Cobbs Lane; a street dedicated to Nicholas Hamner Cobbs
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- Legacies Classification
- Memorial Type
- Memorial Context
- Memorialized Subject
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- Background and Context
- Historical Period
- Location: Institution, City, State
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Memorial Place
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Street Name
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Cobbs, Nicholas Hamner
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Cobbs Lane; a street dedicated to Nicholas Hamner Cobbs
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A gravel roadway in the town of Sewanee on the "Domain" (or property) of the University of the South. The date of its being named for the Right Rev. Nicholas Hamner Cobbs (1796-1861), Episcopal Bishop of Alabama and a founding trustee of the University, is unknown but likely in the 1980s.
Cobbs , the first bishop of Alabama, held four people in bondage in 1860. Born in Virginia and ordained in 1825, Cobbs served briefly as chaplain at the University of Virginia and as rector of several churches before consecration as Bishop of Alabama in 1844. In the 1850s he was an outspoken pro-slavery unionist who vigorously opposed secession, but bondage did not trouble him. Early in his pastoral career when he left Virginia to take a rectorship in Ohio, Cobbs freed his slaves instead of selling them. However, according to the 1850 and 1860 census data, by the time he was bishop in Alabama, Cobbs again was an enslaver. In addition, Cobbs was among the most serious and active bishops pushing planters to instruct, catechize, baptize and marry their enslaved property to safeguard their spiritual welfare and reinforce discipline on the plantation. The bishop himself baptized 1,500 enslaved people. Cobbs was an enthusiastic proponent of the “southern university,” but lost the battle to locate the University in Alabama. Cobbs predicted secession would be the South’s ruin. Despite his stance, his counterpart in Georgia, Stephen Elliott, recalled that “the gentle, loving Cobbs told us, again and again, that when the moment came, old and infirm as he was, he should shoulder his musket and march to the battle-field!" He also is memorialized by Cobbs Lane, a gravel roadway off Tennessee Avenue.
Position: 1842 (44 views)