Every story must begin someplace, and the story of Ty Cobb began in Banks County on Dec. 18, 1886. Many people assume (or assert) that Cobb grew up in a shotgun shack on the wrong side of the tracks from Dogpatch; that is hardly the case. He was born in a nicely appointed 13-room house on the property of his maternal grandfather, a fairly well-to-do former Confederate Army captain named Caleb Chitwood. Local people, for a reason now lost to history, called the area “the Narrows.”
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Cobb’s mother was the very pretty Amanda Chitwood, his father a tall, thin, North Carolinian named William Herschel (W.H.) Cobb, who had first met her when he was a farmhand, working his way through school, on the Chitwood plantation.
Tyrus Raymond Cobb was the baby’s full name.
Get the rest of the story here, and see a special video presentation in which author Charles Leerhsen suggests five things you should know about Ty Cobb. You'll also find more photos and info on the Ty Cobb Museum in Royston.
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