The following was found in the papers given to Lois Lee Williamson of Rancho Cordova, CA on the death of E.R. Fuller

A Brief Biography of Rev.Randal Hobart a Pioneer of
MICHIGAN and CALIFORNIA

Randal Hobart, the son of Nehemiah and Lydia Randal Hobart was born at Burlington, Vermont, February 15, l800. He was linearly descended from Edmund Hobart, the first of the name in America, who was born in the Town of Hingham, County of Norfolk, England.
Edmund Hobart arrived in America in May 1633 and settled in Charlestown, Massachusetts In 1633 he was constable of Charlestown. This same year he removed to Hingham, Mass. and assisted in the organizing the first church there of which his son, Peter, was the first Pastor and from whom Randal Hobart was directly descended.
Edmund Hobart represented Hingham in the "General Court" of Masachussets in 1639-40-41-and 42.
Peter Hobart, his son, preached in Hingham from 1635 to 1679, accord-ing to the memorial Tablet now in the church in that town.
Randal hobart's grandfather Daniel Hobart served under Washington in the Revolutionary War and was killed at the Battle of White Plains, Oct.28, 1776, in the 28th year of his age.
So much for the Randal Hobart's ancestry. In the childhood he with his parents removed to Peru, Clinton Co., New York where he grew to manhood. In 1824 he married Ruth White.
In the summer of 1830 Sidney Ketchum, who for years had been a resident of Peru, Clinton Co., New York (and an acquaintance and friend of Randal Hobart) engaged in merchandising and iron manufacturing, closed out his business and started to explore what was then termed the west, for a new business location.
The Territory of Michigan had for a year or two pervious attracted some attention, and from having long been considered a mass of sand hills and bottomless swamps it began to be reported that it had some land that would produce rye and 'bite beans. To satisfy himself Mr. Ketchum came to Michigan in 1830 and so well pleased was he that he located and bought a large amount of land in and about where the City of Marshall is now located.
On his return to his old home his description of his proposed new location so fired the imagination of his friend Hobart, that he too decided to brave the unknown perils of the west and remove to Michigan. With his wife and two young children, the writer thinks, accompanying Sidney Ketchum and his family, young Hobart made the arduous trip, arriving at his destination late in 1831. He had time, however, to build a log House on a hill in the North Eastern part of what is now Marshall, before winter closed in. That this was accomplished with the usual toil, privation and danger incident to all pioneering in a new country goes without saying. In May 1832, the settlers were treated to an Indian scare of large proportions, George Ketchum, a brother of Sidney Ketchum, received a written message informing him that the Indians in the western part of the State were on the war path, spreading death and desolation in their track and requesting Ketchum to rally every able bodied man and meet at a rendezvous at "Prairie Ronde" without delay. A meeting of the settlers was called, of which Sands McComley(?) was Chairman and
Mr.Hobart was Secretary. A contingent of 12 good men and true were selected, who, heavily armed and adequately provisioned, were dispatched to the rendezvous under the command of George Ketchum with Isaac E. Crary second in command. On arriving at Prairie Ronde the Marshall contingent found that the danger of an Indian uprising had been grossly exaggerated. It was true that there was a slight uneasiness among the Indians located in the Western part of the Territory owing to their propinquity to the tribes controlled by the Celebrated Chief Black Hawk in Illinois, but there was but little fear of the Michigan Indians committing any overt acts so the contingent returned to Marshall to await further developments which it is needless to say never developed so far as Michigan was concerned.
The next thing that came to disturb the peace and serenity of the infant settlement was the breaking out of the Asiatic cholera. The settlers had heard that it had appeared in Quebec and was spreading with rapidity along the lines of travel, carrying death and dismay in its track, but the settlers not being on a frequented thoroughfare considered themselves comparatively safe and therefore felt but little apprehension. On the 4th day of July, 1832, some steamboats, loaded with troops under the command of Gen.Winfield Scott, on the way to the "Black Hawk" war, reached Detroit. Intelligence was conveyed to the shore that these were "floating hazard house", that on their crowded decks the cholera was sweeping off its victims by the hundreds. The vessels were quarantined and every effort made to prevent intercourse with the shore, but soon the dread disease broke out with fearful violence in the town. Many fled from the town. At Ypsalanti the people rose enmass and tried to stop all travel on the Chicago turnpike, going so far as to shoot down the horses belonging to the mail stage in their efforts to stop all travel.
