By Meghan Agresto, Currituck Beach Lighthouse Site Manager
A Forgotten Figure in North Carolina Lighthouse History
In the many, well-loved accounts of North Carolina and lighthouse history, Congressman Clinton Levering Cobb doesn’t seem to ever appear, let alone take up room in the spotlight—but he should. It turns out it was the Honorable Cobb who introduced legislation for appropriations for both the 1872 Body’s (now Bodie) Island Lighthouse and the Currituck Beach Lighthouse.
A recently rediscovered February 16, 1871, article from The North Carolinian brought his role into clearer view, and we here at the Currituck Beach Lighthouse were surprised we had never heard of him, because the “first-class light-house between Cape Henry and Bodie’s Island” is ours.
Cobb’s Vision for Coastal Safety
It turns out that a year prior, Cobb had introduced a House bill to “authorize the building of two light-houses, one at False Cape or vicinity and one at Paul Gamiel’s hill [now Hillcrest Street in Southern Shores] or vicinity.
In 1870, Congress appropriated money for “a lighthouse at Paul Gamiel’s hill or at or near Bodie’s island, about midway between Cape Henry and Cape Hatteras” and so the third Bodie Island tower received its first appropriation—$60,000.
Currituck Beach Lighthouse Becomes Reality
The next year, Congress appropriated funds for another vital navigational aid, one now in its 150th year: Currituck Beach Lighthouse. The 1873 Annual Report of the Light-House Board explained the urgency: “This light has long been needed by the commerce of the country… Its establishment will complete the system of sea-coast lights on the coast of North Carolina.” Initially, $50,000 was set aside for the new tower, and land was purchased on the sand banks of Currituck County. On December 1, 1875, the final dark stretch of the East Coast was illuminated—by a red-and-white revolving beacon from what was then the nation’s only unpainted red brick lighthouse.
Congressman Cobb was to thank. In his 1874 race, which would be his last, Cobb remained popular even across the aisle. A Democrat from Dare County noted his support for Cobb, citing increased postal services, the lighthouses, and life-saving stations. In 1873, he introduced H.R. 277, a bill to authorize appointments to life-saving stations along the coasts of North Carolina and in states to the north. But Cobb was too ill to successfully campaign. As the Greensboro North State later reported, “His bad health rendered him unable to make a canvas and he was defeated.” He lived to see the Currituck Beach Lighthouse first illuminated in 1875, but was dead 4 years later at the age of 37.
More Than a Lighthouse Advocate
Born in Elizabeth City in 1842, Cobb left school at 13, and became a Tar Heel (studied law in Chapel Hill, according to the U.S. Congressional Biographical Directory). He ran for Congress when he was 24 and lost, but ran again in 1869 and won. He served three consecutive terms. In 1872, The North Carolinian praised him as “a man of the people,” writing, “He has done more to build up the waste places of Eastern North Carolina than has ever been done before since the formation of our Government.”
Cobb married Martha “Patti” Pool, a member of a politically and literarily influential northeastern North Carolina family. Her brother, Gaston Pool—longtime superintendent of Pasquotank schools (and later an “inmate” at Dorothea Dix Hospital)—wrote haunting prose about NC’s coast. He described “the bleaching ribs of some of the stateliest craft that ever plowed the deep” lying buried “like antediluvian monsters,” a reminder of what was at stake along this deadly, beautiful coast—and why Cobb’s lighthouse work mattered.
A Legacy Lost to Time
Perhaps Cobb is forgotten because funding legislation isn’t as romantic as shipwrecks, towers, or storm-weathered keepers. Perhaps it’s because he died too young or never wrote a memoir. But as Currituck Beach Lighthouse marks its 150th year, it seems like a good time to bring Clinton Cobb’s story out of the shadows as a way to give him thanks.
