In early 1930's while state highway crews in Oklahoma were doing survey work for State Highway 62 in Leflore County northwest of Whitesboro near the community of Lenox, they stumbled across a cemetery with numerous graves dating back before the Civil War.
In 1937, the WPA Indian Pioneer History Project of Oklahoma in listed the cemetery as "Hobbs Cemetery" and described the location as forlorn, overgrown, and inside a thicket covered with thick briars inside a fenced area.
Located on the site of the long-defunct and abandoned Old Lenox Presbyterian Mission that was established to bring Christianity to the native Americans in the valley, there were over thirty gravesites, the majority of which were caving in and the majority of which had plain fieldstones for grave markers.
Among those graves was that of Reverand Simon Leavitt Hobbs, who along with his wife relocated from Massachusetts in 1853 as missionaries to the Choctaws and spent seventeen years total running the school and church as among the first white residents of the region.
Hobbs had been born in 1813 in New Candia, New Hampshire to Thomas and Sarah Shearburn Hobbs, whose ancestry has been traced as far back as 1616 and whose forefathers had arrived in the New World in 1642 when they landed in Newbury as part of the historic Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The subject of this treatise, S,L, Hobbs, came from some amount of upper society and graduated from Philips Acadamies, Exeter and Andover before obtaining a medical degree from Berkshire Medical Institute in Pittsfield.
Hobbs and his wife Mary Mornelia Sears Hobbs were married in 1852 in Essex County, Massachusetts. She was from an even tonier background than her husband. Her ancestors literally landed at Plymouth Rock in 1632 as the original settlers of the new country.
Simon Hobbs was ordained in 1843 and served a congregation In Lenox until 1849. He served two other churches (Southville and Erving) but at the age of 31 started to feel a wanderlust. Fascinated by the tales of a fellow Masaschusian and famiy friend who had traveled through the Kiamichi Valley in the 1830's, Hobbs convinced the church to fund the mission school in what would eventually become LeFlore County.
At the time of its founding, Lenox was located in Wade County, a part of the Apukshunnubbee District of the Choctaw Nation.
When the couple arrived in the region, the native inhabitants were distrustful. He was called "[ale face" and there was even a plot to kill the young pastor at one point.
However, he hired some of the locals to help him build a home and eventually earned their trust before opening the mission school with 48 students in 1853. The school was dubbed the Lenox Mission in honor of his old hometown in Massachusetts.
Hobbs also used his medical degree and knowledge to entrust himself to the tribe. He often traveled as many as fifty miles---without asking for any pay--to treat the elders, minister to sick children and promote healthy practices among all the members of the nation that would accept his version of "medicine".
One time, he was riding over the mountains to provide care to an Indian child who had pneumonia, fell from his horse broke both legs and spent forty-eight hours alone in the elements before he was found by a scouting party.
In 1858, Hobbs presented biographical information to the Presbyterian Journal which told of the hardships and adventures of the missionaries:
"It would be some relief to us to see and talk with a white woman once in a while. It is now twenty-five weeks since Mrs. Hobbs has looked upon such a person; and for twenty-four weeks she has been incessantly toiling in the day school, the female prayer meetings, the Sabbath school, and in family duties; all the time living in this little log-hut, with its puncheon [split log] floor.
But we have been borne along by something better than human power, safely, happily, swiftly, having had hardly time to look back, except for a moment's wonder and gratitude.
Our religious prospects are still encouraging. Three hopeful converts have been added to our number from beyond the Dividing Ridge, towards Fort Smith, about twelve or fourteen miles distant.
A Sabbath school was immediately formed, and twenty-three are now members of it. You can judge of the latest in our meetings from the fact that, at our weekly prayer meeting last Wednesday evening, fifty-two were present, and one of whom came less than a mile, and some came four miles. Request all Christians to pray for us and our people"
He ended the report by saying "Our chief aim and desire was the spiritual welfare of the 'Dear Choctaws'."
Except for a two-year period at the onset of the Civil War, Simon and Mary spent the remainder of their lives among the Choctaws. The couple produced at least seven children, some of which were buried in the lonely cemetery discovered by that Oklahoma road crew so long ago.
One of his sons, John Hobbs, took over the pulpit and the school when his father died.
Simon Hobbs died September 1, 1883, three weeks after his beloved Mary Cornelia.
His tombstone epitaph echoes the sentiments about his life and mission:
"Our father, Rev. S. L. Hobbs, born April 24, 1813, died September 1, 1883. For 15 years a missionary among the Choctaw Indians. His chief aim and desire was the spiritual welfare of the 'Dear Choctaws'."
.The cemetery lies two and one-half miles northeast of Whitesboro about 4o yards off the old Arkansas to Stringtown stagecoach road.It is about one mile from the Indian village called Old Lenox.
