Cully Cobb

Last updated
Cully Alton Cobb, Sr.
Born(1884-02-25)February 25, 1884
Prospect, Giles County
Tennessee, USA
DiedMay 7, 1975(1975-05-07) (aged 91)
Decatur, DeKalb County, Georgia
Alma mater Mississippi State University
Occupation Publisher; Printer
Educator, Philanthropist
Years active1908-1971
Spouse(s)(1) Byrdie Ball Cobb (married 1910-1932, her death)
(2) Lois Dowdle Cobb (married 1934-1975, his death)
ChildrenTwo sons from first wife:

Cully Cobb, Jr.

David A. Cobb
Parent(s)Napoleon and Mary Agnes Woodward Cobb

Cully Alton Cobb, Sr. (February 25, 1884–May 7, 1975), [1] was an agricultural pioneer, educator, printer, journalist, and philanthropist in the American South who with his second wife, Lois Dowdle Cobb (August 1, 1889–August 9, 1987), [1] co-founded the Cobb Institute of Archaeology on the campus of Mississippi State University in Starkville, Mississippi.

Southern United States Cultural region of the United States

The southern United States, also known as the American South, Dixie, Dixieland, or simply the South, is a region of the United States of America. It is located between the Atlantic Ocean and the western United States, with the midwestern United States and northeastern United States to its north and the Gulf of Mexico and Mexico to its south.

Mississippi State University public university in Starkville, Mississippi, USA

The Mississippi State University for Agriculture and Applied Science, commonly known as Mississippi State University (MSU), is a public land-grant research university adjacent to Starkville, Mississippi. With 21,353 students at its main campus, it is the largest campus by enrollment in the state. It is classified in the category of "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity" by the Carnegie Foundation and has a total research and development budget of $239.4 million, the largest in Mississippi. It is listed as one of the state's flagship universities.

Starkville, Mississippi City in Mississippi, United States

Starkville is a city in, and the county seat of, Oktibbeha County, Mississippi, United States. Mississippi State University, the state's land-grant institution and a public flagship university, is located partially in Starkville and partially in an adjacent unincorporated area. The population was 25,352 in 2017. Starkville is the most populous city of the Golden Triangle region of Mississippi. The Starkville micropolitan statistical area includes all of Oktibbeha County.

Contents

Early years

Cobb was originally a poor farm boy born in his grandfather's cabin near Prospect in Giles County in rural southern Tennessee. [2] His parents were Napoleon Cobb (1849–1913) and the former Mary Agnes Woodward (1855–1932). [3] [4]

Prospect is an unincorporated community in Giles County, Tennessee. The zip code is 38477.

Giles County, Tennessee County in the United States

Giles County is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2010 census, the population was 29,485. Its county seat is Pulaski.

Tennessee State of the United States of America

Tennessee is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th largest and the 16th most populous of the 50 United States. Tennessee is bordered by Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the west, and Missouri to the northwest. The Appalachian Mountains dominate the eastern part of the state, and the Mississippi River forms the state's western border. Nashville is the state's capital and largest city, with a 2017 population of 667,560. Tennessee's second largest city is Memphis, which had a population of 652,236 in 2017.

In 1908, at the age of twenty-four, Cobb received his bachelor's degree from Mississippi A&M College. Thereafter, he accepted for two years the position of superintendent of the first agricultural high school, established in the unincorporated community of Buena Vista in Chickasaw County in northern MIssissippi. From 1910-1918, Cobb was director of the men's agriculture club at Mississippi State University.

Bachelors degree Undergraduate academic degree

A bachelor's degree or baccalaureate is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to seven years. In some institutions and educational systems, some bachelor's degrees can only be taken as graduate or postgraduate degrees after a first degree has been completed. In countries with qualifications frameworks, bachelor's degrees are normally one of the major levels in the framework, although some qualifications titled bachelor's degrees may be at other levels and some qualifications with non-bachelor's titles may be classified as bachelor's degrees.

Chickasaw County, Mississippi County in the United States

Chickasaw County is a county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2010 census, the population was 17,392. Its county seats are Houston and Okolona. The county is named for the Chickasaw people, who lived in this area for hundreds of years. Most were removed to Indian Territory in the 1830s, but some remained and became citizens of the state and United States.

