James B. Hobbs

One of the most prominent Methodist laymen of Chicago is the subject of this sketch James B. Hobbs.  He was born in Sabatis, Maine, in 1830, his father dying when he was but ten months old.  His mother married again and, when but three years old, he was compelled to leave his home because of his stepfather’s opposition.  For the next three years he lived with an uncle in the backwoods of Maine, suffering great hardships and ill-treatment.  His mother, however, afterward took him back and secured him a home with a farmer.  At fifteen years of age he went to Boston, and thence to Bangor, Maine, to find work, landing in the latter town with but thirteen cents in his pocket.  During all this time his education had been neglected, but he finally succeeded in securing three terms’ attendance at the Litchfield (Maine) Institute.  In 1850 he went to Portland and spent three years working at the mason’s trade.
     In 1856 Mr. Hobbs came to Chicago and entered the produce and commission business, in which he has continued for over thirty years, during all this time a member of the Chicago Board of trade, and for one term its president.  Upon his conversion, in 1865, he joined the Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, Chicago, and since that time has been one of its most devoted and influential members.  For fifteen years he was a class leader and Sunday-school superintendent and has always been a most liberal contributor to church finances.  In 1891, he represented his church in the Ecumenical Conference at Washington.
     Mr. Hobbs has been an active Prohibition worker since the party’s formation.  He was the Prohibition candidate for governor of Illinois in 1884.  His first vote was cast in Portland, Maine, in 1851, for men who made up the legislature which afterward passed the famous Maine law.  From 1888 to 1889 he was secretary of the Prohibition National Committee.

— Data from An Album of Representative Prohibitionists (1895)

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