Eunice Hale Waite Cobb
| Eunice Hale Waite Cobb | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Eunice Hale Waite January 27, 1803 Kennebunk, Maine, U.S. |
| Died | May 2, 1880 (aged 77) East Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Resting place | Woodlawn Cemetery, Everett, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Occupation | writer, public speaker, activist |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Notable works | "The First Article" |
| Spouse | Rev. Sylvanus Cobb (m. 1822) |
| Children |
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| Relatives | Stanwood Cobb (grandson) |
Eunice Hale Waite Cobb (January 27, 1803 - May 2, 1880) was an American writer, public speaker, and activist.
Cobb was born in Kennebunk, Maine in 1803 and she married Rev. Sylvanus Cobb in Hallowell, Maine in 1822. She was a devoted and efficient help-mate in his religious work as a Universalist preacher. Her eldest son, Sylvanus, Jr., derived much of his noted faculty for story-telling from her practice of telling him stories -- often continued from evening to evening, as he sat at her feet when a child. She wrote hymns, and occasional poems, and obituary lines. Her faith in God was expressed in all her poetry. As a public speaker, she was very persuasive and convincing. She was the first female president of the Ladies Physiological Institute, of Boston, and served it in that capacity for some 15 years.
Eunice Hale Waite Cobb was born in Kennebunk, January 27, 1803, the second child of Captain Hale Waite and his wife, Elizabeth Stanwood. Her father had removed to Kennebunk from old Ipswich, Massachusetts, a short time before Cobb was born, and he returned there soon after her birth, so that Ipswich was associated with her earliest childhood. Captain Waite died when Cobb was five years old, leaving a widowed mother and four children, two of whom died at a very early age.
After her father's death, Cobb was cared for by her maternal grand-parents, who were Calvinists. At the age of 10, her mother married Samuel Locke, of Hallowell, a man of liberal education who was a school preceptor by profession. He was known to have exerted an influence on his stepdaughter. Thoroughly imbued with the Calvinistic doctrine by her grandparents, Cobb, at an early age, became a prominent member of the Baptist church of Hallowell. Asking her stepfather for spiritual guidance, he responded: "I will not try to shake your faith, but I would have you study candidly, patiently, intelligently, fearlessly, the Bible."
Of her genealogy, the following was contained in a son's memoir: —
Thomas Waite of Ipswich is first mentioned in 1658. He was appointed sergeant in 1664. His wife was complained of before the court for wearing a silk dress, but it was decided that she was entitled to do so. From various circumstances, it is supposed that Thomas Waite was of the same family with the Maiden Waites, and with'them descended from Samuel Waite of Wethersfield, Essex County, England; but the evidence of such descent seems unattainable. Of his five children, the second son, John, was born in 1658, died May 21, 1736. He married for his first wife Kathren Carroll, August 14, 1685; for second wife, Hannah Dorr, November 16, 1712. Their children numbered eight. Jonadab, the third son, was born February 20,1690, married Hannah Adams, September 11, 1725, and died July 6, 1761. They had one child, John, baptized August 17, 1729. He was married to Sarah Kimball, November 30, 1749; died in February, 1752, leaving his widow, Sarah Waite (who in 1773 married John Hodgkins), and two children, of whom John, the youngest, was born April 24, 1752. In the year 1773 he married Eunice Hale of Newbury. March, 1782, she died; and December 29,1785, he took for his second wife Judith Hale. John Waite died August 6, 1789. Of the three children by his first marriage, Hale was the second, born April 30, 1779; died 1807. He married Elizabeth Stanwood, and had two daughters, the youngest of whom was Eunice Hale, who married Sylvanus Cobb. In March, 1684, Sergeant Thomas Waite was granted land on which to build a house for his son John; and it was in that house that Hale Waite, the father of Mrs. Cobb, was born.
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