David Cobb (slave trader)

The Alabama Department of Archives and History holds two bills of sale for people trafficked by Cobb: Cobb sold Primas and Mille in 1807 (or 1801), and bought Claiborn in Huntsville, Alabama Territory, in 1818.{{Cite web |title=David Cobb bills of sale |url=https://digital.archives.alabama.gov/digital/collection/voices/search/searchterm/David%20Cobb%20slave%20bills%20of%20sale/field/collec/mode/exact/conn/and |access-date=2025-01-06 |website=digital.archives.alabama.gov}}

There was a letter waiting for Cobb at the Lexington, Kentucky post office in January 1816.Lexington Kentucky Gazette, January 1, 1816 Page 2, newspaperarchives.com Cobb and Nancy Dudgeon were married in Green County, Kentucky on August 15, 1816.{{cite web |work=Kentucky, County Marriages, 1786–1965 |publisher=FamilySearch |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q28D-9QRZ |title=Entry for David Cobb and Nancy Dudgeon, 15 Aug 1816}} Cobb was enumerated in the 1820 U.S. census as a resident of Lexington, Fayette County, Kentucky, as a free white man aged 26 to 44, along with a woman in the same age cohort and a free white male between 10 and 15 years old.{{cite web |work=United States, Census, 1820 |publisher=FamilySearch |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XHG7-75X |title=Entry for David Cobb, 1820}} In 1823, David Cobb, Daniel Bradford, and James Kelly were tenants of a building located on the north west corner of Short and Upper streets in Lexington, Kentucky.{{Cite journal |last=Staples |first=Charles R. |date=1935 |title=HISTORY IN CIRCUIT COURT RECORDS—FAYETTE COUNTY, KY. (Concluded) |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23370538 |journal=Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society |volume=33 |issue=104 |pages=212–233 |jstor=23370538 |issn=2328-8183}}{{Rp|page=226}} The same year there was a planned court sale of a property on Upper street that had been used as a "tobacco factory" by David Cobb.{{cite news |title=Sale |newspaper=Kentucky Reporter |volume=16 |issue=21 |date=1823-05-19 |page=3 |via=Lexington Public Library

|url=https://rescarta.lexpublib.org/jsp/RcWebImageViewer.jsp?doc_id=8d92c6bd-75cd}}

Cobb was based in Lexington at the time of his death in 1826, and in spring of that year had been tenant of a brick house with a lot located on Constitution Street.{{Cite news |date=1826-03-13 |title=Notice |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/lexington-weekly-press-notice/162376539/ |access-date=2025-01-06 |work=Lexington Weekly Press |pages=1}} Cobb's estate, as inventoried in March and April 1827 in Green County, Kentucky, included a cow and a steer, two sows and pigs, four chairs, one trunk, one table, one yearling, 550 lbs of tobacco, and one hogshead of tobacco neat.{{cite web |title=Probate Records, Green County, Kentucky Clerk of the County Court |publisher=Ancestry.com. |work=Kentucky, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1774–1989 |url=https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/9066/}} {{closed access}} Cobb's son Benjamin died in the 1833 cholera outbreak in Lexington.{{Cite journal |last=Clift |first=G. Glenn |date=1941 |title=KENTUCKY MARRIAGES AND OBITUARIES: VOLUME TWO (Continued) |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23372135 |journal=Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society |volume=39 |issue=129 |pages=373–391 |jstor=23372135 |issn=2328-8183}}

At the time of his murder, a newspaper in Rhode Island stated that "One of the individuals, who fell a victim to the fury of the slaves, as above recited, [Cobb] is a man who has for many years been engaged in the slave trade; and he possessed a heart so callous to all the feelings of our natures, that it is almost incredible to suppose that the pointed steel could reach its centre. He lived a life of iniquity{{mdash}}was a barbarian in principle, and humanity rejoices that 'the waves are upon him.'"{{Cite news |date=1826-10-14 |title=Cobb |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/literary-cadet-and-rhode-island-statesma/162376205/ |access-date=2025-01-06 |work=Literary Cadet and Rhode-Island Statesman |pages=2}}

Abolitionist Lewis Hayden, who had escaped from slavery in Lexington, Kentucky, wrote to Harriet Beecher Stowe about the slave trade that, "I knew a great many of them, such as Neal, McAnn, Cobb, Stone, Pulliam, and Davis, &c. They were like Haley, they meant to repent when they got through."{{cite book |last=Stowe |first=Harriet Beecher |title=A key to Uncle Tom's cabin: presenting the original facts and documents upon which the story is founded |publisher=J. P. Jewett & Co. |year=1853 |location=Boston |language=en-us |pages=378–379 |lccn=02004230 |oclc=317690900 |ol=21879838M |author-link=Harriet Beecher Stowe}} {{free access}}

• List of Kentucky slave traders
• History of slavery in Kentucky

{{Reflist}}

{{authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cobb, David}}

Category:19th-century American merchants

Category:19th-century American slave traders

Category:1826 deaths

Category:People from Green County, Kentucky

Category:People from Lexington, Kentucky

Category:History of slavery in Kentucky

Category:People killed by their slaves