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

Often when I think about local history, I come back to that line that I was always told as a kid if I asked about what "used to be here" -- It was all just farmland. And by raw acreage, that's not completely inaccurate. Most of New Castle County was, in fact, farms. But that statement overlooks two important facts. One, there were other things beside farms, like mills, churches, taverns, and all sorts of artisans. Secondly, those farms were occupied by real families. Families who lived lives just as complex and interwoven as we do now. Their stories are filled with joys, tragedies, struggles, and complications that rival (if not exceed) anything we experience today. 

The problem for us now is that most of those stories are lost to time. We can catch glimpses of them through historical records, but sometimes the whole story is frustratingly out of reach for us. When doing genealogical research, it's important to keep in mind that on the one hand, there may be mysteries that'll never be solved. But on the other hand, if you keep digging, you just might find other amazing surprises you never knew were there. The story of the Lobb family of Red Clay Valley certainly as plenty of all of these phenomena.

My initial point of entry into the Lobbs' story is the household of Mary Lobb, residing on a three acre lot on the northeast side of Barley Mill Road, now nestled amidst land owned by the neighboring Mt. Cuba Center. Although the county lists the erection date of the house as 1735, the Lobbs had only owned it for three years at the time of the 1850 Census (which we'll return to shortly). In 1847, Mary Lobb and George Lobb purchased the lot from Jesse and Rachel Bishop. Rachel might well have been Mary's sister (although like most things here, there's no consensus), and George we'll address more in the next post. The Lobb and Bishop families were obviously close, and had ties that went back at least a generation or two.

Jesse Bishop was the fourth generation of his family to live on the land surrounding Barley Mill Road west of Red Clay Creek. Nicholas Bishop purchased the first 100 acres in 1725, passing it down to his son John, who passed it to his son John, Junior. It had grown to 250 acres by 1805, and in 1840 John, Jr sold the 125 acres on the northeast side of Barley Mill Road to his son Jesse. The fieldstone house Mary Lobb bought had obviously been there for quite some time, and probably had been used by the Bishop family for more than a century by then. So let's dive into the Lobbs who moved in. You might want to sit down for this.

Lobbs -- 1850

The good news for us is that the Lobbs resided here through four censuses (1850-1880), so there's a good bit of information. The bad news is that some of it is obviously wrong, and the rest is very confusing. If we start with the 1850 Census (seen above), it seems very straightforward at first glance. We have Mary as the head-of-household and six others, which one would assume to be her children (there's no husband for Mary, a fact we'll address in a moment). However, once you notice that Mary is 59 and three of the children are under 15, you realize that's probably not the case. In fact, only Lavenia (37) and maybe George (21) are hers. John (18) is probably the son of Jacob Lobb, who died in 1843. Jacob may have been Mary's brother, meaning that John was living with his aunt. 

I'm not sure who 1 year old Mary Ann belongs to, but Ishmael (14) and Mary (8) are Lavenia's children with her husband, Passmore Heald (the elder Mary refers to Ishmael and Mary as her grandchildren in her will). Although Passmore died in a tragic train accident in Philadelphia in 1843, the two were married, so we are unsure why Lavenia was listed as "Lobb" and not "Heald" on this and all subsequent censuses. (The other person in the "we" there is Bonnlyn Ronnan Cobb, a direct descendant of Ishmael. She brought all this to my attention (thanks?) and her research was invaluable in writing this post. Yes, thanks.) There shouldn't have been any confusion, as the enumerator in 1850 was their neighbor, Archibald Armstrong, who should have known them.

Lobbs -- 1860

By the 1860 Census, we have two households under the same roof. George W. Lobb is now married to the former Hannah Hoopes, and they have five children already. Mary, Lavenia, and the younger Mary (listed as Mary Ann in 1850) are still there, along with John. Now, however, we also have Joshua, ten years older than John. Joshua is also likely a son of Jacob, and possibly Mary's nephew. (I'm starting to think that somewhere along the line, someone just tore the "J" page out of a baby name book and left it laying around. There are multiple Johns, Joshuas, Jacobs, and Josephs across several generations.) I should also note that from 1850 to 1860, everyone's age went up by about 10 years (there's always a little wiggle room there)...except Lavenia. She was 37 in 1850 and 30 in 1860. Must have had a good diet.

