Thomas A. Cobb
Thomas A. Cobb was born on January 21, 1837, in Harrison County, Ohio, to William and Mary Cobb. His father was a farmer who owned $3,000 of real estate and $610 of personal property by 1860. He grew up and attended school in German, Ohio, and the family moved to Marion, Indiana, around 1854. He attended Mercantile College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and he began working as a teacher around 1857. He moved to Missouri in 1859 but returned to his parents’ household in Marion a year later.
On September 2, 1861, he received a commission as a 1st lieutenant in Company A of the 10th Indiana Infantry. The regiment took part in the Siege of Corinth, the Battle of Perryville, the Battle of Chickamauga, the Siege of Chattanooga, the Battle of Missionary Ridge, and the Atlanta Campaign. Cobb was promoted to captain on November 18, 1862. According to his comrades, he was an “excellent officer, rather of a retiring disposition, yet congenial when in company with others. In battle he was always cool and deliberate in his actions, brave in the extreme but not reckless. His men had perfect confidence in him and would stand by him under the most trying circumstances.” He mustered out on September 19, 1864.
Cobb returned to Marion after leaving the army, and he married Julia Wilharm on December 1, 1864. They had at least six children: Addie, born around 1868; Eva, born around 1868; Emma, born around 1870; George, born around 1872; Thomas, born around 1874; and Julia, born around 1877. Cobb worked as a teacher for several years after the war and before devoting his life to farming. He purchased 120 acres in the spring of 1865, and he eventually expanded the farm to 400 acres. By 1870, he owned $4,000 of real estate and $840 of personal property.
He was a staunch Democrat, and he supported Stephen Douglas in the presidential election of 1860. He voted for Horace Greeley in the election of 1872, but he eventually became a Republican and then a Populist. His wife died of typhoid fever on August 24, 1893. He may have remarried in the early 1900s and gotten divorced by 1910. He died on November 4, 1921.
Image: Thomas A. Cobb (James Birney Shaw, History of the Tenth Regiment Indiana Volunteer Infantry)
DATABASE CONTENT
| (2338) | Cobb, Thomas A. | 1837-01-21 | 1921-11-04 |
- Conflict Side: Union
- Role: Soldier
- Rank in: 1st Lieutenant
- Rank out: Captain
- Rank highest: Captain
- Gender: Male
- Race: White
Documents - Records: 1
- (3437) [writer] ~ Thomas A. Cobb to William Cobb, 31 July 1864
People - Records: 1
- (2339) Cobb, William is the [parent of] (2338) Cobb, Thomas A.
Places - Records: 2
Regiments - Records: 1
- (73) [enlisted] ~ 10th Indiana Infantry
Groups - Records: 3
SOURCES
1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920 United States Federal Censuses, available from Ancestry.com; Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861-1865, available from Ancestry.com; Indiana Marriage Collection, 1800-1941, available from Ancestry.com; James Birney Shaw, History of the Tenth Regiment Indiana Volunteer Infantry (Lafayette, IN: n.p., 1912).
