(birds chirping) (cicadas chirping) - History, the world history and stuff, it really didn't take a hold of me.

But history that happened right here, right where we are sitting, that, now that's a different story.

(birds chirping) (cicadas chirping) - They were coastal people, sea people.

(birds chirping) (cicadas chirping) The Cobb story is just another great American story.

It's entrepreneurial, it's a story of people moving from one place to another to improve their lives, seeing opportunity and trying to make the most of it.

(gentle music) - The Cobbs were like "How the West Was Won".

They came from Massachusetts, came down here, started Cobb Island, started building, and it wasn't just a hunting camp, it was a community.

They came down here and started a new world.

(gentle music continues) - They were about as self-sufficient as you could be.

They raised everything they ate or they hunted for it.

They were in the oyster business, they were market hunters.

They made some tremendous windfalls salvaging ships.

Plus they ran a hotel, a big hotel.

- It's the rise and fall of a family island empire.

And when it went high, it was high.

And when it was gone, it was gone.

(gentle music continues) (water lapping) (birds chirping) (waves crashing) (birds chirping) - [Tommy] Cobb Island changes every year with every storm, it is a barrier island.

They think the hotel's probably two miles out at sea.

- [Barbara] To see the place where your ancestors grew up and the kind of life they must have had on this windswept island.

(seagulls squawking) (waves crashing) - [Tommy] It just gives you a sensation to walk on the beach and think about, even though it's not the same beach where they walked, but it's the same island where the Cobb family walked, you can almost see 'em.

(waves crashing) (placid music) - Nathan Cobb was born and grew up to manhood at Cape Cod.

And his family were whalers.

By age 22 or 23, Nathan's family were sailing the world and they were captains of their own brig by the time they reached that age.

Nathan married Nancy Doane when he was 23 years old, and they had seven children, three boys and four girls.

(gentle music) About this time, this was in 1837, a lot of people, particularly the women folk in Cape Cod were coming down with consumption, their word for tuberculosis.

It was the cold and wet climate was really rough on 'em.

Nancy had it, several of the daughters had it, and before it was over with, they all got it.

And that's why Nathan decided he wanted to move further south to a warmer climate, hoping that he could save some of 'em.

(gentle music) (birds chirping) Maybe his daughters and his wife would do better with the tuberculosis.

He had made a number of trips up and down the Eastern Shore, hauling potatoes back north and other maritime commerce.

So he knew the area when he brought his oldest son, Nathan Junior, and his daughter, Nancy, who was named after her mother.

(seagulls squawking) (gentle music continues) And so, Nathan built a cottage on Seaside and he set up a store there.

- Nathan Cobb, he had everything planned when he brought with him enough material to build a house and a store, which he called the Yankee General Store.

He could repair shoes and he bought all sorts of stuff that you could sell in the store.

(gentle music) - [Lloyd] Between the barrier islands and the mainland were large flats called the Broadwater.

And Nathan very quickly discovered huge numbers of waterfowl that were funneling down through the Eastern Shore there.

- The coastal lagoon system at that time was full of eelgrass, wonderful feed for waterfowl, huge flocks of brant and diving ducks, redheads, broadbills, we call 'em bluebills, scaup.

- [Lloyd] Nathan discovered something else about the same time, which was that in this shoal water, there were a number of merchant ships that were running aground, particularly in storms.

And these ships needed help.

And he saw the opportunity to make some money there, salvaging these ships.

- When he got down here, he started hunting with the local people and they started going out to what was called Sand Shoal Island.

And he was a businessman too, and he realized the potential.

(gentle music) (seagulls squawking) - It was a big sandbar, it wasn't much more than just a sandbar.

It was about five or six miles long and it was for sale.

In 1839, he bought that sandbar for $150 and that gave him a base of operations for salvaging ships and for also hunting these great concentrations of waterfowl.

When Nathan bought Great Sand Shoal Island, it took some nerve to think about building.

He first started out on that sandbar, just in a tent.

He put tents up, and then later on, he built his first cottage out there, which was called the Pilgrim House.

Two years later, he brought his wife, Nancy, down and the other two sons.

Two of the daughters had already died and he left the other daughter up there.

