Willie Cooper Hobby

Willie Chapman Cooper Hobby (June 19, 1876 – January 14, 1929) was the first wife of William P. Hobby, Governor of Texas from 1917 to 1921, and thus First Lady of Texas.

Willie Chapman Cooper in 1895

Life

The daughter of Samuel Bronson Cooper, a lawyer who later became a United States Representative from Texas, Willie C. Cooper was born in Woodville and educated at Lucy Ann Kidd-Key’s North Texas Female College, graduating with honors at the age of sixteen.[1] She went with her father to Washington, D.C., where she was known as “Miss Willie”, and was a leader of Washington society as well as acting as her father’s secretary for many years. In 1910, her father lost his seat in Congress, and President William Howard Taft appointed him to the Board of General Appraisers in New York, where his daughter joined him.[2]

On May 15, 1915, Miss Willie married William Pettus Hobby, a lawyer who was Lieutenant Governor of Texas, with James Edward Ferguson as Governor. In 1917, Ferguson was removed from office, and at the age of thirty-nine Hobby succeeded him, becoming the youngest man ever to hold office as Governor of Texas. Willie Hobby served as his First Lady until he retired in 1921.[3]

In 1929, Mrs Hobby died suddenly at home, 3903 Montrose Boulevard, Houston, of apoplexy, and was buried at Glenwood Cemetery, Houston.[2] In 1931, her widowed husband married secondly Oveta Culp.[3]

Notes
  1. Ida Hinman, The Washington Sketch Book (1895),
  2. ”Mrs W. P. Hobby dies suddenly in Houston” (obituary), Houston Post, January 15, 1929
  3. Hobby, William Pettus (1878–1964), Handbook of Texas (Texas State Historical Association), accessed November 11, 2020
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