Tulare County Biographies

HOBART WEBSTER

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

 
        The enterprise of Hobart Webster, well known orchardist of the Success 
district east of Porterville, has been crowned with success as the result of 
rightly applied principles and today no one in this section of the county enjoys 
to a greater degree the respect and esteem of the community. As a recent issue 
of The California Citrograph (March, 1925) very aptly observed in this 
connection : "With the capacity for leadership and for an executive, with the 
desire to work for and with the men engaging in the same industry, with the 
ambition to make a success of the line of endeavor which he chose to follow when 
thirty-nine years of age, Hobart Webster is today a successful citrus grower 
because he possessed those qualities and gave them full sway. For more than 
twenty years he has helped place the industry on the firm footing it now 
enjoys."
        In this same connection The Citrograph observed that "Mr. Webster's 
material wealth is not his claim to distinction. To see the man is not to 
visualize his true worth. But to talk to him and to listen to those who have 
long been associated with him is to recognize in him a dynamic figure. Courage, 
foresight, ambition and energy are essential to true success. Perhaps that is 
the reason Mr. Webster is pointed out as a big man in the district he 
represents, for he surely had those requisites to place his all in an industry 
that was at that time very unstable and with a none too bright future. He saw 
possibilities in the citrus industry, possibilities with the aid of cooperative 
marketing, for he felt that without cooperation among the growers in getting 
their crops to market the industry would have been a failure.  Mr. Webster is a 
man of sixty-one years, looks ten years younger and probably feels ten years 
younger than he looks. It is little wonder he commands the position he holds in 
the citrus industry. The personal magnetism of the man, combined with his 
natural ability and training, make up a figure that is a credit to the industry 
he represents."
        The first crop shipped by Mr. Webster was in 1906 when his crop from 
three acres of young trees�a total of about forty boxes�went through the Tule 
River Citrus Association's packing-house. His fellow growers, recognizing his 
ability, made him a member of the board of directors and president of the Tule 
River house and in the fall of that year he was made manager of the association. 
At that time the seasonal output of the house was about sixty cars. Today 
(1925), in the new Tule River house, the seasonal shipments run about two 
hundred cars. Mr. Webster retained this managerial position for three years, at 
the end of which time he resigned in favor of his old "back east" neighbor, 
Frank Wilson, who also had become a successful grower in the newly developed 
Success valley, and has since held that position and is regarded as one of the 
very efficient packing-house managers in the state. After his resignation as 
manager Mr. Webster, by growers' demand, again was elected president of the 
association, a position he has held almost every year since that time. For three 
or four years he was the vice president of the Tulare County Fruit Exchange and 
since 1919 has been its president. He has always been a strong supporter of the 
exchange and believes that its continuance is the hope and salvation of the 
industry. As he says in this connection : "The production centers are scattered 
and the markets are a long way from the centers of production. Before the advent 
of the exchange the annual production of five thousand cars confronted a most 
serious marketing situation and great difficulty was had in selling the fruit. 
Today, with the exchange selling most of the California fruit, a market is found 
because of the cooperative body." The first Sunkist advertising program put on 
by the exchange was carried out in Iowa, the exchange's experiment along that 
line having the cooperation of the railroads. The results, as Mr. Webster points 
out, were immediately gratifying, the consumption increasing forty per cent the 
first year. Since that time the advertising has increased until today the annual 
advertising appropriation is upward of one million dollars. It is but proper to 
say that, largely due to Mr. Webster's fine executive influence and prudential 
administration the Tulare River Citrus Association enjoys an unusually high 
rating in the New York markets. Mr. Webster also had much to do with the 
organization of this irrigation district and aided materially in getting it on a 
sound financial basis. He is a director of the irrigation association and for 
ten years served as its president, until, at his request he was relieved.
        Hobart Webster is a native son of the old Keystone state, born in 
Mainesburg, Tioga county, Pennsylvania, February 11, 1864, and is a son of 
Philander and Mary (Rockwell) Webster, both natives and lifelong residents of 
that county, the former of whom was a son of Roswell Webster, a member of one of 
the colonial families of Massachusetts, who became one of the pioneers of north 
central Pennsylvania and had much to do with the creation of proper social and 
economic conditions in Tioga county in the days when orderly settlements were 
being established. Early devoting himself to the teaching profession, Hobart 
Webster was graduated from the Pennsylvania State Normal School in Mansfield and 
later had postgraduate work in a business college and in the Genesee Wesleyan 
Seminary, Lima, New York. In his teaching he specialized in commercial forms and 
while employed in the schools of Elizabeth, New Jersey, opened there the first 
high school commercial department on record in this country. It was out of the 
success of this experiment in commercial schooling that Mr. Webster presently 
became emboldened to establish a business college in Elizabeth, which he quite 
successfully carried on for some years and which is still a going institution, 
operating under the name of the Union Business College, a continuing monument in 
that city to Mr. Webster's useful service there.
        It was in 1884, when twenty years of age, that Mr. Webster had his first 
experience with the glorious climate and other manifest advantages of the state 
of California, an adventurous impulse in that year prompting him to come to the 
coast as a vacation experience. In Porterville he became employed in the 
mercantile and other operations of Porter Putnam, founder of the town, and 
instead of making a mere vacation trip of his sojourn here found conditions so 
much to his liking that he remained for three years, or until 1887, when he 
returned east and took up his school work. The lure of California was too much, 
however, and two years later, in 1889, he returned to Tulare county and was for 
three years here engaged in teaching school, his summers being occupied in 
exploring the high Sierras to Mt. Whitney. Upon his return east he became 
engaged in business in New York city and after his marriage in 1896 established 
his home there, giving his attention to his commercial college across the bay at 
Elizabeth. Then in 1903 the lure of California brought him back here and he 
since has been a definite and useful "fixture" in Tulare county, rooted to its 
soil and devoted to its interests.
        Upon taking up his residence in this county in 1903 Mr. Webster bought a 
tract of twenty acres in the Success valley in the Porterville neighborhood, 
established his home there and entered upon the program he long had been working 
out in his mind of going into citrus fruit growing on a basis which seemed to 
him to be both horticulturally and economically sound. And this was the 
beginning of the Webster orchards. That was more than twenty years ago and 
neither Mr. Webster nor Mrs. Webster ever has had occasion to regret the choice 
which brought them to this wonderful valley. As Mrs. Webster says : "It was easy 
to be lonesome the first years we were here, when there were scarcely any 
neighbors and no roads. But now with so many of each, I have become accustomed 
to the restful solitude of the mountains and love the beautiful valley. I know I 
should be dissatisfied elsewhere." Mr. Webster and his sons are fond of hunting 
and fishing and there is plenty of both in the towering mountains close by. Mr. 
Webster expresses himself as being fascinated by the mountains, their claim on 
his affections dating from his first visit here more than forty years ago. His 
landholdings have been increased until now he is the proprietor of a fine tract 
of two hundred and forty acres and is continually developing and improving the 
place which has come to be recognized as one of the model establishments of the 
valley.
        It was on June 30, 1896, that Hobart Webster was united in marriage to 
Miss Bertha J. Shaw, of New Brunswick, New Jersey, a suburb of the city of New 
York, and they have two sons : Hobart S. Webster, born in 1898, engaged with his 
father; and Rockwell Webster, born in 1905, who is now (1925) a student in the 
University of California, specializing in agriculture.
 
Source:  History of Tulare County and Kings County, California � Kathleen 
Edwards Small & J. Larry Smith, Vol. II, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke Publishing 
Company, 1926., pp. 138