Still Marshall remained serene and unapprehensive, but on the 20th of July the settlers were startled with the intelligence that Isaac
N. Hurd, one of the proprietors of the Village was down with the cholera. Mr.Hobart visited him on the afternoon of the day that he was stricken and for the first time witnessed the effects of the disease. Hurd died about sundown and was buried that night under the fear that contagion might spread if the remains were not immediately interred. This was done by and under the direction of Mr. Hobart. Quite a number of the settlers were present. Speaking of the incident Mr. Hobart told the writer that most of those present had provided themselves with pieces of Gum Camphor but he had omitted this antidote to contagion. Several took hold of the body with him to lay it in the coffin and as soon as they had it over that receptacle they dropped it as though by concert and drew back to the rear of the room leaving him to straighten the limbs and close the coffin. But he always held that these men were possessed of real courage and under the apprehension they entertained, there was more heroism in that scene than was ever enacted on the battle field, facing the cannon's mouth. The body was borne by torch light to the grave the first ever opened in Marshall. As he often said "Here, at the midnight hour with a slight rain falling, the torches reflecting a feeble light, was buried in silence, the first victim of cholera in Marshall." The next day, a son of a Mr. Fake, a lad of six or eight years of age, died and was buried.
On Monday there was another death. On Tuesday, two young men by the name of Thompson rode up to Mr. Hobart's home and said that their brother had just died of cholera and requested him to procure a coffin and see him buried. They then turned their horses and rode off joining a cavalcade of horsemen, all fleeing as thought an enemy was at their heels, leaving others to care for the dead and dying.
I cannot do better in describing the further devastatiens of the cholera in Marshall in 1832 than to quote from a letter of Mr. Hobart's now before me.
"That morning (Tuesday) I went to the house or Mr. Peirce where Chas. D. Smith and his brother were both down with the cholera fortunately they recoverd. On entering another room a scene presented itself that I never shall forget.
"There I found Rev. J.D. Peirce in attendance on his wife, and she in the awful collapse of the cholera. He had been up all night with no one to assist him. He had eaten nothing and his two little children, uncared for, were crying around him. I burst into tears and besought him to take some refreshment and care for his children and I would do what I could to care for his wife. After this was accomplished, I went into another room where I found a Mrs. Fake in the last stage of the desease, her husband caring for her.
" I had heard that morning that Dr. Hayes and Sands McCamley were going to take their families and leave the settlement. The first man I met on leaving Mr. Peirce's house was McCamley. My nerves were strung to their utmost tension, I told him what I had heard. He said it was true, such being his intention. I vehemently besought him not to do it. "Here", said 1, "is one man dead I have been preparing a coffin, but now I want someone to prepare a grave. Two more will be dead before night. Shall we foresake each other at such a time. The path of duty is the path of safety and if we are all to die together, let us die like men, each rendering all the aid in his power to his fellow sufferers." He stood a moment, his lips quivering and he said: "Mr. Hobart I'll not leave you. If we all die together we'll die at our post of duty. I will find a man and dig the grave and will see that the body is buried." He who said "Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy" cared for him. His family were spared to him.
"That night we buried Mrs Peiree and Mrs. Fake, making six victims of the dread pestilence in four days, out of a community of six houses. Two more subsequently died compeleting Marshall's cholera death roll for 1832, and the plague was stayed at last. The surroundings when we had time to look at them were almost like a battlefield after a conflict. The school house was turned into a hospital where the cholera patients that were becoming convalescent, were cared for. All business was suspended, Many of the survivors left the settlement to place their motherless or fatherless children where they could be cared for and but few outsiders seemed disposed to visit a place which had been so scourged. Altogether this was the most gloomy period in the history of Calhoun County.

