 
worthy commendation in his other fields of important labor as teacher and as 
prior.