Person Page 102

Mark Tyler Cobb was born about 1852 in Eddyville, KentuckyG.^4,5,6
     He appeared on the 1860 Federal Census of Eddyville, Lyon Co., KentuckyG, in the household of his parents, Robert Livingston Cobb and Cornelia Barbour Mims.^8,9 He appeared on the 1870 Federal Census of Paducah, McCracken Co., KentuckyG, in the household of his parents.¹⁰
     Mark appeared on the 1880 Federal Census of Paducah, McCracken Co., Kentucky, enumerated 15 Jun 1880, as a boarder in a hotel on Market St. G. His occupation was shown as "at home," a term generally used for children, but he was about 28 years old.¹¹
     Mark appeared on the 1900 Federal Census of Paducah, McCracken Co., Kentucky G, at the county poorhouse on Mayfield Gravel Rd., enumerated 18 Jun 1900, where he was one of 20 "inmates." They were mixed male and female, both Black and White, and included a child age 6 apparently with her mother, a few in their twenties but mostly in their fifties and sixties.¹²
     The McCracken Co. poorhouse seems to have been used to house not only those who were indigent, but also those with various disabilities. Mark, like about half the others, shows only an approximate age (60 in his case, about 12 years older than it should be for him), and shows his birth state while showing those of his parents as unknown, suggesting the inmate may have been without all his facilities.
     Of his four siblings lived into adulthood, Robert had moved to Texas long before and doesn't seem to have been too prosperous, Joshua had died by this time and his family was clearly financially stressed, and Linah seems to have been just getting by. Only his sister Bobella was apparently doing well; she and her husband were in Evansville. Even given the trying circumstances of most of them, it seems difficult to imagine them leaving a sibling as a public ward unless he had significant mental or physical disabilities that prevented him from being kept at the home of one of them.
     It is easy to speculate that the issue was alcoholism. Mark does not appear in the obituary of his brother Linah when he died in 1904, either as a survivor or having died earlier. It may be possible he was not mentioned because of his condition, whatever that may have been.^13,12
     Mark died on 18 Nov 1905 in county poorhouse, Paducah, McCracken Co., KentuckyG, at age ~53.⁷