In a life of intense and well directed business activity, resulting in success, Mr. Hobson has also found time to devote to the higher purposes of existence as represented in the church and through its various lines of effort for the uplifting of humanity. He has become especially well known as a leader in temperance circles, and he has made for himself a record which is untarnished and which has gained for him the unqualified regard and esteem of his fellow men.

Mr. Hobson is a native of North Caroline, his birth having occurred in Surry county in 1822. He is a son of Stephen and Mary (Bond) Hobson, both of whom were natives of North Carolina and were representatives of an old southern family. His mother was a daughter of John Bond, the famous preacher of the Society of Friends, who devoted fifty years of his life to active service as a representative of that denomination. The grandmother of Mr. Hobson was a member of the Vestal family and a daughter of Thomas Vestal, of Chatham county. North Carolina. Her mother was a daughter of Charles Davis, who ran away from his home in London and came to America. He was sold at Philadelphia in order to pay his passage, and when he had worked out his term of service he established a home of his own and became the progenitor of the family in the new world. To Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Hobson were born five sons and one daughter, but the subject of this review is the only one now living.

The father was engaged in the iron industry, and at the age of fourteen years David Hobson, who up to this time had largely directed his energies toward the acquirement of an education, went into the iron works which his father had and followed that pursuit until his twenty-second year. Then he spent two years in school. It was in 1850 that he started for California, for he desired that he might share in the successes which were crowning the efforts of so many men on the Pacific coast. Crossing the plains he traveled on week after week and month after month until the distance between him and his destination was perceptibly lessened, and at length he reached the end of the journey, arriving at Sacramento on the 4th of October. He did not tarry long in that city, however, but came to Santa Clara county and soon afterward went with his brother, Stephen Hobson, to the mines in Tuolumne county. There he followed mining until the spring of 1853, and was very successful in his search for gold, making enough in that way to purchase property. He bought one hundred and seventy-five acres of land near Berryessa, Santa Clara county. In 1855 he went back to the mines, but since 1859 has made him home on this tract. He planted his first orchard in the spring of 1860 on the east side of Coyote creek, and has been engaged in fruit-raising and general farming up to the present writing, in 1904. He was one of the first settlers of this district, arriving here when it was largely a frontier region and when the work of improvement and progress had scarcely been begun. As the years have advanced he has witnessed its transformation and has borne an important part in the material development of this portion of the state.

Mr. Hobson was married in 1866 to Miss Mary Langensee, a native of Germany, who came to California with her parents about 1863. Their marriage has been blessed with twelve children, eight of whom are now living, as follows: Elizabeth, the wife of Benjamin Van Horn, of Santa Clara; Annie; Philip; David; Alfred; Edna; F. Benjamin; and Celesta.

Mr. Hobson has been a member of the Sons of Temperance for forty-eight years, and is a past grand chaplain of the Grand Division and past worthy associate. He has been a frequent contributor to the press upon the temperance questions and has written tracts and published more than two hundred thousand pages of temperance and other literature at his own expense. This has been quite widely distributed, and the seeds thus sown have not been without their harvest. His interst in all that pertains to the moral progress in the community is most marked, and has been manifested in tangible form by lberal contributions to the support of Christian work. He donated the landon which the house of worship of the Friends Society has been built, on Ninth street in San Jose. He is now one of the trustees and district steward of the Methodist church at Berryessa. His political support is given to the Republican party, and in matters of citizenship he manifests a public-spirited interest.

Source: History of the New California Its Resources and People, Volume II

The Lewis Publishing Company - 1905
Edited by Leigh H. Irvine