Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Cobb and Whitfield Family Papers #1708-z, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Alternate Form of Material

Microfilm copy (filmed 2004) available.

• Reel 1: folders 1-5

Provenance

Received from Winifred Cobb of Tallahassee, Fla., in 1950.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: SHC Staff

Updated by: Kathryn Michaelis, December 2009

Updated by: Laura Hart, July 2021

This collection was rehoused with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Office of Preservation, Washington, D.C., 1990-1992.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Cobb family.
• Families--North Carolina--Social life and customs.
• Florida--History--1821-1865.
• Land grants--North Carolina.
• North Carolina--Social life and customs.
• Sectionalism (United States).
• Slavery--Florida.
• Strange, Robert, 1796-1854.
• Whitfield family.
• Whitfield, James Bryan, 1809-1841.

• Whitfield Family Papers (#1257)

John P. Cobb (1834-1923) was born in Wayne County, N.C., son of William D. and Anne Collier Cobb. He received an A.B. from the University of North Carolina in 1854. He served in the 2nd Infantry Regiment of North Carolina Troops in the Confederate Army, 1861-1865, ending the war as a colonel. Cobb married Sally Eliza Whitfield in 1865 and moved to Florida, where he held state and government jobs and was in the citrus fruit business.

James Bryan Whitfield (1809-1841) of Falling Creek and Strabane, Lenoir County, N.C., was a merchant and planter. He studied at the University of North Carolina in 1824, served as a state senator in 1840, and was a major general in the North Carolina militia.

The collection contains chiefly 18th- and early 19th-century Cobb and Whitfield family deeds, land grants, and legal agreements from eastern North Carolina, especially Wayne, Craven, and Duplin counties; together with family correspondence, after 1837, of James Bryan Whitfield (1809-1841), Lenoir County, N.C., planter and state legislator, including two letters, 1840, from United States Senator Robert Strange regarding the admission of Florida to the United States as a slave state.

Most items are from the Whitfield family. Cobb family items are few and scattered. They include an account with William D. Cobb, 1845, and the college diploma, notes, and will of John P. Cobb.

In the last folder are undated typed transcriptions of land records, 1682, 1685,and 1693, of Matthew Whitfield in southeastern Virginia and a clipping, 1946, concerning the death of William D. Cobb, son of John P. Cobb, of Hernando County, Fla., as well as other items concerning Cobb and Whitfield family history.

Oversize paper folder (OPF-1708/1)

Microfilm reel (M-1708/1)