Hobart

Hoban appears in 1798 as one of the bidders for
the erection of the old Executive Offices, later
restricted to the Treasury. During the admin-
istration of Jefferson, he was little employed by
the government, but by this time he was no longer
dependent on his calling, having large holdings
of city lots. In 1799 he was captain of the Wash-
ington Artillery. On the incorporation of the
city in 1802, he was elected to the city council
and remained a member until his death. After
the destruction of the public buildings by the
British in 1814, he rebuilt the White House,
completed in 1829. The State and War Offices,
begun in 1818, were both designed and erected by
him. Hoban had married, in January 1799, Su-
sannah Sewell, and had ten children. He was a
solid citizen and patriarch of the city, and at his
death, in 1831, he left an estate valued at $60,000.
His son James, who died Jan. 19, 1846, was a
United States district attorney.

[M. J. Griffin, "James Hoban, the Architect and
Builder of the White House/' Am. Cath. Hist. Re-
searches, Jan. 1907; Fiske Kimball, Thos. Jefferson
and the first Monument of the Classical Revival in
America (1915), Thos. Jefferson, Architect (1916), and
"The Genesis of the White House," Century Mag., Feb.
1918; "Restoration of the White House," Senate Doc.
197, 57 Cong., 2 Sess.; W. B. Bryan, A Hist, of the
Nat. Capitol (2 vols., 1914-16) ; Glenn Brown, Hist, of
the U. S. Capitol (2 vols., 1900-03); A. C. Prime, The
Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia (1929) ; Nat. Intelli-
gencer (Washington, D. C.), Dec. 9, 1831; the Star
(Washington, D. C), Feb. 24, 1918; documents and
drawings, Md. Hist. Soc., Bajtimore, Office of Pub.
Buildings and Grounds, Washington; Coolidge collec-
tion, Mass. Hist. Soc,, Boston; information as to cer-
tain facts from descendants of Hoban and from W. G.
Strickland, Dublin, Ireland.] F.K.

HOBART, GARRET AUGUSTUS (June 3,
i844-Nov. 21, 1899), vice-president of the
United States, 1897-99, was born at Long
Branch, N. J., the son of Addison Willard and
Sophia (Vanderveer) Hobart, of English, Dutch,
and Huguenot ancestry. The head of the family
was Edmund Hobart, of Hingham, Norfolk,
England, who emigrated to Massachusetts in
1633, settling at Charlestown and later at Hing-
ham. Sixth in descent from Edmund were John
Henry Hobart and John Sloss Hobart [qq.v.].
Another descendant, Addison Hobart, was born
in New Hampshire but moved to Marlboro, Mon-
mouth County, N. J., where he taught school and
married Sophia Vanderveer. In 1841 they moved
to Long Branch. Here Garret was born and
here he passed an uneventful childhood marked
only by his mental precocity and by his ability
to make friends. He entered the sophomore
class at Rutgers College in his sixteenth year,
and in 1863 he was graduated with honors in
mathematics and English.

After a short interval of school-teaching, young

Hobart

Hobart went to Paterson, N. J., where he entered
the law office of Socrates Tuttle, an old friend of
his father. He was licensed to practise law on
June 7, 1866, became a counselor at law in 1871,
and was made a master in chancery in 1872. On
July 21, 1869, he was married to Jennie Tuttle,
the daughter of his law partner. They had two
children, Fannie Beckwith Hobart, who died at
Bellagio in 1895, and Garret Augustus Hobart,
Jr. Hobart soon rose to prominence in business,
law, and politics. In 1871 he was chosen city
counsel of Paterson; in 1872 and 1873 he was
elected a member of the Assembly; and in 1874,
at the age of thirty, he was chosen as its speaker.
Elected state senator in 1876 by the largest ma-
jority ever given in his district, he was reflected
three years later by a still greater majority, and
in the sessions of 1881-82 he was chosen presi-
dent of the Senate. From 1880 to 1891 he was
chairman of the state Republican committee, and
in 1884 he was elected a member of the national
committee, but failed of election to the United
States Senate. He was also delegate at large
from New Jersey to five successive Republican
conventions. His rapid advancement in politics
he owed to business sagacity, legal ability, and a
genial personality. He once remarked that he
made politics his recreation; his main interests
were business and law. He was one of the re-
ceivers for the New Jersey Midland Railroad,
the First National Bank of Newark, N. J., and
many other concerns which he helped to reor-
ganize on a profitable basis. In 1885 he became
president of the Passaic Water Company, which
had taken over water rights of the Society for
Useful Manufactures, an organization founded
with the aid of Alexander Hamilton. He was a
director of several banks and is said to have been
connected at one time with sixty corporations.
With Jacob D. Cox and James I. Goddard he was
named as an arbitrator in the settlement of a dis-
pute relating to traffic, passenger, and express
rates, between thirty railways of the great trunk
lines forming the Joint Traffic Railroad Asso-
ciation, but he resigned in the first year of his
vice-presidency.

By 1895 Hobart had accumulated a fortune
and was regarded as the leading Republican of
northern New Jersey. In that year he secured
the Republican nomination for governor for his
friend John W. Griggs [q.v.] who was elected.
He managed the Griggs campaign, thus helping
to make New Jersey Republican for the first time
in many years. At the state convention of his
party in 1896 his name was brought forward for
the nomination for vice-president on a ticket with
William McKmley, but at the suggestion of Gen.

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