Herman Kobbe (June 24, 1848-Sept. 21, 1899) was an attorney and a charter member of The Lambs in 1877. He was among the 21 men who launched the club.
He was born in New York and educated in Germany, where his father, William, was born. Kobbe graduated from Columbia Law School and joined the New York State Bar. He joined a partnership around the time the founders of the Lambs of New York first met in 1874, Sullivan, Kobbe & Fowlers, attorneys at law. He was also the secretary of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad.
When the Lambs was adding new members in 1875, he married his first wife, Mary Reddington. The couple moved to Port Jervis, New York, where he continued to practice law. They had three daughters; upon the birth of their third child in 1883, Mary Kobbe died in childbirth. Kobbe was left with three children, between eight and infancy. A year after his wife’s death, on October 13, 1884, he married Mary Lyman Sanford. He had met Mary years before through work, when her father hired him to resolve her teenage marriage and unsuccessful elopement.
Kobbe was only active with The Lambs as a social member.
Poor health drove him from New York to the West Coast right before the turn of the century. Kobbe died Sept. 21, 1899, in Pasadena, California. He was 51. His wife died the following day, on September 22. Kobbe’s remains were returned to New York, and he is interred in the Kobbe family mausoleum in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn.
–Researched and written by Shepherd Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, 2025.