Background
He was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1836, the son of Martin and Anna Elizabeth (Slade) Hobby.
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Alfred Hobby
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His grandnephew William P. Hobby, Junior., was lieutenant governor of Texas 1973-1991. Hobby entered a mercantile partnership and established a general store at the new town of Saint Mary"s of Aransas, Refugio County, about 1857. Although only about twenty-two, he almost immediately became a political leader of the county.
Upon the resignation of Henry Lawrence Kinney in 1861, Hobby was elected to the Texas House of Representatives for the Eighth Texas Legislature.
Hobby was an ardent supporter of states rights and organized a chapter of the Knights of the Golden Circle at Saint Mary"son At the Secession Convention he represented his district and voted for secession.
He was reelected to the Ninth Texas Legislature but resigned to enter the Confederate States Army. On May 14, 1862, Hobby organized a regiment and was elected to the rank of major.
The force was later known as (Hobby"s) Eighth Texas Infantry regiment.
Hobby would eventually rise to the rank of Colonel. He commanded the Texas forces at the Battle of Corpus Christi, repelling a Union invasion. While stationed at Galveston during the war, Hobby married a widow, Mistress
Gertrude Menard.
During the war he wrote several patriotic poems. These, including "The Sentinel"s Dream of Home," were widely published in newspapers of the period. After the war, he devoted himself more seriously to literary work.
His best-known prose was his Life of David G. Burnet (1871).
Serfs of Chattenay and Miscellaneous Poems (ca 1881) contained his "Poem in Honor of Colonel Thomas South. Lubbock." After the war Hobby disposed of his Refugio County holdings and settled at Galveston, where he resumed the mercantile business. He spent the last years of his life in Silver City, New Mexico.
Hobby died in New Mexico on February 5, 1881, in a wagon accident near Mimbres Creek.
