Hancock County, Maine Biographies

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Hancock County,
Maine

GEN. DAVID COBB
GEN. DAVID COBB OF GOULDSBOROUGH, MAINE.
BY COL. JOSEPH W. PORTER.
Read before the Maine Historical Society, January 25, 1894.

FROM 1795 to 1820, for a quarter of a century, Gen. Cobb was the most conspicuous and influential citizen of Eastern Maine, and possibly of the whole state. As his name and fame have been almost wholly appropriated by the mother state, I have thought it proper to assert his claims as a citizen of Maine. I have before me several volumes of Massachusetts origin which contain biographies of him, two of which make no allusion to his residence in Maine, and the others made of it the merest mention. David Cobb was the son of Thomas and Lydia Cobb, of Attleborough, Massachusetts, and was born September 14, 1748. He was fitted for college by Joseph Marsh, Jr., of Braintree, Massachusetts, who had a classical or Latin private school there from 1740 to 1762. Mr. Cobb was graduated from Harvard College in 1766. He studied medicine with Dr. Perkins of Boston (or Bridgewater), and settled in Taunton in 1766. He married the same year, Eleanor B radish, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was elected representative to the General Court in 1774, as a colleague with his brother-in-law, the distinguished Robert Treat Paine, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

In 1777, he entered the army as lieutenant-colonel of the Sixteenth Massachusetts Regiment, of which Henry Jackson was colonel. This was a famous regiment, and was in many famous battles. Cobb's bravery and judgment attracted the attention of Washington, and in 1781 he appointed Cobb a member of his staff. He continued through the war in that position, the beloved, intimate, trusted friend of Washington, and after the close of the war he went to Mount Ver-non and passed several months there.
He returned to Taunton in 1784, and resumed the practice of his profession. The state had need of his services. In 1784 he was appointed chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas for Bristol County, an office which he held for about eight years. In 1785, he was elected major-general of the Fifth Division of Massachusetts Militia. In 1786, a local insurrection took place in Eastern Massachusetts, which was particularly aimed at the courts. In June the mob attempted to prevent the holding of Judge Cobb's court. He ordered the militia out and addressed the mob, and told them he " would sit as judge or die as general." In the end his courage and bravery overcame the insurrection. In 1789, he was elected representative to the General Court, and for that year and three more years was speaker of the House. In 1792, he was appointed as commissioner to run the boundary line between Massachusetts and Rhode Island, a question which had been in dispute for more than one hundred and fifty years. He was representative in Congress, 1793-95.

In 1795, he was appointed agent of the great Bingham estate in Eastern Maine, and in that year or early in 1796 he removed to Gouldsborough. He erected a house on Gouldsborough Point, on the easterly side of the town. His house was always open, generous and hospitable. There Gen. Knox, Gen. Henry Jackson, William Bingham, the principal owner of the Bingham estate, and others visited him. The roads of that time were few and bad, and the ocean was the great highway for travelers. Few men of any note passed by without calling upon Gen. Cobb.

Upon his arrival at Gouldsborough he at once commenced great enterprises, which he hoped would benefit both proprietors and settlers. He laid out miles of roads in the town and northerly of it, on lands of the estate ; some of these roads were built. He built wharves, storehouses, saw mills and ships, and for a time shipped large quantities of lumber to the West Indies. He was passionately fond of agricultural pursuits, and spent much time and money in promoting that interest. He fondly hoped to found a city at Gouldsborough, but business and settlers went to other towns, Ellsworth, Steuben, Narraguagus River, and further to the eastward. The city of his ambition faded away like a dream, and is now almost as much a myth as the ancient city of Norumbega on the Penobscot.

With all his business cares the interests of the District of Maine made constant demands upon him. He was senator from Hancock County 1801, 1802, 1803 and 1805, and president of the Senate all those years. In 1803, he was appointed chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas for Hancock County, and held his court in Castine until 1809. In 1804, he headed the Federal electoral ticket of Massachusetts as candidate for elector at large. General Cobb was major-general of the Fifth Division of Massachusetts Militia in the District of Maine for several years before 1814, when he was succeeded by John Blake of Brewer. He was lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts in 1809, and was defeated as a candidate for re-election. He was supreme executive councillor for the district of which Hancock County was a part for 1805, 1808, 1812, 1813, 1814, 1815 and 1817; indeed, that office seems always to have been kept open for him.
In 1820, the management of the Bingham estate having passed into the hands of his son-in-law, Col. John Black, of Ellsworth, and being in feeble health, he concluded to go to Taunton and live with his children there. He removed the last of 1820, or the first of the following year. Many years previous to this, January 8, 1808, Mrs. Cobb died while on a visit to Taunton. His widowed daughter, Mrs. Betsey Smith, immediately went to Gouldsborough and, while Gen. Cobb lived there, was his faithful housekeeper. When he left there he left his home, his books and papers, a diary which he kept all through the Revolutionary war, which is now in the possession of his great-grandson, Mr. George N. Black, of Boston, and another diary of his life in Gouldsborough, which his descendants there have.

After his removal to Taunton he took much interest in public affairs, and remembered with peculiar satisfaction his residence in Maine. In 1829, he removed to the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, of which he is said to have been one of the founders, to spend the remainder of his life there.
He died April 17, 1830, and was buried beside his wife at Taunton. A monument has since been erected to their memory.

His will of February 18, 1829, was proved in Hancock County (a large part of his property being still there) August 18, 1830. The trustees of his will were his sons, Thomas and D. G. W., of Taunton, and his sons-in-law, Judge Samuel S. Wilde, of Boston, and Col. John Black, of Ellsworth. As a matter of fact it seems that Col. Black settled the estate.

General and Mrs. Cobb had eleven children, of whom six died in Maine, two in the Northwest and three in Massachusetts. Descendants in female lines are very numerous in Eastern Maine. General Cobb was the founder of Taunton Academy, a founder and vice-president of the "Society of the Cincinnati," and a member of the American Society of Arts and Sciences. frank, sincere, honorable, pure and kind-hearted, and altogether a man who can safely be praised in an obituary notice.
In religion he was a Congregationalist, and in politics a Federalist. As a judge, although not a lawyer, he had a good knowledge of law as applied to causes which were brought before him for trial. It was said of him at Castine that some times he took a "short cut" to get at the justice of a matter. When he sat on the bench he wore his cocked hat and revolutionary costume.

As a presiding officer he possessed remarkable grace, dignity and tact, and by his strict impartiality won the unqualified approval of his political opponents. I have given this sketch of this eminent Maine citizen, executive councillor, general, judge, lieutenant-governor and senator, in order that the people of Maine may hold him in remembrance. His portrait hangs in the senate chamber at Boston, over which body he presided four years. There is nothing in or about that portrait to remind the beholder that when Gen. Cobb presided over that body he was a citizen of Gouldsborough, Maine.
Source: "Collections of the Maine Historical Society"
Published by The Society, 1895
Submitted to Genealogy Trails by K. Torp