Agricultural publisher

In September 1918, Cobb became editor of Southern Ruralist magazine in Atlanta, Georgia. He was named president of the American Agricultural Editors Association for three consecutive years. In 1932, the Southern Ruralist was sold to Progressive Farmer . Cobb was the managing editor of the Georgia-Alabama edition of Progressive Farmer. [5]

A magazine is a publication, usually a periodical publication, which is printed or electronically published. Magazines are generally published on a regular schedule and contain a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by prepaid subscriptions, or a combination of the three.

Georgia (U.S. state) State of the United States of America

Georgia is a state in the Southeastern United States. It began as a British colony in 1733, the last and southernmost of the original Thirteen Colonies to be established. Named after King George II of Great Britain, the Province of Georgia covered the area from South Carolina south to Spanish Florida and west to French Louisiana at the Mississippi River. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788. In 1802–1804, western Georgia was split to the Mississippi Territory, which later split to form Alabama with part of former West Florida in 1819. Georgia declared its secession from the Union on January 19, 1861, and was one of the original seven Confederate states. It was the last state to be restored to the Union, on July 15, 1870. Georgia is the 24th largest and the 8th most populous of the 50 United States. From 2007 to 2008, 14 of Georgia's counties ranked among the nation's 100 fastest-growing, second only to Texas. Georgia is known as the Peach State and the Empire State of the South. Atlanta, the state's capital and most populous city, has been named a global city. Atlanta's metropolitan area contains about 55% of the population of the entire state.

In 1933, however, he accepted an appointment in Washington, D.C., under U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as director of the Cotton Division of the New Deal agency, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. [5] Cobb supervised the controversial decision to plow under cotton fields to reduce farm output in the expectation of reversing the slump in prices to farmers. [6]

Washington, D.C. Capital of the United States

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington or D.C., is the capital of the United States. Founded after the American Revolution as the seat of government of the newly independent country, Washington was named after George Washington, first President of the United States and Founding Father. As the seat of the United States federal government and several international organizations, Washington is an important world political capital. The city is also one of the most visited cities in the world, with more than 20 million tourists annually.

Franklin D. Roosevelt 32nd president of the United States

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and became a central figure in world events during the first half of the 20th century. Roosevelt directed the federal government during most of the Great Depression, implementing his New Deal domestic agenda in response to the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. As a dominant leader of his party, he built the New Deal Coalition, which realigned American politics into the Fifth Party System and defined American liberalism throughout the middle third of the 20th century. His third and fourth terms were dominated by World War II. Roosevelt is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in American history, as well as among the most influential figures of the 20th century. Though he has also been subject to much criticism, he is generally rated by scholars as one of the three greatest U.S. presidents, along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Cotton plant fiber from the genus Gossypium

Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus Gossypium in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. Under natural conditions, the cotton bolls will increase the dispersal of the seeds.

In September 1937, he returned to Atlanta, where he purchased the majority of stock of the Ruralist Press, one of the largest printing concerns in the South. He continued as president of Ruralist Press until 1971, when he sold the company. He was also president of the Master Printers Association of Atlanta and a mainstay of the Georgia printing industry. [5]

Family

Cobb's first wife was the former Byrdie Ball of Buena Vista, Mississippi, where he had been the superintendent of the agricultural high school. The couple had two children, Cully, Jr. (born ca. 1917), and David A. Cobb (born ca. 1924). Byrdie died in 1932, the same year that Cobb's mother expired. [5] Son Cully, Jr., practiced neurosurgery in Nashville, Tennessee, and is presumably retired. [7] Grandson Cully A. Cobb, III (born 1943), is a neurosurgeon in Sacramento, California, [8] and is affiliated with the Sutter Neuroscience Institute there. [9]

In 1934, Cobb wed the former Lois P. Dowdle, a graduate of the University of Georgia at Athens who also enrolled in graduate studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. During World War I, Lois Dowdle had been director of Food Production and Food Preservation for Georgia as an appointee of Herbert C. Hoover, the federal Food Administrator, who became U.S. President in 1929. Between 1932-1934, she was director of the American Institute of Home Grown Fats and Oils. She worked to convince the U.S. Congress to repeal restrictive legislation against the manufacture and sale of oleomargarine. She too wore many hats: editor, writer, schoolteacher, administrator, trustee, and homemaker. She was a president of the Georgia Home Economics Association and the only woman to have served as president of the Southern Association of Agricultural Workers, now known as the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists, Inc., [5] [10]

