HANSMANN, Max Henry Louis Ranniger

Other Events and Attributes:

• Name: Maximillian Henry Louis Ranniger Hansmann
• Residence: 1 Jul 1895, Washington, District of Columbia, USA

Notes:

From bio on FindaGrave:
Maximillian “Max” Hansmann was born in Washington, DC in 1856. He was one of eight children. His father, a doctor, Bernhard Theodore Hansmann, was born in Germany and educated at Heidelberg. His mother was Sophie Ranniger Hansmann.

Max attended a private school from ages 8 to 10. At age 11, he became a "folder" and a page for the House of Representatives and entered the U.S. Treasury Department at age 13 as a laborer. He was then detailed to the office of the U.S. Lighthouse Service Board in 1872 at age 16, where he served for over 50 years.

His early duties included tracing and drafting which he continued intermittently over the length of his career. In 1881, he was assigned to the office of Lighthouse Engineers in South Carolina for three months to prepare drawings for the Savannah River Lights.

Part of his job was to also set up exhibitions showcasing lighthouse technology at various expositions. He reminisced that in 1873, at age 17, he was involved in positioning a lighthouse lens to be visible from inside the third floor window of the Treasury building during the evening of the second inauguration of President Ulysses. S. Grant. The bright flash of the lens was quite noticeable all along Pennsylvania Avenue attracting much attention and comment.

He also was in charge of the lighthouse exhibit at the 1881 and 1884 Cincinnati Industrial Expositions and was assigned as part of a team to travel to London in 1883 to represent the United States in setting up a similar Lighthouse Board exhibit at the London Fisheries Exhibition which was awarded a gold medal of the first class. There were undoubtedly more expositions and world fairs that he participated in during his long career.

Additional duties over the course of his service were to take charge of the Lighthouse Board's files of charts, plotting and verification of positions of aids of navigation, listing and keeping track of lights and fog signals and preparing monthly bulletins and notices to mariners.

At his retirement, Max was serving as the assistant engineer in charge of the hydrographic division of the Bureau of Lighthouses in Washington, DC. He retired from his post on March 1, 1927 with an "exceptional record of 55 years of service" as noted in the Lighthouse Bulletin.

In his private life, Max had several passionate hobbies including bicycling, photography, and collecting records and oriental art. In 1879, he helped found the Capital Bicycle Club in Washington. DC. (which still exists today) and was known to take his camera with him everywhere he cycled. He became captain of the club in 1884 and visually recorded many interesting trips through his photography.

One of his most famous bicycling adventures was recounted in the August 1883 issue of "The Wheelman" where Max and two other club members rode 500 miles in three weeks to visit the Luray Cave and Natural Bridge in Virginia where "no machine had ever been seen." (see attached photo illustration.)

As a result of many such trips, he helped form a photography group within the Club that staged America’s first photography salon, the “Washington Salon and Art Photographic Exhibition” in 1896. The Smithsonian has the original photos from this exhibit (see attached photo.)

Max was known to be very creative and mechanical. Along with a fellow cycler, he invented and patented a combined lamp and cyclometer in 1881 that when attached to the axle of the bicycle, measured distance traveled. He also worked in wood, ceramics and silver. Examples of his work include a turned wooden lamp he made on his lathe with a ceramic overlay and a kaleidoscope he made for his grand-nephew.

Max was also known for collecting records. One of his friends recounted that he had an "extremely keen ear for music". He also enjoyed collecting Japanese art. He never traveled to the Far East but eventually became disillusioned by their military build-up and stopped collecting prior to WWII.

Up until his death in 1952, he was a member of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of the District of Columbia.

Max was a bachelor and in relatively good health until he passed away at age 96. Per his instructions, he was cremated and his remains were sent to Keene Valley, NY, where they were spread over the area he loved and where he spent his summers, his cabin in the Adirondacks which he named "Content."


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Bernard Ludwig William Theodor Hansmann

1821–1912
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Sophie Wilhelmine Bernardine Ranniger Hansmann


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Lena Marie Hansmann Williams

1859–1907
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Alfred E Theodore Hansmann
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