The Fascinating (and Confusing) Lobb Family -- Part II

Locations of past and current (as of 1881) Lobb properties

In the last post, we took a deep and confusing look at the Lobb family, who from 1847 until 1882 lived along Barley Mill Road amid land now owned by the Mt. Cuba Center. There were a number of obstacles to understanding the family from the census records, mostly due to uncertainties over the identity of various people's parents. Our starting point was the 1850 Census, compiled only three years after Mary and George W. Lobb purchased their home, and helpfully enough the first census to list every person individually by name. Unfortunately the 1850 Census did not list each person's relationship to the head-of-household (which would have been really helpful), as that did not begin until 1880.

The first mystery we face for the family in the 1850 Census is the relationship between Mary and George, with whom she bought the house and three acre lot. He's definitely not her husband, as you might first assume. He was born in 1828, about thirty years after Mary, and a few years later married the former Hannah Hoopes. In the 1860 Census, George, Hannah, and their children are listed as a separate household in the same house as Mary and the others. George's occupation is shown as butcher, which would make sense for a man with a small (three acre) farm. In 1870 he's listed completely separate from Mary's household, and shown as owning $15,000 in real estate. Although that's quite a large amount, he's nowhere to be found on the 1868 map. Judging from the names near him, he seems to have been somewhere on Lancaster Pike near Wooddale. I've also not found any record of George's buying any other properties in Delaware. I cannot explain his 1870 listing.

What I can explain is where he and his family went next. Sometime before 1880, George bought a farm in Pennsbury Township, Chester County -- just west of Chadds Ford. Although I don't have access to Pennsylvania land records, the map seen below, from 1883, shows George Lobb's farm just above the center. For reference, The Gables at Chadds Ford restaurant is now located in that small, triangular intersection directly south. There is still a house on Lobb's property which is dated to c.1740, meaning it was likely his home. The bigger question for us, though, is who was George W. Lobb?

Pennsbury Township, 1883

The most likely explanation is that he was Mary Lobb's son, younger brother to Lavenia. However, neither I nor Bonnlyn Ronnan Cobb, a direct descendant of Lavenia who has researched this much longer than I have, can find proof of this. Oddly enough, Mary Lobb's will specifically names Lavenia as her daughter and Ishmael and Mary (Lavenia's children) as her grandchildren. George is mentioned in the will but is not stated to be her son. There's no reason he has to be, but I find it odd nonetheless. 

Another possibility is that George is Mary's nephew, either by blood or by marriage, as I believe the John and Joshua who resided with her were. There are several competing and irreconcilable Lobb family trees, but none convincingly place George. If George is Mary's nephew, the question then moves to blood or marriage. This ultimately brings us to the core mystery of this part of the Lobb family -- Who was Mary Lobb?

Since we know she had at least one child and she's never shown with a partner in any census that we can tell (remember, prior to 1850 only the head of household was listed by name), the logical assumption would be that she was widowed. And in fact, in the only census in which she appears where such is noted, Mary is listed as a widow. That would mean her husband was a Lobb, as widows then usually did not revert to their maiden name. They rarely do even now. However, we can find no record of her marriage, and cannot even find evidence of another unaccounted-for Lobb male of her generation.

But remember, this family was a bit unusual. We have at least two instances (Lavenia and Lydia) of Lobb-born widows being listed under their maiden names in the census after their husbands died. This opens up the possibility that even if she had been married, Mary could have been born a Lobb. The other possibility is that she was never married -- less likely for the time, but not impossible. If we assume that she was a Lobb by birth, then who were her parents?

