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The Story of Herbert S. Cobb
During
the spring of 1899 my father arrived in Canada as one of Dr. Bernardo’s
little immigrants! He
spent two years in Novar, Ontario and then was sent to the farm of Mr.
and Mrs. Frank Brimacombe near Seagrave.
He attended Seagrave Methodist Church, “a small frame building”
as he wrote in his memoirs.
During harvest time he would work from 5 a.m. until 9 or 10 p.m.
A Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Mitchell took an interest in him and
persuaded the Bernardo Home Authorities in Toronto to let them take him
from the Brimacombe’s into their home and educate him.
He was at the Brimacombe’s from April 1901 until February 1902.
Mr. Mitchell worked for his brother-in-law, Mr. Robert Thompson (a
member of the building committee for this church), who owned the general
store.
During the summers my father worked for several farmers such as Duncan
Towne, Issac Clemens, Dick Martin, Albert Lois, Orchard and Cephas
Sleep. He started to attend
the village school and for the next four years had teachers such as Mr.
Ward, a Mr. Brewster, Miss Annie Metheral whose father, Rev. Moses
Metheral, was the minister at the Methodist Church in Seagrave and then
Miss Hazel Thompson a niece of my father's foster mother and daughter of
Mr. Robert Thompson. He
attended 2 years while she taught.
She prepared him for the entrance examination, which he wrote in
Port Perry and passed. He
attended another year and took high school leaving.
That summer, 1905, his foster parents move to Toronto and he
stayed with the Thompsons and worked in the store.
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In the fall of 1906, Mr. Thompson, who was plagued with ill health, sold
his business and retired to Whitby.
My father returned to Toronto and lived with his foster parents and
worked in a grocery store.
Meanwhile, the Methodist Church was scourging the everywhere for young
man to serve in the West as student missionaries.
My father applied and was accepted and sent to Saskatchewan and
spent the next four years as a student minister in about 4 different
towns. In 1911, he returned
to Ontario to attend Albert college for the next three years and then in
the fall of 1914 he entered Victoria College in Toronto.
In November 1915, he enlisted in the Army
After the war he returned to Victoria College.
He was ordained into the Methodist Church June 1921 at Whitby,
Ontario. He married Ella
Mae Wight from Bowmanville on June 1, 1921 and they went west to
Saskatchewan where he served the Methodist Church and in 1925, the
United Church of Canada in such places as Griffin Harris, Wolsley and
Weyburn. Returning to
Ontario, “the land of milk and honey”, as my father used to say, in the
summer of 1938. He served charges such as Tillsonburg, Dawn Mills (near
Chatham) and St Enoch’s United Church, Toronto from which he retired in
January 1956
My father preached at Seagrave United Church on:
· July
4, 1948 - an evening
service
· September
18, 1955 - Anniversary
Service and
· October
2, 1956 - Golden
Anniversary Service
Robert Herbert S. Cobb born August 10, 1890 in Horsham England, died
June 17, 1973 in Willowdale, Ontario
This account was related to us by Miss Helen Rotterman, daughter of Rev.
Cobb, on the occasion of the Centennial Celebration.
Do you know that the Thompson family never received a thank you letter
from Seagrave for their gift of pulpit chairs?
When the Whitby post office was undergoing renovation, the letter
was found, caught in some paneling long after it was originally posted.
Related by Leona Wanamaker at Centennial Celebrations |