Charles M HOBBS

                   Working as a canal captain in 1850 in chicago.
Also enumerated in Michigan in 1850, farming.
Working as a carpenter in Chicago in 1860
Working as a builder in Kalamazoo in 1870.

About the house they lived in in Kalamazoo:
After the Civil War, the house passed to Reuben Kipp, a cooper by trade, and later to one James White. Charles M. Hobbs bought it about 1872. Hobbs and his family had come to Kalamazoo in 1860, after living in Chicago for a time. During the War he farmed just north of town, then moved into the village. He served for a time as village trustee and as superintendent of the water works. In the 1870s, he was involved in selling windmills and agricultural implements. The 1880 Census-taker listed him as fifty-two and his wife, Sylvia, as forty-eight, and found three daughters still at home. The Gazette offered "the heartfelt sympathy of the entire community" in announcing his death in June of 1881. Mrs. Sylvia Hobbs continued to live in the home until 1901.

About the windmill business in Kalamazoo:
Pendleton, together with Bradley S. Williams, Kirk A. Smith, and Charles M. Hobbs, organized Pendleton, Williams, & Company in 1867 to sell and install windmills, pumps, and other agricultural equipment. In 1873, Pendleton and Hobbs sold their interest in the business, and it became known as Williams & Smith.