Kentucky:  A History of the State, Battle, Perrin, & Kniffin, 3rd ed.,
1886. Warren County.

COL. WILLIAM E. HOBSON comes of a distinguished and numerous family.  It
has been said that "few families in the State have been and are more
widely or favorably known, while few are more numerous than the Hobson
family, and to the name of no one in any station in life is there attached
a stain, spot or blemish."  The Hobsons were of a military cast of mind,
and no war has occurred in our county since the Revolution in which they
were not well represented on the side of right.  Back through stirring
scenes and troublous times, and through many generations, the name is
traced to revered and honored ancestry, shrouded in the mists of no
tradition or fable, but written in letters of light upon the records of
their country. Col. Nicholas Hobson, the great-granduncle of the subject,
commanded a regiment, and Capt William Hobson, the great-grandfather of
the subject, commanded a company in the Revolutionary war, and
participated in many of the battles.  Col. Hobson was born January 8,
1844, on the anniversary of the victory at New Orleans, and was the
youngest Colonel in the Union Army in the late civil war.  He is the son
of Atwood G. and Juliet (Vanmeter) Hobson, whose children are Mary E., the
subject, Jonathan, Joseph V., and George A.  Atwood G. Hobson was a son of
Capt. William and Lucy (Kirtley) Hobson.  These were all good citizens,
and some of them are very prominent ones.  Gen. Edward H. Hobson was a
gallant soldier in the late war, and is extensively mentioned in the body
of this volume, as well as under the head of Green County.  Col. William E.
Hobson, the immediate subject of this sketch, was educated principally in
the schools of Bowling Green, and under the supervision of private tutors,
thus receiving a sound practical education.  Like his ancestors, he early
developed a remarkable taste for military life, and had the late unhappy
strife continued he would have risen to the highest military distinction. 
In 1861, then but seventeen years of age, he organized a large number of
his boyish companions into a body of "soldier boys," tastefully uniformed,
and whom he designated as the "Bowling Green Zouaves."  The interest he
manifested in his young soldiers and the care exercised in drilling them
but prefigured the stand he took and the record he made in subsequent
years, when he led strong men with burnished arms and bristling bayonets
through long, fatiguing and hazardous campaigns.  He unhesitatingly took
firm position on the side of the Government and against those who placed
themselves in antagonism to her institutions.  He opposed resort to arms
as long as there seemed the remotest chance of staying the bloody tide and
preventing the fratricidal strife that followed.  Animated by the purest
patriotism, he flew to arms, and with unbending courage devoted himself to
the cause of his country.  He left all the allurements of home, and a mere
beardless boy proceeded to Greensburg, and joined the standard of his
uncle, Col. Edward H. Hobson, who organized the Thirteenth Kentucky
Infantry. He became major and then lieutenant-colonel of this regiment,
and upon the promotion of his uncle, he succeeded to the command of his
regiment, as its colonel, March 13, 1863.  During the perilous east
Tennessee campaign, the the latter part of 1863, and while Burnside was
retiring from Loudon before Longstreet, whose forces outnumbered the
Federals five to one, Col. Hobson was especially selected to command the
rear brigade, and covered the retreat of the entire army to Knoxville,
receiving the thanks of the commanding general. For meritorious conduct in
this retreat he was continued brigade commander, which position he
successfully held during the siege of Knoxville, the campaign through
Georgia, the fall of Atlanta and the battle of Jonesborough. The services
of his gallant regiment are fully detailed in the chapters devoted to the
civil war, and the part taken in it by Kentucky troops, and to sketch them
in this article would be but a repetition.  After the battle of
Jonesborough, Col. Hobson returned to Kentucky and was appointed
post-commander at Bowling Green.  The delicate duties of this position he
discharged to the satisfaction of all, until mustered out of service in
1865.  Upon leaving the army he entered the law university at Albany, N.
Y., and graduated in the class of 1866, and engaged in the practice of
law; but the profession not being congenial to his tastes, he abandoned
it, and entered the revenue service, the duties of which he faithfully
discharged. He was married in March, 1873, to Ida Thomas, daughter of Hon.
H. K. Thomas, judge of the Warren County Court.  In the beginning of 1874
he established the Bowling Green Republican.  For several years, and to
the period when the National Government passed into the control of the
Democratic party, Col. Hobson held the office of postmaster at Bowling
Green, a position he filled with his characteristic fidelity.

Hobson Vanmeter Kirtley Burnside Loudon Longstreet Thomas
=
LA Greensburg-Green-KY TN GA NY

http://www.rootsweb.com/~kygenweb/kybiog/warren/hobson.we.txt