Portal:Oregon/Selected biography/33

Fern Hobbs (May 8, 1883 – April 10, 1964) was an American attorney in the U.S. state of Oregon, and a private secretary to Oregon Governor Oswald West. She was noted for her ambition and several accomplishments as a young woman, and became the highest-paid woman in public service in America in her mid-twenties. A native of Nebraska, she lived there and in Salt Lake City, Utah, before her family moved to Oregon. The family settled in Hillsboro, with Hobbs working to help support the family before attending Willamette University College of Law where she graduated in 1913. Hobbs made international news when Governor West sent her to implement martial law in the small Eastern Oregon town of Copperfield. The event was considered a strategic coup for West, establishing the State's authority over a remote rural community and cementing his reputation as a proponent of prohibition. Hobbs later worked for the American Red Cross in Europe and at the Oregon Journal newspaper. She died in Portland in 1964.