And we don't know exactly why, I was not able to find out why, but I'm very suspicious that she had tuberculosis because not long after that, she died with it.

(gentle music) (birds chirping) He was ready to move out there, but he never moved his wife Nancy out there because she died in January of 1840.

And she was buried on the mainland.

And he moved his three sons out there to the first house that he built on that sandbar a few months after she died.

But he did not move his daughter, Nancy, named after the mother.

She was 16 and she was teaching school.

She was also suffering from tuberculosis.

So she stayed there in the cottage and she died not much longer after that.

(gentle music continues) The loss of so many members of your family affected Nathan in an adverse way, you know it had to.

So many members of a family.

It wasn't like just bad enough to lose one, he lost all four daughters and his wife.

(gentle music continues) - Well, my grandmother always talked about the Mayflower and Stephen Hopkins and how the Cobbs were related to Stephen Hopkins.

She was very proud of the Mayflower situation (laughs).

So my chart went all the way to the Mayflower.

(gentle music) (paper rustling) Well, I got the chart as a gift from my mother.

When I was about six or eight, my mother gave my cousin and me an ancestral chart to fill out.

Me, my mom, June Paige Cosby, Amine Cobb, Thomas Lucius Cobb, Albert Cobb, Nathan Cobb.

Elementary school I lived with my grandmother, Amine Cobb Cosby.

And she had several things from Cobb's Island in her home.

The harp was in her music room.

And as a child, when we'd have friends over, it was very tempting to try to pluck the strings.

That was a no, no.

(gentle music continues) (paper rustling) Let me start with Elkanah again over here, Nathan Cobb's father.

So we always heard about Cobb's Island.

Anything from Cobb's Island was a treasure.

This is a photograph of the sofa that was in the Cobb's Island Hotel.

And this was in my grandmother's sun porch.

And we had to be very careful because it was from Cobb's Island.

Jonathan Cobb Senior married Sarah Hopkins.

And then it just splits, so I've got Stephen Hopkins, Giles, and Stephen Hopkins who came over on the Mayflower.

And it's stained, it's got, I don't know, all kinds of spots and stains on it.

This thing's probably 60 years old.

(gentle music continues) (paper rustling) (wind whistling) (waves crashing) (thunder rumbling) - When a ship got caught in a storm and got on all that shallow shoal water, it would start floundering.

It couldn't move 'cause the keel would be aground and the wind would be blowing.

It'd start rocking back and forth.

And you've got freezing water coming over the ship.

And it was just a matter of time before lives would be lost.

Right in the middle of the storm, Nathan and his own sons, as they grew of age, he would go out and get alongside these ships in what he called a five-handed boat.

And it was a boat that he had used in the whaling business at Cape Cod.

(cannon firing) They also had a gun like a small cannon that would shoot a rope over to that boat.

And then they had a flotation vest type thing that attached to the rope and people who were on the boat would get inside this and work their way down the rope over to the five-handed boat.

(wind whistling) It's been written in several books that no lives were ever lost in the ship salvaging business, but that's not true.

Not only were lives lost from people who were on the ship, but also some of Nathan's friends were lost, some of people that were helping him in the salvaging operation were lost.

So it was a very dangerous business.

(dramatic music) (waves crashing) Once they got everybody on shore, they would take care of their needs and they would not go back out there until the storm subsided.

And he'd never charged anybody for saving their life.

(dramatic music continues) (seagulls squawking) The first thing they tried to do was to see if they could save the whole ship.

Sometimes the ship was too far damaged, then they would take everything off the ship they could get, whatever it was carrying in the way of freight and even all the rigging, they would save the ropes, as much of the lumber as they could, everything and strike a deal with the owners of the ship.

And sometimes he would make a lot of money.

Whenever he would have these windfalls, he would take that money and invest it in better docks on the island and also accommodations for more clients to stay in.

(dramatic music continues) (waves crashing) And he noticed as the years went by that the south end was growing larger.

Mother nature was piling up the sand and it grew at one time to about 100 acres.

As the south end accreted, Nathan developed a community there.

(placid music) He started building more cottages.

He named some of them after the cities from which a lot of his clientele came to hunt, like he had the New York Cottage and he had the Baltimore Cottage and the Richmond Cottage.

