The Hofgaard surname can be traced back to Scandinavia of the middle ages, and loosely translates as “royal house guard or servant.”

The Hampton surname comes from 12th century England, and means “homestead settlement (e.g. “Southampton”).

Hofgaard -Hadler-Speck- Hendrickson-Phillips

Andreas Hofgaard (1843-1922) and Helene Hadler Hofgaard (1845-1936) emigrated from Norway through Chicago in the 1870s, where their first child Henry Christopher Hofgaard was born in 1874.  Andrew (as he became known in America) came from a once-wealthy landowning family of Lutheran ministers, but his father had lost most of their wealth.  Andrew & Helen came to Buffalo County in central Nebraska where they farmed and raised their children.

Mary Ann (Dobson) Hendrickson — Gardner, Nebraska 1890s

Gladyce Pearl (“Pearl”) Phillips in college, Grand Island, Nebraska – 1910s

Andreas Hofgaard, grandfather of Andrew Hofgaard (1756-1826)

John Hendrickson — Gardner, Nebraska 1870s

Hampton- Deeter - Smith- Wineman

Edna Adelle Smith — Griggsville, Illinois 1898

Ethel Wineman & her horse “Babe — 1924, Gering, Nebraska

William Riley Hampton — 1890s, Banner County, SW Nebraska

Wineman Farm Auction Notice — 1915, near Conway, Missouri

Sarah Ann (Deeter) Hampton — 1880s, Banner County, SW Nebraska

Sam & Mary Jane Wineman — 1885, Ansley, Nebraska

Bill, Hank & Sid Hofgard — 1950s, Scottsbluff, Nebraska

Jeff Hampton - 1918 Gering, Nebraska

Jeff & Ethel Hampton & Family — 1930s Gering, Nebraska (Edna Blanche Hampton, front center)

Bill Hofgard — 1947, Chadron, Nebraska (at summer camp where Edna & Bill met)

William Keith (“Keith”), Edna & Shirley Hampton — 1937 Carter Canyon Ranch, Nebraska (going to school with pony cart “Rainy”, cart is now at Oregon Trail Museum, Gering, Nebraska)

Bill Hofgard — 1950, Lincoln, Nebraska

Sid & Bill Hofgard advertisements in Time magazine — 1950s

Fairview High School Graduation Pictures — Boulder, Colorado - Mark (1973), Jeff (1977), & Kurt (1985)

Edna & Bill Hofgard

Bill Hofgard & Edna Hampton Hofgard , Carter Canyon Ranch, Western Nebraska. 1952.

Hank Hofgard – UBI Ranch, Nebraska Sandhills, 1890s

Andrew & Helen Hofgaard and Family, including Andrew (Kurt’s great-great-grandfather, seated far right), Helen Hadler Hofgaard (Kurt’s great-great-grandmother, seated far right), Henry (“Hank”) Hofgard (Kurt’s great -grandfather, standing  far left), Mary Speck Hofgard (Kurt’s great -grandmother, seated  far left), and Willliam Sidney (“Sid”) Hofgard (Kurt’s paternal grandfather, infant) – Buffalo County, Central Nebraska, 1903.

Helen & Henry Hofgaard – Chicago, Illinois, 1875.

Hank & Mary Hofgard – Torrington, Wyoming, 1923

Hofgard Family: Scottsbluff, Nebraska – 1930s William Glenn (“Bill”)Hofgard, Pearl Hofgard, Sid Hofgard

Wilbur Sloan — 1887, Athens, Ohio

Mark, Kurt & Jeff Hofgard — Colorado Mountains, 1971

Kurt, Jeff & Mark Hofgard — Paragon Drive, Boulder County, Colorado 1971

4 Generations - Shirley (Hampton) Noyes (Kurt’s Aunt), Ethel Hampton, Blanche Wineman, Stella Sloan — 1928, Gering, Nebraska

Katie (Hendrickson) Phillips — Kearny , Nebraska 1893

William Riley & Sarah Deeter Hampton and Family, including William Riley (Kurt’s great-great-grandfather, seated with infant), Sarah Deeter (Kurt’s great-great-grandmother, seated right), and Willliam Jefferson(“Jeff”) Hampton (Kurt’s maternal grandfather, infant) – Banner County, Western Nebraska, 1903.

