William White Hobartserved in the following governmental positions:
1853-1855 - Dep. Sheriff, Butte Co., CA
1855-1857 - Under Sheriff, Butte Co., CA
1857-1860 - Tax Collector, Butte Co., CA
1864 until elected to higher office Alderman, City of Austin, Neveda
1864 - 1867 - State Senator - Nevada
1870 - until appointed to higher office Assesor of White Pine Co., Nevada
1870 - 1879 State Controller for the State of Nevada
1880 - 1884 State Senator for Eureka, Co., Nevada

Life member, Society of California Pioneers - Joined Nov. 1896 and was President of the society from July 1905 - 1907

Letter from William W. Hobart to his sister Ruth Copied 9/11/71 by Eleanor R. Rideout

STATE CONTROLL'S OFFICE
Carson, Nev., Nov.l4th 1876

My Dear Sister
I am very sorry to learn through a letter from Addie that you are confined to your room but hope that she is wrong about your complaint being disease of the spine.
Since receiving her letter I have been thinking of the "other days" and my mind has gone back to our childhood. and through varying changes of our lives to the present. While I cannot remember our Mother I do, the day of her death, the hushed solemn stillness of the house, the passionate grief of Sarah and Nehiemiah, the open eyed wonder of my immediate playmate next younger than me my sister Lavinia who in a few short days I was to be separated from and never to see again the solemn almost hopeless grief of my father, who broken in fortune had not met his as well as our greatest misfortune in the loss of his young life's helpmate The bride of his youth and the mother of his children.
And I remember as if it were yesterday the little black haired red faced babe, yourself, a few days or at most a few weeks old, thrown by this great calamity - a motherless waif on the world. After the gloomy funeral came the breaking up of the family. Sarah and Livinia went to Aunt Livinia Warren at Detroit, Nehiemiah to the country on some farm. You to an old lady by the name of Reave to be "broughtup by hand, or to die as the fates decreed, While I was turned over to the tender mercies of Aunt Chloe White who, an old maid just married was to experiment on me and thereby gain knowledge as to how children should be brought up ere her own came into the w orld.
To relieve the monotony of Aunt Chloe's conflicts with my natural cussedness, the smarting of the chastisements, I got in such conflicts my tussels with my spelling and defubutsuve lessons in webster, my nautical voyages through Olneys Old Geography.
"Yungste Kiang Houng Ho Heavenly River how they flow. "
my insane efforts to grapple the multiplication and division tables in Coburns Mental Arithmetic, (talk about the Spanish inquisition and the French Reign of Terror, they were nothing to the remembered horrors of those childish days to me. There were two green spots in my life. One was the evening reading of Good Old Uncle Reuben White of Dickens Old Curousity Shop then being published in Horace Greeley's New Yorker newspaper. He read aloud to Aunt Chloe. I lay in my little bed in the next room awake for hours and many a night I cried myself to sleep over the woes and trials of poor little Nell. The other was my periodical visits to my baby sister at old mother Reaves. Father was away on a visit to his childhoods home in New fork.
Then came Father's second marriage and you and I came home and while it might not have been the house that our "sure enough" mother would have provided for us, we both were better for the change, for I escaped the horrors of Aunt Chloe's effort to make me a model "old maids child" and you the doubtful tender mercies of old Mother Reave(?) whom I now shrewdly suspect loved gin too well.
As I now think of them with all the drawbacks of poverty and mortified pride, as to "patched and hole-y" clothing there were these several happy years to me at any rate. I cant say as much for you though for though you loved me devotedly and thought me greater and better than you ever have since. All boys are brutes and savages and I know now that I was outrageously mean and tyrannical to you at times and the echo of your heartbroken cry of "Lules(?) dont treat me so" rings yet in my ear as an avenging nemiissis.
Then came the Wild burst of excitement over the discovery of Gold in far off Ca1ifornia and Father's determination to try his fortune in that Tera Incoginata, and his final determinstion to make me his companion in his quest after fortune. Ah how well I rememberer that drizzly April day when I bid you goodby,you then a Blip of a girl 11 or 12 years old. I full of dreams and ambitions never to be realized for they all centered on the swift fortune Father and I were to acheive and then to return to Old Marshall to enjoy. How many boyis , affronts and slights was I to revenge on the wealthy Comstock, Dickey Gorham and Hays boys. We would build a house on "Hobart" Hill that would throw the Hays - Fitch and even the old Ketchum Mansion in the shade, and the lion should enter the soul of those patricians at our magnificince. The weary march the wayfarers were put to their final rest on the praries, the shattered hopes when we got to the Golden land all pass before my mind like the changeful prisms of a kelidescope.
The year's passed. We could not return to you 80 you came out to us. I had grown a tall awkward bashful boy of one and twenty and you a tall black haired lassie of fifteen. The rest with its joys and sorrows its loves and disappointments, its success and reverses we both know. Our Father rests peacefully under the sod of Chico Grave Yard. Our Dear ones some of them are quietly at rest. I am a gray haired man beginning to look back at the past instead of forward into the future. While you arc sIck and reaching back to the old times and those yo u then loved for co mfort and reme mberance. Poor girl- and still happy- for you have good C hildren and you have new ties and loves and rememberances that I have no part in. Still the old times and the old love will come back to both of us, whether we will or no. At any rate they will to me, and I when I think of the black haired motherless babe the slip of a girl who idolized and was tyrarantzed over by her adored "Lulu"(?) the tall black eyed lassie at Bidwells Bar who could not understand why her boody brother should be so bashful. I want to put my arm xxxxx around your now substantial waist and lay my head on your broad shoulder, and forgetting my thin gray locks enjoy a good boyish cry once more.
In some things I dont think you have done me and niece "even and exact" justice. Not intentional however but because you were not in possession of all the facts XXXXX of the case. But that is past and not to be recalled. You are in sickness and the trouble and loneliness brings and my heart goes out to you as my darling sister Ruth. I can do nothing. but to extend to you my sympathy and fervent brotherly love. I can but hope that Jon will speedily recover. I pray that it may be so. If I have brightened a moment of your weary lot in your room, if I have given you a single happy thought by this rambling unconneted scrawl, I am glad that I have written it. Give my love to all the children.
Remember me to Gil.
with a heart full of love and commeration, I am
Your loving Brother
(Signed) W.W. Hobart

Added by E.R. Fuller
William White Hobart -Born Bidwells Bar 8/l8/1832 (44) yrs
Wrote this letter Carson, Nev. 11/14/1876
Died San Francisco 2/23/1916 (84)

12/31/97 retyped and Xed out enters were edited out by Thomas E. Williamson of New London, CT, from the Original Copy which is in the procession of Lois Lee Williamson of Rancho Cordova, CA