Lobbs -- 1870

In 1870 we have mostly the same cast (Mary, Lavenia, Mary, and Joshua), except now there is a Joseph listed, who's about ten years younger than Joshua. Since I can't find record of another Joseph who would have been the right age, I think this is probably still the John Lobb shown in 1860. We also have a new addition, 12 year old Jonathan Colwell. I believe he was the son of the widowed Lydia Lobb Colwell, sister of John and Joshua. Lydia is listed in the 1870 Census as a domestic servant of the Wollaston family, living about where All Saints Cemetery is now, off of Kirkwood Highway. I believe the younger Mary here is the one who was 8 in 1850, although the 25 year old age here is not exactly right for either girl. I think Mary Ann was elsewhere in 1870, for reasons that'll be apparent momentarily. 

Lobbs -- 1880

Finally, we have 1880. The little house on Barley Mill Road still has the now 90-year old Mary Lobb as its head, with Lavenia, Joshua, and John. Now, though, Lydia resides with them (and note that like the widowed Lavenia, she's listed under her maiden name), with another of her children, Caroline Colwell. And as if all that wasn't confusing enough for a genealogist, we have two new residents in the house -- David A. and Hannah L. Lobb. They are the children of Mary Ann Lobb, who may have been off and married in 1870, although I can't yet find her. I don't know who the kids' father is, and remember, we still don't know for sure who Mary Ann's parents are. My hunch is that she's Lavenia's daughter, but the complication there is that she was born about six years after Lavenia's husband, Passmore, passed on. Bolstering the idea, however, is the fact that Bonnlyn has DNA matches with descendants of Hannah, making Lavenia their most recent common ancestor.

Mary Lobb died in October 1881, at the impressive age of 92, made even more impressive when you consider that she seems to have led her family for decades as a single mother/grandmother/great grandmother. Whether that might have been because she was unmarried, widowed, or divorced, and who her parents might have been, will be addressed in the next post. A few months after Mary's death, George W. Lobb sold the house and its three acres to George Montgomery. Just so I could be sure that the Lobbs' home was indeed the same one that's there now (because some of the old maps seem to show it not exactly where it is now, although I think it's just impreciseness in the maps), I did follow the chain of ownership up to the present day.

George Montgomery sold the lot in 1911 to Amos Craig, who sold in 1923 to Mary A. DuRoss. Mrs. DuRoss sold in 1923 to Floyd Cockerham, and Cockerham sold three years later to Lorraine Rathmell. Rathmell's son sold the house to the current owners in 1988. The simpleness of the chain of ownership of the house seems to be in inverse proportion to the make-up of the Lobb family.

When people think of The Old Days they tend to see in their mind only simple, nuclear families, with maybe a grandparent here or there. Children just got married, moved out, and started their own families. Like just about everything in life, though, the reality was much more complicated than that. Without the social safety nets we have today, folks found shelter (literally and figuratively) wherever they could. Yes, without nursing homes or senior living facilities, it was common for older people to move in with their children. Being a single parent on a farm was nigh on impossible, so it was common to either remarry quickly (sometimes to your deceased spouse's single sibling, since presumably they would already know the children) or move in with nearby family. Or you could have nearby family move in to help you, which I guess is sort of what the marrying-your-sister-in-law thing is.

Sometimes teens (especially girls) would leave home to to find work as live-in domestic servants. Single men couldn't just rent an apartment and live on their own, so if they were farmers they either hired out as farm hands (living in their employer's house or in a smaller house on the farm, which I suppose is like renting an apartment) or they lived with nearby family, like an aunt or uncle. With a plethora of single adults -- with and without children -- the Lobbs displayed many of these living arrangements. While it certainly makes it more difficult for researchers a century or more down the line to sort out exactly who's who, it does show that they had a strong family that was willing and able to give assistance whenever it was needed.

In the next post, we'll look closer at the matriarch of this clan, Mary Lobb. After extensive digging, I believe I may have found clues to her past, linking to a property that many of you might have spent some time on.