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No restrictions. Open for research.

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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 Lucy M. Cobb Papers, #4019, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Nancy Cobb (Mrs. Edward G.) Lilly of Raleigh, N.C., May-June 1976.

Additional Descriptive Resources

A copy of the original finding aid for this collection is filed in folder 1a.

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

Encoded by: Noah Huffman, December 2007

Updated by: Kate Stratton and Jodi Berkowitz, November 2009; Nancy Kaiser, January 2021

This collection was rehoused and a summary created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This finding aid was created with support from NC ECHO.

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.

• Aging--North Carolina.
• Chapel Hill (N.C.)--Social life and customs.
• Cobb, Lucy M. (Lucy Maria), 1877-1969.
• Cobb, Mary Louisa, 1899-1976.
• Family--North Carolina--Social life and customs.
• North Carolina--Genealogy.
• Oates family.
• Operas--Librettos.
• Operas--Scores.
• Royster family.
• Single women--North Carolina--Social conditions.
• Whitfield family.
• Women authors, American--North Carolina--20th century.
• Wyatt family.

• Cobb Family Papers (#4008).

Lucy Maria Cobb (1877-1969) was a teacher, professional genealogist, and free-lance writer of Raleigh, N.C. Cobb was born in Lilesville, N.C., the tenth of twelve children of Baptist minister Needham Bryan Cobb (1836-1905) and Martha Louisa Cobb (1840-1888). Her eldest brother was Collier Cobb (1862-1934), who became professor of geology at the University of North Carolina.

Lucy Cobb attended Peace Institute and St. Mary's School, both in Raleigh, N.C. She graduated from the latter in 1896 and thereafter taught English and drama in the public schools of a number of North Carolina towns and of Baton Rouge, La. She occasionally taught summer terms at small colleges including Campbell College in Buies Creek, N.C., and Carolina College in Maxton, N.C. For a short time, she was also the city editor of the High Point (N.C.) Enterprise. Later she acquired training in home economics and for four years worked as county home demonstrator for Duplin County, N.C. Intermittently she took courses at the Louisiana State Normal; Campbell College; Peabody College in Nashville, Tenn.; Greensboro (N.C.) College; North Carolina College for Women (later Woman's College of the University of North Carolina) in Greensboro, N.C.; and the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

In 1921 she received her A. B. degree and in 1927 an M. A. degree in English from the University of North Carolina. Her thesis was a collection of folk-songs and ballads from eleven eastern North Carolina counties. As a member of the Carolina Playmakers at the University, she wrote a play, "Gaius and Gaius, Jr.," which was published in Carolina Folk Plays (1924) and for many years was the Playmakers' most frequently produced play.

After receiving her M. A. degree, Lucy Cobb tried to secure a college teaching position. Unable to do so, she settled in Raleigh, N.C., and devoted herself to free-lance writing and to genealogical research. From time to time she took other jobs. In 1929 and 1931 she proofread at the state legislature. In 1936 (and perhaps earlier) she worked for the Federal Writers Project in North Carolina. She and Mary A. Hicks collected for the Federal Writers Project a number of folk songs, animal tales, and local legends. They adapted many of the animal tales as children's stories; and in 1938 E. P. Dutton & Company published the stories as Animal Tales from the Old North State.

Sometime before 1928 Lucy Cobb wrote the libretto for an operetta entitled "Pretty Penelope and the Perilous Pirate" (later "The Pirate and the Governor's Daughter") and based on the legendary romance between the pirate Blackbeard and Penelope, daughter of North Carolina colonial Governor Charles Eden. Lucy tried unsuccessfully for many years to get it produced although in 1955 she hired Patrick McCarty of East Carolina College (Greenville, N.C.) to orchestrate it. (Dorothy Horne of Maryville College, Tenn., had written a piano score earlier.) That same year she privately published a related play, "A Gift for Penelope."

Lucy Cobb lived in Raleigh, N.C., until 1966, when failing health forced her to move to Pine Ridge Nursing Home in Southern Pines, N.C. She died in July 1969 in Chapel Hill, N.C.

She was a member of and active in the Baptist Church, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Magna Carta Dames, the North Carolina Folklore Society, and the Raleigh Women's Club. In 1957 she received the Charles A. Cannon Award from the North Carolina Society for the Preservation of Antiquities.

The collection includes personal and professional papers of Lucy M. Cobb including family and genealogical correspondence, genealogical notes, primary drafts of poems, plays, children's stories, and articles by her, and the libretto (by Cobb) and music for an unpublished operetta, "The Pirate and the Governor's Daughter." Mary Louisa Cobb (1899-1976), Lucy Cobb's niece in Chapel Hill, N.C., was her most frequent family correspondent; her letters discuss family matters and report on people and events in Chapel Hill. Family correspondence also deals with Lucy's well-being as she ages, discussing dilemmas faced by an older, single woman in the late 1950s and 1960s. The Oates, Wyatt, Royster, and Whitfield families are prominent in the genealogical materials.

• Photographs (PF-4019/1-2)
• Oversize volume (SV-4019/2)