From being raised in Vermont, to managing over one million acres of Texas ranch land.
T.D.Hobart was Worshipful Master of Pampa Lodge No. 966 in 1914-1915 and again in 1915-1916. He was born in Berlin,Vermont in 1855. He moved to Texas to work for the New York and Texas Land Company, which owned five million acres scattered from Brazoria to the Panhandle.
In 1881 Major Ira H. Evans, a cousin of Hobart, visited Hobart’s home in Berlin, Vermont and offered the young man employment with the New York and Texas Land Company, Limited. Hobart accepted the offer and left Vermont October 31, 1882, for Palestine, Texas, which at that time was headquarters for the company, which owned five million acres scattered from Brazoria to the Panhandle.
Ira Hobart Evans (April 11, 1844 – April 19, 1922), was an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War and received the Medal of Honor due to his actions on April 2nd, 1865 at Hatchers Run, Virginia. On April 17th, 1865, Evans was also one of the officers in the honor guard of President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral cortège. He was also a prominent Texas businessman. Read more about this interesting cousin of T D Hobart here.
Timothy Dwight Hobart began his career in Texas with a debt of several hundred dollars, a family that relied on him for support and a salary of thirty dollars a month.
Mr. Hobart, a skilled and avid outdoorsman served a four year apprenticeship with the Company, where he quickly learned surveying and the weather and flora and fauna of Texas.
After moving to the Panhandle, Hobart established headquarters in the struggling frontier village of Mobeetie which was then in the heyday of its existence. He shared an office with lawyer Temple Houston, the youngest son of General Sam Houston. Hobart began immediately to locate, survey and lease the lands of his company.
After six years of hard but successful work in Texas, Hobart returned to Berlin, Vermont, to marry his childhood friend and sweetheart, Minnie Wood Warren, on September 20th, 1888. She had encouraged him to seek a new life in the West because she felt that his prospects in Vermont were not very good.
At the time the Hobarts lived in Mobeetie, about the only visible evidence that the Panhandle was in the confines of civilization was Fort Elliott, a mile west of town, with its flags fluttering in the breeze. Minnie enjoyed trips to Fort Elliott where the encampment of Indian Scouts furnished a novel sight with their squaws, papooses and numerous dogs which were said to furnish a large part of their meat.
Because of Hobart’s outstanding record with the New York and Texas Land Company, George Tyng, first manager of White Deer Lands, strongly recommended Hobart as his replacement. On March 12, 1902, he wrote to trustee Frederic Foster:
“Men are not made more trustworthy and conscientious than Hobart. Everyone who knows him, friend or enemy, would tell you the same. He has been selling land all over the Panhandle sixteen years or longer and knows the land and land buyers. The lands in his charge are nearly sold out. … He would be moderate as to wages and would be well worth what he would ask. There is your man.”
Andrew Kingsmill met with Hobart when he visited Pampa in the fall of 1902. As representative of the proprietors in England, Kingsmill agreed to Hobart’s employment. Accordingly Hobart tendered his resignation to the president of the New York and Texas Land Company on November 26, 1902, and on February 6, 1903, he began his employment as manager of White Deer Lands.
T D Hobart, far right and M K Brown, center at the JA Ranch Headquarters
Hobart worked tirelessly promoting Pampa and the surrounding area. He would often board the train cars while the train had stopped in Pampa, to promote to the settlers traveling on the train Pampa and Gray county as a fine place to start a new life. He would pass out illustrated pamphlets that he had printed ( “White Deer Lands in the Panhandle of Texas”) in 1905, to the train loads of settlers headed further West.
These salesmanship forays we so effective, one land promoter wrote to Hobart and threatened to “slug” any White Deer Land man who persisted in handing out the White Deer Land booklets. Hobart’s candid reply, typical of this plain spoken Vermonter turned Texan. Dated September 3rd, 1906, he responded simply:
“I have been in Texas some 24 years, and my knowledge of Texas people convinces me that they do not take kindly to slugging, and I have known the results to have been very unpleasant. Just keep your sluggers in Chicago, and feel very sure that they will enjoy much better health that if the attempt to apply their vocation here.”
Timothy Dwight Hobart passed away in Pampa on May 19th, 1935.
The Reverend Clinton Earl “Clint” Lancaster (1888-1961) of the First Baptist Church of Pampa, a Mississippi native who had been a chaplain in World War 1, delivered Hobart’s funeral oration. The Reverend Lancaster said, accordingly:
“His clear intelligence was resistant to hasty conclusions; once reached, they were dispassionate and final. He was fitted by native character and habits of life for great administrative work. He was vigilant, patient, cordial, and an intuitive judge of men. He was never swayed by trends of public opinion, though responsive to them, which fitted him for so tremendous a place of responsibility as he always carried. His vigorous intellect, lofty principles, honest feeling of heart, brought him into the councils of our nation’s responsible men in government, education, religion, and economic life. He was Pampa’s first citizen.“
Hobart is interred at Fairview Cemetery in Pampa, Texas.
His epitaph reads:
A pioneer, loved and respected by all who knew him
With a character strong and rugged as the hills of Vermont from whence he came and a vision as broad as the Texas prairies.