- [Tommy] Cobb Island was not just duck hunting, fishing, sunbathing, socializing and relaxing was far more important to them in the day than people think.

- Back in that time, doctors would tell you, go to the seashore for your health.

That was a big thing.

You'd go to Cobb Island to rejuvenate your body and soul and come home all refreshed and ready to have at it again.

(gentle music continues) - Nathan Junior was the oldest of his sons, the three sons, and Warren was next, and Albert was the youngest.

Nathan Junior, he started out helping his father right away in the salvage business at a very young age.

He also was drawn to the hunting and wildlife in general, he was a real outdoor person studying the birds, and he knew all about their habits.

And he was also the best decoy carver in the family.

(upbeat music) Warren, the middle son, he was more the fun-loving guy.

(upbeat music continues) (crowd chattering) His favorite time of the day was late in the afternoon when they all went to the bar.

And he would get in the bar and he'd get up on the bar, and he'd play "Spin the Bottle," and he would have a few drinks and he would get very jolly.

And Warren was just a very fun loving guy.

Everybody liked Warren.

(gentle music) Albert, the youngest son, was the brains of the outfit.

Albert was the one that was most behind the business of the operation.

Albert kept the ledger, he kept up with the inventory.

But they all seemed to get along very well.

Their wives, their families all got along well.

If they didn't, it would've been very hard to make that operation work.

(gentle music continues) - This room is called the Cobb Room.

It's a room that is in memory of my grandfather, T. Lucius Cobb, who is the son of Albert Cobb, who was one of the owners of Cobb Island.

This duck was carved by Nathan Cobb in about 1860, maybe 1870.

And they used to carve many ducks and geese for hunting, 'cause that was one of the draws of the Cobb Island.

And you can see his initials on that right there.

My grandmother, they used to have trunks full of these ducks and geese.

And for firewood, she would burn 'em because they would be dry and easy to light a fire.

But she didn't know, none of us knew how valuable eventually they would be.

And over here, this is the original box that my mother gave me, and that's the chest that supposedly bought Cobb Island.

They had either gold or silver in the box, enough to buy the island, which cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $100.

This is 1889, they had a store on the island and then people would come in and they'd buy different things here, shingles, $1.35, four bales of fence, $22.

And they would give everybody credit until they could pay them.

(gentle music) They would take people to the island on their boat.

Here it is right here.

One boat was $3 and 60 cents transportation to the island.

So there are a lot of memories here, and it was not only pleasure, but a privilege to be a part of the Cobb family.

(gentle music continues) - [Lloyd] Something about Nathan Junior, he just had a way of bringing life to a block of wood.

- The first time I saw one, that was just so heroic.

You just see the muscle and they're just like a boxer.

And I said, "Boy," I said, "This is something to behold."

- A decoy is an inanimate object, and it's just sitting there.

But if you can give the illusion that it's moving, what you're really giving is the illusion of life.

(gentle music) - [Lloyd] He would make these heads and necks in so many different shapes.

If you saw a group of 30 of his decoys out in the water, it really looked like it was a real live group of birds, and I'm sure that's why they attracted the real birds so well.

- [Grayson] It's a form of communication.

You're trying to communicate to a bird and you want to convince that bird that this is his long lost buddy.

- [Polk] Cobb's Island decoys are unique in that they're so well made, the glass eyes and they were hollow.

That's a lot of work to hollow out and put something together, the way the heads were constructed, I mean they were much better than they needed to be to get the job done.

- Some of his dovetailed heads, the way the dovetail in the body is just the highest kind of workmanship.

- Everything that the Cobbs made was sturdy, it lasted.

Some of their birds are 150 years old, 160 years old.

And some of 'em looked like they did 150 years ago.

(gentle music continues) I've been doing this since I was a teenager.

And I've been, I guess, this obsession with it, but the ducks and the geese and the brant.

This was voted one of the top 100 decoys in the United States, a Nathan Cobb curlew.

And it's probably my favorite bird.

I think about decoys all the time and people say, "It's a great investment," and I say, "Well, "I don't buy 'em for an investment."

I love them, I just like looking at 'em.

