Cobbs

[Angel Cobb]

Hello, my name is Angel Cobb. I love that a place like this exists to help people with genealogy. I am looking for a man named William Cobb who was born around 1745 I believe in England. He died October 18th 1829 in Clendenin, Kanawha County, West Virginia. He was married to a woman named Elizabeth Morrison on Aug. 8 1787 in Greenbrier County West Virginia. They had 9 children. He was in his 50's when he married Elizabeth so it would make sense that he was married before. I cannot find anything about where this man was born. If anyone had run into this man anywhere in their searches, I would love to know where he was born or lived, or anything about a previous wife or children.

Thank you

[Bo Peep]

|wave|Hello Angel and welcome to the Brit-Gen forum. I am delighted you have joined us and wish you every success with your research.

Please take a look around the forum and when you are ready, post your queries on the appropriate boards.

[Angel Cobb]

I guess my first question is, how do I start looking for someone who I don't know where they were born or even an exact date on when they were born? I know (as my first post states) where they lived later in life. I just don't know where to even look! He was already living in the United States when the first census was taken in England. Help please.

[ChrisKelly]

Welcome to the forum. :)
To answer your question, you start looking for someone in the available records either by visiting a library or records centre (local, national or whatever) or utilising one of the many online family history resources such as, for example, Ancestry or the National Archives (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/) which has loads of stuff. Also check the records held by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Its followers have over many years copied millions of church records, the films and microfiches of which can also be inspected in libraries across the world. The "IGI" records can also be very easily and conveniently searched online (http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp). So, if you search for William Cobb born 1745 +/- 10 years you will see that there are lots of records. As to which one is yours, who knows?

BUT, what evidence do you have that he "was born around 1745 I believe in England"? Even you find his name on one of the passenger lists for crossings from England to the US (those can be searched too) there is still no proof he's 'your' William Cobb unless you've got other information to corroborate it.

Lots of people on this forum will be quite happy to help you with your search, but you need to give us something more to go on! There is absolutely no point searching for William Cobb in England unless you've got some evidence that he was actually born there.

[Angel Cobb]

Well unfortunately that is the problem that we are having with Dr. William Cobb. We have researched every place that we could think of, and he seems to be a dead end. The information that I have stated is literally everything that we have on the guy. I do know that names of all of his children with Elizabeth Morrison, but it almost seems as if this guy just appeared from no where. That's why I joined this forum. I was hoping that if I put it out there on the internet that we are looking for this guy, that someone else will also be looking for him. That is also why I don't know where to look. I will check out the Church of Latter Day Saints as I don't think my sister thought to look there.

I also know that there are DNA projects involving the Cobb line, but they insist on the donors being male. I am not sure that my brother or father is willing. However, I feel like that is our only chance to know where exactly we came from.