BUILDING A FOUNDATION FROM ICE.(Business)

The Hoffman family isn't sure exactly where patriarch Charles A. Hoffman came from.

Some family members think his father, Henry, "came down from Taborton Mountain" in Renssalaer County. Most agree Henry did not own his own business.

"We start our family tree with Charles A.," said David Hoffman, who owns Playland on Route 9, "because it was he who began the business. Everything sprouted from there."

According to his children and grandchildren, Charles A. Hoffman, born in 1869, moved to Averill Park in 1904 and began selling meat and charcoal from a horse-drawn cart.

In 1910 after buying 13 acres of land, including part of Littles Lake in …