[Sources: Isa Garteray Urquhart Glenn research 1900, based on McAllister; Sorley, The Lewises of Warner Hall, pp 804-5]
Ambrose Cobbs was a brother of Joseph Cobbs who is registered as having landed at Jamestown, Virginia in 1616. He came as a passenger on board the "Treasurer," just six years after the first permanent settlement in the new world was effected at this point. His wife and two children, Benjamin and Joseph, came "Bonnie Bess," in 1624. The date when Ambrose arrived is unknown, but he appears on the land grants in 1635, at which time the name of Joseph also appears among the patentees, and the presumption is that, if they did not come together to America, they were separated in coming by only a short interval.
Robert Cobbs appeared in 1651 as a church warden and as a resident of the County of York. In 1667, he was a Justice of the Peace for the same county, in 1681 a commissioner, and in 1682 a high sheriff. He died intestate in the year last named and to his son, Edmund, were granted letters of administration. Edmund died in 1692, leaving a will in which he divides his property between a son-in-law, Matthew Pierce, and three brothers, Robert, Ambrose, and Otho. It was the first of these who carried on the line. Robert Cobbs had three sons, Thomas, John and Robert, whose names appear frequently in the records of Henrico and Goochland, between the years 1736 and 1750, chiefly in the county last named, which was formed from Henrico. These constitute the heads of three distinct lines of the Cobb family in the United States: 1. Thomas, 2. John, 3. Robert. According to the early records, there are Cobb connections in both the Lee and randolph families of Virginia. We find in the Lee family, for example, a distinct branch, known as the Cobbs Hall Lees, and in the Randolph family, a distinct branch, known as the Randolphs of Cobbs. Through the Lewises, another group of ancient families is brought into the Cobb connection, including the Meriwethers, the Warners, the Washingtons, etc.
Thomas Cobbs, whose name first appears among the records of Goochland, is also found in Hanover, Albemarle, and Buckingham counties, Virginia, in Granville county, North Carolina, and in Columbia county, Georgia. Like a typical member of the Aryan race, he seems to have been always on the move; but he was a contradiction rather than a proof of the old adage that "a rolling stone gathers no moss." He became possessed of an abundance of worldly goods, acquiring extensive tracts of land, scattered over three states, but he finally settled in Georgia, where he spent the last fifty years of a life protracted to a phenomenal age, sone say 120 years. He is known, in the family traditions, as "Grandpa" Cobbs, and was usually addressed as "Colonel," a title which he doubtless acquired in the colonial wars in Virginia.
One of the children of the old patriarch was Thomas Cobbs, Jr., who was an officer of the Revolution. I am inclined to think that Thomas Sr. was too old to do much fighting in the struggle for independence, and that his services to the country in a military way were rendered in colonial times. Still, he as a true patriot, and though past fifty when the Revolution began, he was ready to fight with the youngest. Dr. White, in his Collections of Georgia, states that he was an officer of the Revolution, and this is the information which his descendants have received by way of tradition.
Thomas Cobbs, Jr. married when quite young. His wife's name is unknown, but he left issue: Robert H., Napoleon B., Catharine, Nancy, Julia, James, Stirling, and mary. Nancy married a Smith and from her descended, in the second generation, General Edmund Kirby Smith, one of the most distinguished of Confederate generals, who, in 1863, became commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department. He was also noted after the war an an educator, was President at one time of the University of Nashville, and died while holding a professorship in the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee.
John Cobbs, another son of Thomas, Sr., was also a soldier of the Revolution, and one of the first members of his family to drop from his name the final "s." He became the father of Hon. Thomas Willis Cobb (1784-1830), who illustrated Georgia on the bench and in the Senate of the United States. It was this distinguished member of the Cobb family, for whom Cobb County, Georgia was named in 1832, soon after his death. Moreover, he was the first of the Cobbs to achieve a national reputation. He died while a judge of the Superior Court for the Ocmulgee Circuit. His son, Joseph Beckham Cobb, removed to Mississippi, where he became an important figure in the politics of the State, but died early in life. He was a man of letters, and wrote a novel, entitled: "The Creole," besides two other books containing sketches of life in Mississippi in ante-bellum days.
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