(wood thumping) Mm.

(hands slapping) This goose head I'm not sure was ever put on a bird, but that is a goose head.

I don't care who it is, never see one better.

Bufflehead is probably the rarest bird I have.

It's a female, probably made around the Civil War.

One of the few that has original paint.

And I got her from a friend of mine.

And he liked me, so he gave me a heck of a price.

Then I bought her mate, which cost me three times what my first house did, but I thought they ought to be together.

And this to me is one of my treasures.

This is Elkanah Cobb's gunning box.

You can see his E. B. Cobb in pencil.

But here his initials he carved for the gunner box, E. B. Cobb.

Nathan had a gunning camp right over here on this island, Mockhorn Island, and they hunted this area.

You gotta realize these people lived there, they made their own clothes, but they were self-sufficient.

They didn't have a Dollar General.

(gentle music continues) Just look at the birds and think about a lot of 'em what they had seen.

Some of these birds from Cobb Island, can you imagine what they've seen and what they've witnessed in their life?

Those birds have been on Cobb Island Beach or on the water, have seen thousands of birds come to 'em.

(gentle music continues) The history, that's where it does it for me.

(gentle music continues) - My best guess is that there's somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe no more than 300 left that are in original physical condition.

So because of that, a number of them have sold in the one, two, three, $400,000 category for one bird, one wooden decoy, that they would've gladly sold you for 20 cents the day they made it.

- Well, having a Nathan Cobb decoy couldn't mean any more to anybody than it means to me, 'cause it comes from my family and it's so well done and so beautiful and so suggestive of what I've always been most fascinated with in life, just knowing that my family has been involved with Cobb's Island and came down here from New England, and as part of that could make something so durable and so effective and so artistically expressive is just something that means very much to me.

(gentle music) There is something bigger than hunting going on when you talk about Cobb's Island.

There's something, if you're a waterfowler, that's special about seeing huge flocks of birds in an open setting.

I think that was a big part of the romance of some of the hunters that came back year after year to Cobb's Island, just being exposed to the seaside and the just really harsh, beautiful, clean environment.

And then seeing these people that are not like the people you see on the street in New York or wherever (laughs).

I'm sure it was very colorful.

- It was more than just taking 'em hunting and shooting birds.

And it also gave 'em a look at a world that's entirely different than what they lived.

Ya got these people that are completely different, lived completely different lives, all coming together, businessmen and very wealthy people, the guides and the hotel keepers, but yet they're coming together on a much more equal footing than they would ever be in any other situation.

(upbeat music) And the Cobbs were good at what they did and that's why people liked 'em and that's why they came back year after year after year.

(upbeat music continues) - After the Civil War, things really kicked into high gear around 1870 to around 1895.

That 25-year period was probably the true golden age of the Cobb operation.

Some of the salvaging made them windfall profits.

So they took the money from the salvaging operations and they built larger accommodations.

They could house up to 200 clients at one time.

(upbeat music continues) - Both my great grandmother and my great great grandmother worked in the hotel as waitresses and cleaners of the hotel rooms when they changed from one guest to another and maybe even doing some cooking.

(gentle music) - [Lloyd] They had a lot of people working there.

At one time, there was close to 80, 80 some odd people in one census that I saw were living on the island.

It just continued building up and up and up.

There were as many as 20 or 25 separate structures.

- It wasn't just a hunting camp, it was a community.

They had a church, they had bowling alley.

- They had a large dining hall and they served food that was good and in large quantities.

If you ordered fish, instead of bringing a filet, they might bring a whole six or seven pound baked red fish and throw it down on a plate right in front of you.

- They were not as unsophisticated as we'd like to think.

They were sharp, sharp people and sharp, sharp businessmen.

- [Lloyd] Nathan bought a farm on the mainland and he grew vegetables there and various crops.

He had cattle and hogs and chickens and he not only would sell these, but the primary purpose of it was to supply food for his operation on the island.

- [Barbara] Nathan Cobb Senior had an eye toward growing his family and making his family prosperous into the future.

- He had a store there and anything from toilet paper to tobacco, to snuff, to molasses, all kinds of things that they bought from the Cobb Island store, anything they needed, the Cobbs would furnish it.

