Title: Cobb's ordeal
First published: 1997
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
Places: Southampton County, Southampton County (Va.), Virginia
People: Daniel W. Cobb (1811-1872)
Time periods: 19th century, Civil War, 1861-1865
LC classification: F232.S7 C63 1997