Cobb was involved in civic and church affairs, having taught Sunday school for more than three decades at the Druid Hills Baptist Church in Druid Hills in Atlanta. He was also a member of the Masonic lodge. Mrs. Cobb was of Methodist affiliation but regularly taught a class at her husband's Baptist congregation. [5]

The Cobbs were patrons of charity. They assisted student ministers from Emory University in Atlanta by providing some of them free housing in their garage apartment. [5] In 1938, the Cobbs purchased an historic house in Decatur, Georgia, built by Michael Steele, a pioneer of DeKalb County, along with eighty-seven adjacent acres on which to raise grain and livestock. Upon Cobb's death, the property was donated to Emory University. The current owners bought the Steele-Cobb property in 1988. [11]

Mrs. Cobb spent her remaining years in Decatur, where she died at the age of ninety-eight a dozen years after her husband's death. The couple is interred in DeKalb County. Mississippi State University historian Roy Vernon Scott of Starkville, co-author with Jimmy G. Shoalmire of a 1973 biography of Cobb, was a pallbearer at Cully Cobb's funeral. [12]

Cobb Institute of Archaeology

In June 1971, the couple first provided funding for the Cobb Institute of Archaeology, which includes multiple classrooms, research labs, offices, a library, and a museum. [13] Groundbreaking at the building site followed on April 14, 1973. On that occasion, the Cobbs were joined by MSU president William L. Giles. Cobb said that he was inspired to establish the institute in Starkville because of how much Mississippi State had meant to his life. Construction began in 1974 and was completed in 1975, five months after Cobb's death. Mrs. Cobb last visited the institute in 1979 on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday. She dedicated to the museum a copy of the Lion Panel from the Ishtar Gate in ancient Babylon. [14]

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References

  1. 1 2 "Social Security Death Index". ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com. Retrieved July 16, 2010.
  2. ↑ Jimmy G. Shoalmire and Roy Vernon Scott, The Public Career of Cully Cobb: A Study in Agricultural Leadership, (Jackson, Mississippi: University and College Press of Mississippi, 1973), p. 1; Shoalmire and Scott used materials from the Henry A. Wallace Collection at the University of Iowa in Iowa City in their biography of Cobb.
  3. ↑ "Cully Alton Cobb, producer, and Lois D. Cobb, ed., The Cobbs of Tennessee: Descendants of John Cobb of Cobbs Court, County Kent, England, 1324-1968, edited by Lois D. Cobb, ed. (Atlanta, Georgia: Ruralist Press, 1968)". boards.ancestry.myfamily.com. Retrieved July 16, 2010.
  4. ↑ "Family Tree Maker". familytreemaker.genealogy.com. Retrieved July 16, 2010.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "The Founders of the Cobb Institute of Archaeology". msstate.edu. Retrieved July 16, 2010.
  6. ↑ "Agricultural Adjustment Act". encyclopediaofarkansas.net. Retrieved July 16, 2010.
  7. ↑ "Howell/Allen Clinic History". howellallen.com. Archived from the original on March 27, 2010. Retrieved July 18, 2010.
  8. ↑ "Dr. Cully Cobb: Neurological Surgeon". vitals.com. Retrieved July 18, 2010.
  9. ↑ "Sutter Neuroscience Institute" (PDF). checksutterfirst.org. Retrieved July 18, 2010.
  10. ↑ "Bylaws, Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists, Inc" (PDF). saasinc.org. Retrieved July 16, 2010.
  11. ↑ "Steele-Cobb House". historicforsale.com. Retrieved July 16, 2010.
  12. ↑ Statement of Roy Vernon Scott, July 16, 2010
  13. ↑ http://www.cobb.msstate.edu/
  14. ↑ Victor A. Danilov, Women and Museums: A Comprehensive Guide. Google Books . Retrieved July 16, 2010.
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