Ken Hobbs was a elderly miner at his early sixties from Grantville. He joined the posse that formed around Dan Frost and Mike Stearns to investigate what had happened to the town after the Ring of Fire. Hobbs, an antique fire-arms enthusiast, identified the firearms belonging to the two gunmen killed by Frost as matchlocks. Later, Hobbs was put in charge of re-opening a closed coal mine to replenish Grantville's power plant.