Cobb's ordeal

Description:

Daniel W. Cobb, a farmer and small slaveholder from Virginia's rural tidewater, was unhappily married, resentful of his prosperous in-laws, and terribly lonely. His closest friend was the diary he kept for more than thirty momentous years in American history, from 1842 until his death at age sixty-one in 1872. The devout, plainspoken Cobb wrote in a conversational style, candidly recording his innermost thoughts. His diary's intimate account of a troubled marriage provides a painfully frank chronicle of incompatibility. The diary also illuminates the tremendous impact of the Civil War and emancipation. Offering Insight into a culture, a time, and a place, Cobb's Ordeal reveals the differences that separate that world from our own.

subjects: Agriculture,  Biography,  Confederate Personal narratives,  Diaries,  Farmers,  History,  Personal narratives, Confederate,  Slaveholders,  Virginia Civil War, 1861-1865,  Virginia, history, local,  Virginia, history, sources

People: Daniel W. Cobb (1811-1872)

Places: Southampton County,  Southampton County (Va.),  Virginia

Times: 19th century,  Civil War, 1861-1865