Hobbs, William C.

Born: 1800-12-24 Maryland

Died: 1861-02-10 Bloomington, Illinois

Flourished: 1840-1861 Bloomington, Illinois

Before Hobbs left Maryland for the west, his fiancée died; for the remainder of his life he wore a black crepe band in honor of her, and he never married. By 1840, he had settled in Bloomington, Illinois, where he initially made his living as a teacher. In 1848, he was a founding member of the Bloomington division of the Sons of Temperance, and in 1849, he became a Grand Master Mason. In 1850, he was a merchant in Bloomington, and from 1857 until his death in 1861, he was a clerk of the McLean County Court.

Gravestone and Mason Memorial Marker, Evergreen Memorial Cemetery, Bloomington, IL; The History of McLean County, Illinois (Chicago: Wm. Le Baron, Jr., 1879), 198, 334, 379, 408; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), McLean County, IL, 4; Bill Kemp, "Lifelong Bachelor Marched to Beat of Different Drummer," The Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL), 23 September 2012.