Cobb County, formed in 1832 after the Cherokee were expelled from their land northwest of present-day Atlanta, was named after U.S. congressman and U.S. senator Thomas Willis Cobb. Cobb was born in 1784. He served terms in Congress representing the district surrounding Greensboro, GA, from 1817 to 1821, and after losing an election, was reelected for another term in 1822. In 1824 he was elected to the Senate, and served until 1828. Cobb was ardently pro-slavery while in the House and Senate.
Cobb died in 1830, and is buried in Greensboro City Cemetery.
The inscription on his grave reads:
Sacred to the memory of the Honorable Thomas W. Cobb, who departed this life on Monday 1st February 1830 in the 46th year of his age. He had been at successive periods a Representative and Senator in the Congress of the United States, and was at the time of his death a judge of the Superior Courts of the State of Georgia. In his domestic circle he was fond and affectionate. As a friend he was ardent and devoted. As a man, honorable, generous, and sincere. As a statesman, independent, and inflexible. As a judge, pure, and incorruptible. Amiable in private, and useful in public life, his death was a deep affliction to his children, his friends, and his country. “An honest man’s the noblest work of God.”
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