And he even built a corn mill on the creek that fed the little village of Oyster and he ground corn to make his meal.

- I think it's just one of those things that was like building stoned upon stone, just get bigger and bigger.

And with the children, each one had responsibilities and then just grew with the family.

- Compared to other operations up and down the East Coast, the prices that the Cobbs charged were less.

I think the reason for that is it was competition and they were very difficult to get to Cobb's Island.

(upbeat music) Just to make the trip down, they may have to come by train for a ways.

(upbeat music continues) (water lapping) And then after that, get on a boat and go by a boat, and then get to another boat, (wagon rattling) (upbeat music continues) and then maybe go across the peninsula of the Eastern Shore by mule and wagon, (wagon rattling) (upbeat music continues) and then take another boat finally out to the island.

So it was a big deal and it took 'em an amount of time.

So I think that to be competitive, they charged very reasonable prices.

(upbeat music continues) In 1876, the first lifesaving station was built on a barrier island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

And that was on Cobb's Island.

They even hired one or two of Nathan Cobb's grandsons to work there.

Arthur worked there for a while, and later on, George worked there for a while.

That kept Nathan from having to do the more dangerous work because now it was a lifesaving crew that did that, but the ship still needed to be salvaged if that was possible.

And so, his sons continued to operate a ship salvage business.

(gentle music) Nathan and his third wife, Nancy Richardson, bought 36 acres over on Seaside.

And he planned to retire there.

He did retire there, but he did not completely divest himself of the organization.

He continued to oversee several aspects of the business.

But he died in 1881.

(gentle music) And when he died, he was buried on the island.

(gentle music continues) (waves lapping) Then when one of the hurricanes was starting to wash away the sand and eat into the cemetery, Nathan's sons went out and they exhumed Nathan Senior and they reburied him at the farm that he had purchased on Seaside.

(gentle music continues) (leaves rustling) And there's still a little cemetery there today.

(gentle music continues) (leaves rustling) - I don't know why there was never a tombstone.

My father-in-law, Herman Richardson, talked to me several times about this cemetery.

So I'm confident that this is where Nathan is buried.

My late husband, Bruce's great great grandmother was Nancy Richardson Cobb, and she married Nathan Cobb and they lived in a home here close to the cemetery.

And so, that's where we're pretty sure they are.

And they will soon have a more authentic monument to mark their graves.

(gentle music) (leaves rustling) - After Nathan died, right about the mid '80s.

the island started to erode and wash away.

And the sons, I think, realized that problems were coming.

And so, they sold a large part of the operation to a syndicate.

But this group didn't take care of it and didn't operate it as well as the Cobbs.

They had various problems.

And that syndicate did not last very long.

And soon, the Cobbs were running it again.

(gentle music continues) - The thing that I think about when I think about these people is that they were resilient, they were hardy.

- What a tough bunch of people they were to survive in that environment and thrive.

- Living on the island's like being at sea.

If you ain't got it, you have to make it, is all that.

You can't make it, you just ain't got it.

(gentle music) The ship Clara Combs was built on the island in 1890, and that was a 60, 80 foot boat.

And they had no steam power out there.

It was just man and wood and tools.

It was all done by hand.

That was a heroic undertaking in itself.

(gentle music continues) (birds chirping) - [Polk] These islands are so fragile.

They move around and wash over and this and that, it's hard to have anything established on a barrier island.

(somber music) - Storms were a continual thing as they are anywhere along the coast.

But the worst one was 1896.

That was a storm that destroyed so many of the structures on the island.

And that's when the Cobb family decided it was time to move off the island.

And most of them moved to the small village of Oyster.

(somber music continues) A few days after the storm, they went out and collected whatever they could that was left, some of the hotel furniture and some of the other furnishings from some of the cottages that were demolished.

All of this was brought in to the dock they had at Oyster.

And it was auctioned off.

When Nathan Junior came in on his boat at the time this was taking place, he saw them auctioning off the furnishings from some of the buildings, and you can just imagine how sad he was as he looked on.

(somber music continues) It was all gone now.