Here I have a pretty good guess, and an exciting connection. There were actually several Lobb families floating about in the eastern Mill Creek Hundred/western Christiana Hundred area in the late 1700's, but the one I want to look at is that helmed by Joseph and Frances (Strange) Lobb. Joseph was born in Darby Township, Delaware County, PA in 1740 and married Frances Strange in Wilmington in 1763 (I think at Old Swedes Church). Interestingly, Frances' father, Jonathan Strange (not sure if they ever had a Doctor in the family), had owned about 100 acres in eastern Christiana Hundred, along the Brandywine. Here, near Rockland I think, Strange operated a fulling mill. This makes sense, as he is listed in deeds as a clothier (one who deals in cloth, and a fulling is part of the process of creating woolen cloth).

The first deed I can find of Joseph Lobb purchasing his own land is in 1765 when he bought about 25 acres from Robert Barker along Red Clay Creek, in Mill Creek and Christiana Hundreds, in the Mt. Cuba area. What makes the part above about Jonathan Strange interesting is that both Barker and Lobb are also listed as Clothiers in the 1765 deed. I have to think that somehow, the occupational connection had something to do with how Joseph Lobb met Frances Strange.

Excerpt from Scharf's 1888 History of Delaware

At the time of Joseph Lobb's 1795 death, he and Frances had five children. The eldest was Joshua, who seems to have inherited his father's land. I had found an 1810 purchase of 28 acres which I had believed to be his first acquisition, but now I think this augmented the land Joshua had received from his father. That land, it turns out, may be more familiar to many people than they think. It looks as if Joshua retained his father's mill site, but transitioned away from textiles toward grain and lumber milling. After Joshua Lobb's death in 1841, the mills were briefly sold to his son Jacob, however Jacob died before the deal could be finalized. In 1843, the appropriately-named D.C. resident Miller Speakman purchased the mill from Joshua's estate. Speakman would run the mill for many years, as noted in the excerpt from Scharf above.

Have you ever ridden on the Wilmington & Western Railroad and stopped for a snack and a stretch at the Mt. Cuba picnic ground? Did you notice the the dam in the creek and the millrace flowing out of Red Clay Creek under an old wooden bridge? If so, you were on Joshua Lobb's old property, seeing the millrace that ran to his (and his father's) mill. Additionally, on the eastern edge of the property along Mt. Cuba Road stands a fieldstone house reportedly built in 1820. If accurate, that would mean it was constructed for Joshua Lobb, probably replacing an older family home.

Fieldstone house on Mt. Cuba Road, likely that of Joshua Lobb

This, then, brings us full circle back to our mysterious Mary Lobb. We have frustratingly found no concrete proof of this, but my hypothesis is that Mary was one of the daughters of Joshua and Rachel Lobb. She had three sisters -- Susan, Keziah, and Rachel -- all who married into prominent area families. Susan wed Joseph Guest, and Keziah married James Morrison. Rachel married Jesse Bishop -- the very same Jesse Bishop from whom Mary and George bought their home, just a few years after her father (?) and brother Jacob (?) died. In this scenario, it's still unknown as to whether Mary had Lavenia and possibly George out of wedlock or whether she might have been married and widowed (or even divorced -- it was uncommon then, but not unheard of). Of course, another possibility is that her husband could have been an as-of-yet-unknown-to-me member of the Lobb family, perhaps a son or nephew of Joshua.

As you've no doubt figured out by now, there are few easy answers when it comes to this Lobb family. There are situations where just one marriage certificate or a well-filled-out death certificate would answer lots of questions and fill in lots of holes. Some of the mysteries lie just out of reach, a few years before the relevant documents asked the questions we want answered. 

The point of this is not to discourage anyone from doing genealogical research -- quite the opposite. Before poking around in their past, we knew fairly little at all about the Lobb family of Mill Creek and Christiana Hundreds. We were able to uncover quite a bit of information, even if some of the key details are up in the air. With more and more data coming online all the time and with more careful study and diligent research, there's no reason why those missing pieces can't eventually be filled in. It's like doing a big jigsaw puzzle -- sometimes you have to keep trying different pieces to see what fits, and sometimes you just have to stare at it for a while and it all makes sense. And even if you can't tie up every loose end, what's life without a few mysteries?