This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Hobson-Anderson-Polk-Current Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/nk.2ADI/832 Message Board Post: First White Child Born in Henry County Indiana First printed in the New Castle, IN. Courier Thursday January 5, 1911 by A. W. Hobson Transcribed by Melvin L. Miller The first white child born in Henry County, Indiana, Mrs. Jemima D. Hobson, aged, 91 years, died at Enid, Oklahoma, Sunday, December 18, 1910. She was a pioneer well and favorably known in the states of Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, and California. She helped to carve a way into the western wilderness in Indiana and Missouri for succeeding generations to build and inhabit. Mrs. Hobson was born March 29, 1820, in a rude, little but hurriedly built of logs near what is now New Castle. Her parents were George and Sally Hobson formerly of North Carolina. Here she married Stephen Hobson, also of North Carolina, afterwards moved to Missouri and they were among the earliest settlers in Andrew County. Family moved to Iowa From this pioneer home she sent her husband and two sons into the Civil War. After the war they moved to Mills County, Iowa, where he died in 1898, and she was buried beside him. Since that time she has lived among her surviving children, James R. Hobson, of Montrose, Colo.; Mrs. e. p. Anderson, of Denver, Colo.; A. W. Hobson, of Lyons, Neb.; Edward B. Hobson, of Los Angeles, Calif.; and A. Eugene Hobson, of Guernsey, Wyo. Her remarkable vitality enabled her to travel these great distances alone to see her children, even to her last week of life. She was remarkable in other ways as well. When she was a young and a small woman, her husband kept a mill and she shouldered a two-bushel sack of wheat and carried it up the gang plank into the mill to shame a customer who wanted someone to come and take his grist into the mill. A Cousin of President Polk. She never used spectacles in her life and could read and write up to the day of her death, prior to which time she had but one spell of sickness during her long life of ninety-two years. She was a descendant of Capt. William Polk, (her maternal grand-father), of Revolutionary fame, whom brother Ezekiel Polk was the grand-father of President James K. Polk and she herself being a third cousin of the president. Miss Annie Currents, book, ‘Genealogy of the Current and Hobson Families’ giving a sketch on her life “In character she was always timid, modest and quiet, always preferring to help with the dishes than to be entertained any other way. You could not keep her from “helping” no matter what how hard you tried, and what she did with her hands in helping was only a sign of the boundless benevolence of her soul. She would give to those whom she saw in trouble. She would deny herself and give her last dollar in her purse to ev! en a stranger if she meet him in trouble,”