Caleb Secum Hobbs
Caleb Secum Hobbs was a Cleveland resident from 1848 until his death on March 5, 1870. He played a very active and influential part not only as a business man but as a citizen and his name is one that deserved some special tribute in this publication.
He was of old New England ancestry. The best accounts indicate that the progenitor Thomas Hobbs was in Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1657. Through the different generations they were distinguished as mathematicians and with a high degree of mechanical skill. Caleb Secum Hobbs was born at Dedham, Massachusetts, February 3, 1834, a son of Thomas Jefferson and Sarah Crosby (Mayo) Hobbs, a grandson of Joseph and Mary (Cressy) Hobbs and a great-grandson of Joseph and Elizabeth (Peabody) Hobbs of Londonderry, New Hampshire. His great-grandfather was a Minute Man and pensioner of the Revolution, while the great-great-grandfather, Abraham Hobbs, was a member of the Constitutional Convention that formulated the present Massachusetts constitution; was in the State Legislature during the Revolution and had five sons who were Minute Men. The grandfather Joseph was a soldier in the War of 1812. Thomas Jefferson Hobbs, the father, was a millwright, a draftsman and an inventor. He assisted in building the first iron boat in America at Boston, Massachusetts. He followed his son out to Ohio and about 1850 located at East Rockport, Ohio.
On the maternal side Caleb Hobbs belonged to the Mayo family, which contained many interesting and prominent connections in old New England. One of its ancestors was Rev. John Mayo, the first ordained minister of the Old North Church in Boston, who delivered the Artillery sermon in 1658. Copps Hill, the historic cemetery at Boston, received its name from its first owner William Copp, also an ancestor. The preserver of Plymouth Rock in 1745 was Elder Thomas Faunce, and the first Pilgrim publication was issued by George Morton in London, England, in 1622. All these being among the Pilgrim and Puritan ancestors in the Mayo branch of the Hobbs family. There were others who were members of the ancient and honorable artillery companies of Massachusetts and were soldiers of the Revolution.
Caleb S. Hobbs grew up and received his education in Boston, and on locating in Cleveland in 1848 entered upon a very active career. For a number of years he was paymaster of the Painesville and Ashtabula Railroad, now part of the New York Central system. During the Civil war, when the operating officials were unable to run the pay train through, "Cale" Hobbs volunteered to take the engineer's place and reached the desired destination without difficulty.
For many years he was one of the firm of the Hobbs & Savage Printing Company. He was also secretary of the Forest City Varnish Company. He was one of the first men in the country to master the art of telegraphy and imparted it to several of the early students in that art. One of his characteristics was a fondness for books and he was a great reader and a collector. He left a large library of rare editions, many of which had his name stamped on the binding. He served as private in Company A of the Twenty-ninth Regiment, Ohio National Guards, in 1864, was also a member of the Old Cleveland Guards, was a lieutenant in the Cleveland Grays and in 1870 was elected an honorable member of this company. He served as secretary of the Fourth Ward Relief Association for the benefit of the soldier's families during the Civil war. He was appointed a Guard of Honor while the funeral train of Abraham Lincoln was in Cleveland in 1865. On that occasion he wore a badge of black ribbon with narrow white edging, containing the words "Guard of Honor" printed in white. This badge is preserved in the family scrap book.
In Masonry he was affiliated with Iris Lodge, Free and Accepted Masons, and with the Oriental Commandery of Knight Templar. His son also joined Iris Lodge, and it is the ambition of the only grandson to become a member of the same organization, thus giving three generations of the family to this order. Aside from the many interests which claimed his time and energies while in Cleveland Caleb Hobbs should be remembered as a man of perfect probity, genial disposition, exceptional generosity and a lover of the beautiful and artistic. He was an exceptionally fine penman.
On April 18, 1859, he was married at Avon in Lorain County, Ohio, to Miss Ada Antoinette Lynes, daughter of Sturges and Betsey (Lindsley) Lynes. To this marriage was born one child, Perry Lynes Hobbs, whose career is sketched on other pages. The son was born in the old family home on Huntington Street but they afterwards removed to Prospect Street, where Caleb Hobbs died.
From Cleveland - Special Limited Edition, The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago & New York, 1918 v.1