Arthur Dobbs

Arthur Dobbs (2 April 1689 – 28 March 1765) was a British politician and colonial administrator who served as the governor of North Carolina from 1754 to 1764.

Early life and career

Arthur Dobbs was born in Girvan, Ayrshire where his mother had been sent because of political and religious unrest. He was the eldest son of Richard Dobbs of County Antrim, Ireland, who was soon to become Sheriff of Antrim in 1694 and Mary Stewart from Ballintoy. The first English ancestor to settle in County Antrim was John Dobbs (his great-great-grandfather), an officer who had arrived in 1596 with Sir Henry Dockwra. In 1599 John Dobbs built a home known as Castle Dobbs. He married Margaret Dalway and had two sons.

Dobbs was a neighbour and family friend of Jonathan Swift despite their political differences. He served briefly in a dragoon regiment in the British Army, and afterward managed his family estate. He was appointed Engineer-in-Chief and Surveyor-General in Ireland by Sir Robert Walpole, supervising the construction of the Irish Parliament House in Dublin, as well as other Irish public buildings. He was appointed High Sheriff of Antrim in 1720, and in 1727, was elected Member of Parliament for Carrickfergus, a seat he held until 1760.

In 1731, he was one of fourteen men to found the Dublin Society (later the Royal Dublin Society).

Whilst a member of the Irish Parliament, Dobbs purchased 400,000 acres (1,600 km2) in North Carolina in 1745 and encouraged settlement in the colony, especially by Scots Irish. Following the death of North Carolina governor Gabriel Johnston, Dobbs was confirmed to succeed him on 25 January 1753. However, he did not arrive to assume his duties until October of the following year.

Governor of North Carolina While governor of North Carolina, Dobbs sought unsuccessfully to establish a permanent capital, to be called George City, near Tower Hill and the Neuse River.

Legacy

Discovery of the Venus flytrap

In 1759, Dobbs, recorded the first written description of the plant which would later be named the Venus Flytrap. "We have a kind of Catch Fly Sensitive which closes upon anything that touches it. It grows in Latitude 34 but not in 35. I will try to save the seed here." In a letter he wrote to botanist Peter Collinson, Dobbs went into greater detail about the plant dated Brunswick, 24 January 1760. This seems to be the earliest notice of the plant and is before the letters from John Ellis (who gave it the name Dionæa muscipula) to The St James's Chronicle, a London newspaper and Carl Linnaeus on the subject.

Northwest Passage Apart from his North Carolina interests, Dobbs was heavily involved in attempts to find a Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic during the 1740s. He actively worked to have the Hudson's Bay Company's trade monopoly revoked on the grounds that they showed little or no interest in promoting discovery expeditions relating to the Northwest Passage. Dobbs felt that others might finance exploration if they had some expectation of trade. Revoking the Hudson's Bay Company's trade monopoly was his solution for stimulating exploration. From 1741 to 1747, Dobbs managed to stimulate exploration, the result of which convinced most people that such a passage did not exist. A British Parliamentary inquiry in 1749 ended attempts to revoke the Hudson's Bay Company's charter. Dobbs' involvement in the Canadian Arctic exploration resulted in a substantial increase in geographical knowledge as well as increased awareness of the economic potential. Dobbs was also an amateur scientist and published several astronomy articles as well as a pamphlet on honeybees.