Grover & Blanche Wineman (left)— 1905, Ansley, Nebraska

Grover & Blanche Wineman — 1944, Gering, Nebraska

Edna, Shirley & Keith Hampton, Dust Bowl Children — 1930s Carter Canyon Ranch, Nebraska

Edna Hampton — 1950, Lincoln, Nebraska, “Sweetheart of Sigma Chi”

Sid & Bill Hofgard — 1954, MONY “Man of the Year” award given to Bill

Hampton-Hofgard Wedding — November, 1952, Gering, Nebraska

Bill Hofgard — 1957, at work at office on Pearl St., Boulder, Colorado

Bill & Kurt Hofgard — Western Boulder County, Colorado, 1996

Kurt, Jeff, Mark & Bill — Paragon Drive, Boulder County, Colorado 2011

Bill & Edna Hofgard & Family - Boulder, Colorado 1975

Edna & Bill Hofgard & Family — Paragon Drive, Boulder County, Colorado 1990

Kurt — at Grandparents Hofgard’s house — Longmont, Colorado 1972

Bill & Edna Hofgard & Family - Lakewood, Colorado 1979

Jeff Hofgard and President Clinton — White House, Washington, DC 1990s. Jeff was a senior science and technology advisor in the Clinton Administration, credited with phrase in a Clinton speech on NASA: “Actually this is rocket science.”

Mark, Jeff, Bill & Kurt Hofgard — 2014, Longmont, Colorado (Bill Hofgard & Hofgard Insurance inducted into Boulder County Business Hall of Fame)

Kurt & Linda Hofgard & Family — November, 2025, Bolinas, California

Jeff Hampton 1950s — Carter Canyon Ranch, Western Nebraska

Sid Hofgard on his handmade fishing boat “The Mark” - 1950s: Flaming Gorge, Wyoming

Sid & Pearl Hofgard — 1973 Longmont, Colorado

William Riley Hampton (1830-1904) and Sarah Ann Deeter (1831-1903) married in Jasper County Iowa in 1853 before setting out for Western Nebraska to farm and ranch.  Hampton ran away from home in Kentucky as a teenager – nothing is known of his lineage. “Judge Hampton,” as he became known though he had no legal training, and Sarah raised a passel of children(at least 12 that we know of) on the high plains near Harrisburg –  Banner County, one of whom was Albert Jefferson (“AJ”) Hampton (1872-1951). AJ’s bride Edna Adele Smith (1880-1918) came from a Virginia family that had resettled in Illinois after the Civil War.  The Hamptons built their ranch house in Carter Canyon in the Wildcat Hills southwest of Gering, Nebraska in 1912.

Sid & Pearl Hofgard — 1966 Boulder, Colorado

AJ & Edna Hampton at their new home in Carter Canyon, Western Nebraska, 1914 (home still in Hampton family). Edna (Smith) Hampton (Kurt’s -great-grandmother, standing left), Albert Jefferson (“AJ”) Hampton (Kurt’s great -grandfather, standing  far right) and Jeff Hampton in front of AJ.

The eldest of their four children, Kurt’s maternal grandfather William Jefferson (“Jeff”) Hampton (1902-1987) and his wife, Kurt’s maternal grandmother Ethel Mae Wineman (1909-2005), carried forth the Hampton cattle ranching legacy on the family’s 10,000 acre Carter Canyon Ranch. Ethel was raised on a farm south of Gering, the oldest child of Grover Cleveland Wineman (1887-1965) and Olive Blanche (“Blanche”) Sloan (1890-1978).  Grover and Blanche came from Missouri, bringing Grover’s elderly father Samuel Cummins Wineman (1834-1920) with them upon selling his farm after his wife Mary Jane Pugh (1851-1905) had died. Blanche’s mother Amanda Estella (“Stella”) Jeffers (1865-1944) came from a farm in Ohio that was a stop on the underground railroad. She outlasted several husbands, including Blanche’s father Wilbur Ellsworth Sloan (1864-1918)

AJ & Edna Hampton & Family (Jeff Hampton right) — 1913 , Gering, Nebraska

Ethel & Jeff Hampton & Children — 1984 , Gering, Nebraska (Edna Hofgard, far left)

Kurt’s mother Edna Blanche Hampton (1932-1995) was the third of ranchers Ethel & Jeff Hampton’s children. Edna was born “in town” at her great-grandmother Stella’s house in Gering, Nebraska, and grew up on her family’s Carter Canyon Ranch in the Wildcat Hills without electricity and running water in her early childhood.  Overcoming rhematic fever as a child on the high Western plains of the 1930s (before penicillin) that damaged her heart valves permanently, Edna nevertheless graduated at the top of her class from Gering High School shortly after World War II ended.

