A Brewster Captain Asked Robespierre for a Meeting. The Reply Said 10 A.M.

The note was one sentence long, and he spelled it his own way.

"An American citizen, captured by a French Frigate on the high seas, requests, a personal interveiw; & to lay his greivances before citizens Roberspeire."

It was 1794. Paris was in the middle of the Terror. The man who wrote the note was a young sea captain from the north side of Harwich, the part that would split off in 1803 and name itself Brewster. His name was Elijah Cobb, and the French Republic had eaten his cargo.

His Flour Became Paris Bread

Cobb was born on July 4, 1768. His father died at sea. Elijah went to sea young.

By 1794 he was carrying flour and rice when a French frigate took his ship and brought it into Brest. His papers were taken. His cargo, he wrote in his memoir, "was taken out, & was daily made into bread, soups, &c &c, for the half starved, populace."

He decided to go to Paris about it.

By his own account the trip covered 684 miles behind teams of five to nine horses, stopping only to change them. He arrived "just 74 hours from the gates of Brest" and reported that he "did not git one wink during the journey."

Then he sent the note.

Tomorrow at Ten

The answer came back in Robespierre's name: "I will grant Citizen Cobb an interveiw to morrow at 10 A M."

Cobb went. He laid out his case. Robespierre sent him to a government office with a message to deliver: if the official "does not produce your papers, & finish your business immediately, he will hear from me again."

One of the most powerful men in revolutionary France had just stepped in personally for a Cape Cod skipper.

It worked. Cobb wrote that his business was "compleated the next day."

Fifty Cents on the Dollar

Then Cobb made a calculated choice.

He was paid in bills drawn "payable sixty days after date." He refused to take them in Paris and had them sent to the agent in Brest instead. By his reckoning, the delay worked in his favor, with demurrage still running on his detained ship.

He stayed in Paris about three weeks.

In that time, Robespierre fell. On July 28, 1794, he went to the guillotine, and Cobb was there. His sentence about it is one of the strangest in Cape Cod history:

"Before I left the country; I saw Robertspeirs head taken off, by the same Machine—But to return to my induvidual, and embarised affairs…"

The Revolution had just devoured its leader in front of him. He had paperwork.

And the paperwork had a new problem. "My exchanges," he wrote, "which before, I could have readily sold at par value, now, would not bring 50cts. on the dollar."

So he carried the bills to Hamburg himself. The agent there looked them over and said: "your money is ready for you; but this draft, must not go out of my hands again."

The Farm on Lower Road

In 1799 Cobb came home to a surprise. His "pertner, in lifes voyage," he wrote, "had run me in debt, for a cape Cod farm."

His wife, Mary, had bought the land. The house they built on it that year is still standing on Lower Road: Georgian, twin chimneys, widow's walk.

He kept sailing. Rum from the West Indies. Gold and ivory from Africa. In the War of 1812 the British captured him at sea and held him in Canada. When he finally got home: "The doors flew open… Thus in a moment, I was transported to the greatest earthly bliss."

One later voyage followed him home in a different way. In 1819, after his ship Ten Brothers returned to Boston, Cobb was accused of slave trading and of bringing yellow fever into the city. The Boston Board of Health cleared him, calling the voyage "disastrous" but "perfectly honorable and lawful." The Brewster Historical Society takes that history on directly. It notes that no direct evidence has been found that Cobb traded in enslaved people, and that Brewster's captains still benefited from trade tied to slavery.

Cobb retired in 1820 and died in Brewster on November 21, 1848.

The Brewster Historical Society now owns the house, with Community Preservation support approved by the town in 2014. It's a quiet place on a quiet road. The man who built it once wrote a one-sentence note to Robespierre and got an appointment.

Captain Elijah Cobb House · Brewster Historical Society | 739 Lower Road, Brewster
Fall hours: Saturdays, 1–4 p.m. Visit info