The foregoing may seem more appropriate in a history of Calhoun Co. than in a Biographical Sketch of Mr. Hobart, but of these scenes and incidents it must be said that "all of them he saw and part of them he was." Seventeen years later he was destined to go through another cholera experience when the lesson he learned in 1832 enabled him to releive much suffering and save many valuable lives.
In 1833 or 4 the County of Calhoun was created by the Act of the Territorial Legislature and Mr. Hobart was appointed its first Register of Deeds by Governor Mason.
The next three or four years were the flush times in early Michigan and Mr. Hobart acheived his share of financial success. Then came the money panic of 1837 and his fortune crumbled like that of many another. The saying that misfortune never comes singly proved true in his case as the wife of his youth died in the spring of 1839, leaving him with a young family to care for singlehanded. He had made a profession of Religion and Joined the Methodist Episcopal Church before he left New York. This church connection he maintained until his death in 1870. He became a "Local Preacher" of that church in or about 1840 and officiated at a very large percentage of both marriages and furnerals in and about Marshall in the forties.
He was also the first State Lecturer of the"Washingtonians" the first Total Abstenance Temperance Society in the United States. He married for his second wife, Adaline Farrer in 1841. He was for serveral Terms Justice of the Peace for Marshall Township and as such acted as committing Magistrate in the cases of the so-called kidnappers in the celebrated Crosswhite fugitive slave case, that many of the substanial business 'men of Marshall had a financial reason for remembering as they had to pay for the escaped slaves under the ruling of the U.S.District Court.

In the summer of 1848 the whole country was startled by the report of the discovery of Gold in California a recent acquisition of the United States, resulting from the Mexican war. When this was authorticated by official reports the wildest excitement prevailed throughout the land. A company was formed at Marshall to go overland to the land of promise and Mr.Hobart was one of the first to join. He afterwards determined to take his youngest son, Wlliam, a lad of sixteen years, with him, His idea was, as was that of most of the adventurers, to get enought of the easily to be acquired gold and return to "God's Country" and to live comfortably and happily ever after. He left Marshall one stormy February day in 1849 never to return. The "Wolverine Rangers" ( the name adopted by the Michigan gold seekers) rendezvoued near Independance, Missouri to fit out for their long overland journey. The cholera had come up from New Orleans by the River and broken out in St. Louis and was being carried by the steamboats up the Missouri and other rivers. Disquieting rumors reached the camp of the Rangers of the appearance of the disease above and below their camp. One morning the camp was appalled by the announcement that their Doctor, a young Marshall practitioner who had joined the company, had died that night from cholera. Mr. Hobart had been with him from the time of his seizure until his death, Ministering to him, soon others were taken and before 48 hours there were five deaths and twelve were down with
the pestelence A meeting of the company was convened and Mr.Hobart addressed them He told them that if they remained where they were that they would die like rotten sheep; that there was but one thing to do and that was to put their sick into the wagons and roll out, that a change of air and location would do more for them than medicine; that they were fortunate in not having women and children to care for and the manly course was to go forward and meet the fate that was in store for them. His advice was taken and the result was that there were but two more deaths resulting from cholera. His career in California could not be of interest to Michigan readers. He mined for a couple of years with varying success. During this time he was never forgetful of what he considered his religous duties. On the plains each Sunday when practicable, he held religious services and when mining he did the same, often preaching in the open air under the shade of some "Monarch of the Forest." In those wild days he soothed the last moments of many a stricken adventure and Read the last prayer over his grave.
He filled many positions of Honor and Trust in the Golden State. On the 7th day of February 1870 at his farm near Chico, Butte County, California this brave, unselfish, Christian Gentleman, was called to his reward.
Born February 15th 1800. Died February 7th 1870.

Written in pencil by Eleanor Peal Rideout Fuller on 9/5/71
Note to Lois:
Butch and Sandy were married in the Same Methodist Church in Oreville were your great, great, great gandfather Hobart Preached