Edna Hampton — 1949, Carter Canyon Ranch, Nebraska

Bill & Edna Hofgard — 1953, Carter Canyon Ranch, Nebraska

At summer camp (age 14) Edna met the love of her life, Kurt’s father William Glenn (“Bill”) Hofgard (1931-2020), a “town kid,” and son of the prominent insurance man in Scottsbluff.  Bill knew what he had in Edna, the smartest and most beautiful girl in Western Nebraska, and Bill even stuck around for a year of junior college in Scottsbluff to wait for Edna to graduate high school. Edna’s parents were happy to see her wed Bill and escape the hard ranching life, but, reflecting the times even though she was an ace student at Nebraska Wesleyan in Lincoln, Edna stopped her schooling to support Bill as he graduated from the University of Nebraska. After college, Bill first had to serve his Army duty in Detroit, and Aberdeen, Maryland. Then, the young couple moved to the little college town of Boulder, Colorado with their one year old son Mark in 1956, where Bill began his career as a Mutual of New York Life Insurance Agent.

Edna (Hampton) & Bill Hofgard — November, 1952, Gering, Nebraska

Edna & Bill went on to raise three sons in quickly changing and growing Boulder (Mark, Jeff & Kurt) and adopt one daughter (Anne-Marie: 1970-80). They lived “in the country” on Paragon Drive near Spanish Hills between Boulder and Louisville. In 1966, Bill became an independent insurance and employee benefits agent (his dad told him “you’ll come back begging in six months”), and Bill and Edna together built Hofgard & Company and Benefit Plan Administrators, two successful insurance firms in Boulder that thrived for over fifty years. Edna’s intellectual energy never ceased — she went back to school after her kids were grown and graduated Magna Cum Laude in her 50s from the University of Colorado.

Kurt & Bill Hofgard — Carter Canyon Ranch, Nebraska 1980

Edna & Kurt Hofgard — Paragon Drive, Boulder County, Colorado 1984 (Edna Graduation from University of Colorado, Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa)

Kurt, Jeff & Mark — Paragon Drive, Boulder County, Colorado 1989

Bill & Kurt Hofgard — Boulder, Colorado 1994.

Edna, Bill, Linda & Kurt — Paragon Drive, Boulder County, Colorado 1995

After Edna passed away in 1995, Bill & Kurt continued with Hofgard Insurance, while Kurt & Linda Blank Hofgard founded the estate planning law firm of Hofgard & Associates in 1998. Not a day goes by when we don’t miss Bill’s smile and invitation to “come in and sit down… I think I can help you with that.”

Bill & Kurt Hofgard — Boulder, Colorado 2012.

Linda Blank Hofgard & Kurt Hofgard — 1997 Louisville, Colorado

Linda Blank Hofgard & Kurt Hofgard — 2010 Boulder, Colorado

Mark, Kurt & Jeff Hofgard — 2020, San Francisco, California

Kurt near Westcliffe, Colorado - July, 2024

The oldest of Hank and Mary’s three children, William Sidney (“Sid”) Hofgard (1902-1976), started selling life insurance at age 20 door to door in Nebraska while living at the YMCA in his small town. Sid eventually moved to Scottsbluff, Nebraska with his wife, and Kurt’s paternal grandmother Gladyce (“Pearl”) Phillips Hofgard (1902-1986), to be the Western Nebraska regional sales manager for Mutual of New York.  Pearl’s parents, E. Delbert (“Bert”) Phillips (1869-1949) and Katie Hendrickson (1871-1965) farmed and ran real estate businesses in Grand Island, Nebraska. Katie’s parents John Hendrickson (1846-1922) and Mary Ann Dobson (1842-1910) came to Nebraska in their covered wagon from Iowa in 1878. Mary Ann was brought from Ireland as an infant escaping the potato famine of 1848.

Hendrickson homestead near Sodtown, Nebraska – 1884

Bill, Edna, & Mark Hofgard — Boulder, Colorado 1990. Together, they built Benefit Plan Administrators, which was an Inc. 500 company.

Linda D. Blank Hofgard & Kurt C. Hofgard — 2006, Boulder, Colorado (celebration of 50 years of Hofgard & Co. in Boulder)

Phillips-Hofgards: Grand Island, Nebraska – 1920s (E. Delbert Phillips, Pearl (Phillips) Hofgard, Sid Hofgard, Katie Phillips)

Jeff & Ethel Hampton, Edna & Kurt Hofgard — Carter Canyon Ranch, Nebraska 1983

Bert & Katie Phillips — GrandIsland, Nebraska – 1920s

Wm. Sidney (“Sid”) Hofgard at Mutual of New York Life Insurance Conference, Atlantic City, New Jersey – 1930s

Henry C. (“Hank”) Hofgard (1874-1960) (he took the extra “a” out of the name) was the foreman of the massive UBI ranch in the Sandhill country of Nebraska in the 1890s.  He and his sweetheart Mary Speck (1877-1937) married in Valentine, Nebraska in 1900, and he left his cowboy days behind to work in hardware stores. Hank and Mary eventually settled in Torrington, Wyoming where Hank owned his own store and served as a Goshen County Commissioner in the 1940s.

Hank & Mary Hofgard – Valentine, Nebraska, 1900