The son of John George & Mary Ellen (Kanaga) Bobb, in 1860 he was a painter living with his family in Silver Spring Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. He stood 5' 10" tall and had brown hair and gray eyes.

A Civil War veteran, he served two terms of service:

1. Enlisted at the stated age of twenty at Harrisburg April 20, 1861, mustered into federal service that day as a corporal with Co. C , 16th Pennsylvania Infantry, and honorably discharged with his company July 30, 1861.
2. Enlisted at the stated age of nineteen [sic] at Mechanicsburg February 17, 1862, mustered into federal service that day as a private with Co. E, 87th Pennsylvania Infantry, and promoted to corporal, date as yet unknown. He was assigned to recruiting duty with his company captain Solomon Myers at Carlisle from February 17, 1863, through May 4, 1864, and thus was not present at the battle of the Wilderness. On May 23, 1864, while on detached service guarding supply lines at White Oak Church, Virginia, he accidentally shot himself while putting away a rifle, costing him the second finger of the left hand. Hospitalize, he returned to duty in time to honorably discharge at term's end February 17, 1865.

During his second tour of recruiting duty, he married Emma B. Eckels May 3, 1864, before returning to the front the following day. He ultimately fathered George K. (b. 04/27/66), John M. (b. 04/02/70), Emma Ward (b. 02/17/73 or 74), Mary Albert (b. 05/04/75 - death certificate claims 05/03/83 but censuses and John's pension file disagree), Sara E. Woodward (b. 03/20/79), and Francis Eckels (b. 12/20/81). Through two sisters' marriages, he was brother-in-law to John Ritner Stoey and Emanuel Keller, both veterans of the 130th Pennsylvania Infantry. Later in life, he was a guide at the Harrisburg State Capitol building and an amateur historian who died while speaking at Carlisle's First Lutheran Church. His family proceeded to squabble bitterly over his last will and testament, events described in his pension file. He may have been originally buried in Old Grave Yard in Carlisle and re-interred in Westminster in 1960, but no article describing that action was found in the Cumberland County newspapers.

Obituaries for Civil War veterans routinely distort their military records, and John Bobb's (attached here) is no exception. Contrary to what it claims, he left service with the 87th Pennsylvania at the rank of corporal, not captain. The captaincy may have come during his service with the post-war 8th Pennsylvania National Guard, a unit with which he began service in January 1879 at the rank of 1st corporal, but that is as yet unverified. A well known post-war personality in the region, his name appears in Cumberland County newspapers no less than 674 times between January 1, 1866, and his death. On July 14, 1892, and again on January 24, 1914, articles elevated him to major, and the Carlisle Evening Herald of March 7, 1913, claims he had been a lieutenant colonel. However, the latter rank was a brevet (i.e. honorary) rank bestowed post-service through the efforts of Pennsylvania governor John Kinley Tener, and Bobb never served active duty at that rank.