Jonathan Holmes Cobb

Background

Jonathan Holmes Cobb was born on July 08, 1799 at Sharon, Massachusetts, United States. He was the eldest of the ten children of Jonathan and Sibbel (Holmes) Cobb. His father was a prosperous innkeeper and farmer.

Education

Jonathan had the advantage of an excellent preparation at Milton Academy and a college course at Harvard. He graduated from that institution in 1817 in a class which included George Bancroft, Caleb Cushing, and Stephen H. Tyng. After graduation he commenced the study of law in the office of William Dunbar of Canton, Massachusetts, where he remained about a year, when he went to Charleston, South Carolina. In that city he pursued his studies in the office of Benjamin S. Dunkin and at the same time opened a classical and English school. An outbreak of yellow fever in 1819 led him to return to Massachusetts and enter the law office of Jabez Chickering. From there he was admitted in 1820 to the Norfolk County bar.

Career

Cobb distinguished his legal career about 1820. In addition to a legal practise in Dedham and Boston, Cobb was register of probate for Norfolk County, 1833-1879, and town clerk of Dedham for thirty consecutive years, declining a reelection in 1875. For forty years he was an active magistrate in Norfolk County.

He was widely known in his own day as an expert in the production and manufacture of silk. When the morus multicaulis, a new form of the mulberry tree, was introduced into the United States in the decade of the twenties, he was among the earliest and most enthusiastic experimenters. After a period of intensive experimentation he so convinced the state legislature of the practicability of silk production in Massachusetts that they commissioned him to write a manual on the subject and appropriated $600 to cover publication. The result was A Manual Containing Information Respecting the Growth of the Mulberry Tree with Suitable Directions for the Culture of Silk (1831). This little book came out at the height of the morus multicaulis boom and was widely read. The Congress of the United States ordered the printing of 2, 000 copies for distribution, and the book went through four editions by 1839.

Before the last edition was printed Cobb was in a position to give directions as to the production of silk from the tree to the finished product for he had successfully accomplished the whole process in Dedham. In 1837 he established a silk-mill which in the following year operated sixteen throwing machines of one hundred spindles each and turned out $35, 000 worth of sewing silk as well as a “considerable quantity of narrow goods”. This factory, which was destroyed by fire in 1844, was one of the earliest in the United States, and to Cobb as much as to any single individual must go the credit of arousing an interest in the manufacture of silk. Cobb was active in many local projects. He was a founder and treasurer (1831 - 1834) of the Dedham Institution for Savings, editor for some years of the Village Register and for forty years a deacon in the First Church of Dedham.

Achievements

• Jonathan Holmes Cobb was recognized for establishing the silk manufacturing factory, which was one of the earliest plants in the United States, and credited for arousing an interest in the manufacture of silk. He was also instrumental in the foundation of the Dedham Institution for Savings.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Manual Containing Information Respecting the Growth of the Mulberry Tree: With Suitable Directions for the Culture of Silk; In Three Parts (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from A Manual Containing Information Respecting t...)

Connections

Cobb was married on September 26, 1822, to Sophia Doggett of Roxbury.

Father:

Jonathan Cobb

Mother:

Sibbel (Holmes) Cobb

Spouse:

Sophia Doggett