This substantial and successful agriculturist is living about one mile southeast from Gifford, where he has a good estate of one quarter section that he gained title to through the homestead right and from the wild and unbroken sod he has made it a fertile and valuable farm. He raises much grain, has thirty five acres of timothy, three acres of orchard, which he is increasing to fifteen, and other crops in proportion.
John W. Hobson was born in Nevada County, Arkansas, on December 3, 1867, being the son of Nathaniel P. and Eliza (May) Hobson. The father was born in New York of parents who bad come thither from England and Ireland. He was a farmer and blacksmith and migrated to Alabama, thence to Mississippi, thence to Arkansas and finally to Texas, where he lived fourteen years and then died aged fifty-six. The mother of our subject was born in Pennsylvania, was married in Alabama and is now living in Texas. John W. was reared in Texas and educated in the district school.
When eighteen, he went to Los Angeles, California, and thence to every portion of the state. He shipped on a whaler and sailed nine months in the Behring and Okhotsk seas, then was three years in California, and about 1890 he came to Idaho.
He rented land near Moscow for four years and then came to the reservation and worked for H. Beeman. On November 20, two days after the reservation opened, Mr. Hobson filed on his present place. He has three brothers and two sisters, Robert N., Tillman Y., and Nathaniel E., all farmers and stockmen in Texas; Martha M., wife of R J. Powell, who operates a grist mill and cotton gin in Texas; Sophia E., wife of Frank Swopes, a farmer in Texas. On May 21, 1896, Mr. Hobson married Miss Lillie A., daughter of James A. and Mary (Barnard) Wilcox, natives of Missouri. Mrs. Hobson was born in February 1879 she has one brother and one sister, James, a farmer in Missouri; Mrs. Henry Rogers, in Melrose. Mr. and Mrs. Hobson are members of the Christian Church and he is a member of the M. W. A. Melrose Camp.
He is a Democrat and a Prohibitionist in political matters. Three children have been born to gladden the home: Winnie M., Mary Ethel and Grade Aranda.
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Source: An Illustrated History of Northern Idaho, Embracing Nez Perce, Idaho, Latah, Kootenai and Shoshone Counties, Western Historical Publishing Company, 1903