Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1912 [PAGE 94]

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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

[Dec. 13

EMORY COBB. Aug. 20, 1831. April 14, 1910. Emory Cobb was born in Dryden, New York, and received academic training in Ithaca Academy. At the age of sixteen he learned telegraphy and soon was an operator at Buffalo and afterwards at Cleveland. In 1855 he was appointed general manager of the company, which became by change of name the next year the Western Union Telegraph Company, and he held this position until 1867. From this time, without closing official connections with the Western Union and the Northwestern Telegraph Company, of which he was vice president, he turned his attention to general farming, stockraising and banking, being for some years vice president of the Illinois State Board of Agriculture, the organizer and first president of the First National Bank of Kankakee, and president of the American Shorthorn Breeders' Association, engaging also in other important business enterprises. Upon the chartering of the Illinois Industrial University, Governor Oglesby appointed Mr. Cobb a member of the Board of Trustees, and, at the first meeting, made him chairman of the Finance Committee, the first standing committee of the board. Also upon the organization of the Executive Committee Mr. Cobb was appointed one of its members. These were at that time especially important committees, since titles of real estate donations were to be examined, sales of land scrip and loans of proceeds arranged for, and ways and means for maintenance devised; and, further, since the Executive Committee was entrusted, with but slight restrictions, with the functions of the board in the interim of meetings, while the by-laws adopted provided for but one regular meeting a year. By the reorganization act of 1873 the board was reduced, from thirty-two to eleven in number. Mr. Cobb became one of the nine appointive members, and was at once- elected president, which office he held for ten years, being at the same time chairman, ex officio, of the Executive Committee. For the larger part of 1883 and 1884 he was traveling, though continuing a member of the board. In 1885 he was again made a member of the Executive Committee, and was also appointed a member of the Farm Committee, and these positions he held until 1893. When, in 1888, the Agricultural Experiment Station was organized under the Hatch Act, Mr. Cobb was appointed a member of the Board of Direction, and he had*much to do with the shaping of its work for the first five years. Ward's Casts of Fossils, practically the beginning of the museum, were the gift of Mr. Cobb in 1876. In these and many other ways, of which there appears no record in the proceedings of the board, Mr. Cobb served the University for twenty-six years, from 1867 to 1893, a term of service thus far neither equaled nor exceeded by that of any other member except Alexander McLean.

JOHN MILLS PEARSON. Oct. 7, 1832. June 4, 1910. John M. Pearson was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He prepared for Harvard College in the Putnam Free School of that city, but instead of going to college came west in 1849, settling in Alton, where later he became a partner and was the manager in the Agricultural Works in that city. In 1865 he retired from this business, and in 1866 removed to a farm in Godfrey, where he lived for the rest of his life, making dairying and fruit raising his specialties. He was early a member of the Illinois State Horticultural Society, and was its president in 1885-6.