(somber music continues) So after the 1896 storm, within just a couple of years after that, Elkanah, who was Nathan Junior's son, with the help of his father still, rebuilt a cottage back out on the island, which was a new clubhouse, wasn't nearly as big as the other ones that had been there, but it would house several dozen clients who were hunters.

And so, they continued the operation.

But in 1930, this clubhouse burned.

And when it burned, Elkanah was getting old and that's when Elkanah gave up.

(gentle music) So the three sons of Nathan, Albert, the youngest, very unexpectedly had a heart attack and he died in 1890.

And he was on his way out to Cobb Island when he had the heart attack.

Legend has it that he was going out there to do some paperwork, to turn over a big part of his interest in the business to his son, T. Lucius.

(gentle music continues) (birds chirping) And Warren died in 1903.

(gentle music continues) (birds chirping) And Nathan Junior died in 1905.

(gentle music continues) (birds chirping) And all three of the sons are buried in Cape Charles Cemetery.

(gentle music continues) (birds chirping) But George, who was Warren's son, wanted to keep the operation going.

And so, George built another small cottage and he continued to have a few clients for a few years.

The story goes that the lifesaving station and George did not get along well.

George had actually worked in the lifesaving station for a while, but he quit because he thought they were a bunch of lazy people.

And there were some bullet holes in his cottage that the lifesaving people said they were just practicing shooting and happened to have a few bullet holes go through George's cottage.

So he was not on good terms with the people at the lifesaving station.

(dramatic music) (waves crashing) But in 1933, another huge storm came.

And by this time, they had some warning the storm was coming.

(dramatic music continues) (waves crashing) So the people at the lifesaving station said that they went by and tried to get George to leave.

Nobody knows that for sure.

They also said that George said he wouldn't go anywhere with them.

He'd rather stay out there and die than to go anywhere with them.

Well, he stayed out there and that's what happened.

(dramatic music continues) He was never seen again.

Apparently he tried to hold on in the height of the storm to a pole that was on the parade ground by the lifesaving station.

And they found his jumper, which is what they called a sweater then, still lashed to the pole, but no sign of him.

(gentle music) So that pretty much ended all Cobb operations on the island forever.

(gentle music continues) (waves lapping) (birds chirping) - [Barbara] It's really important to know about this history.

(waves lapping) (birds chirping) - [Tommy] We older people want people to know what happened here and never forget, never forget what we had here.

- The people who populated Cobb Island and the other islands out on the edge of the Atlantic, when they moved to the mainland, they brought that independence with them.

And I think there's a strong thread of independence that rolls now through native Eastern Shore people.

(gentle music) The people who lived those lives helped us to become the people that we are.

- Nathan Cobb, he was a man of tremendous strength of character and he saved lives, he saved a lot of lives.

He was an entrepreneur in every sense of the word.

And he was a pioneer in many ways.

Look at what he did, what he built on a barrier island.

And what adds so much more intrigue and interest to the story is that all of that now is gone.

The island is nothing but a sandbar now.

He did so much there, and yet it's just all gone.

(gentle music continues) (waves lapping) (cicadas chirping) (attendees chattering) - Hey, how you going?

(cicadas chirping) (attendees chattering) - They said, "Come over here and stand behind the geniuses."

(cicadas chirping) (attendees chattering) - Good morning, good morning.

It is wonderful to see everybody here.

Thank you all so much for coming.

I wanted to thank Nancy Richardson and her family for allowing us to assemble this morning for the resting place of Mr. Cobb and his wife.

- Certainly nobody deserves having a marker, nobody is more of an icon for the Eastern Shore of Virginia, or for that matter, for the whole country, Nathan was well known from Maine to Ormond Beach, Florida.

- On the night of his death, Nathan told Nancy to put a lamp in the window and wherever the light fell would be the spot to bury him, and she did.

- Well, I wasn't expecting to say anything, but Nathan Cobb's kind of always been one of my heroes and I'm happy to see that, like Lloyd said, nobody deserves it more.

- [Lloyd] Thank you, thank you so much for coming.

(gentle music continues) (attendees chattering) - [Barbara] I didn't think he'd want flowers, so here's a shell from Cobb's Island.

(gentle music continues) (attendees chattering) (upbeat music)