"Federal Hill," on Hanover street, owned and occupied by Mrs. H. Theodore Wight, was, in the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries, the home of Thomas Reade Rootes, who was one of the most distinguished lawyers of his day. His third daughter was Sarah Robinson, who married Colonel John A. Cobb, of North Carolina, a son of Howell Cobb, of Virginia. Soon after his marriage Colonel Cobb settled in Georgia, where were born those two distinguished lawyers and soldiers, Howell and Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb. The latter was killed in front of the Stevens House, at the foot of Marye's Heights, on the 13th of December, 1862, it is claimed, by a shell, which was said to have been thrown from a gun stationed at Federal Hill, where his mother was born and married. A recent writer in a Northern journal, however, claims that General Cobb was killed by a shell thrown from the Stafford side of the river. But both accounts differ from the report of General Kershaw, who took command of the line when General Cobb was wounded. In his report of the battle he says General Cobb was killed by a sharp-shooter stationed in one of the houses to his left on Hanover street.[58] As General Kershaw was on the ground a few minutes after General Cobb was wounded, and saw and talked with him after he was wounded, his version is more than likely the correct one. No one knows when or by whom Federal Hill was built. At one time the property belonged to a gentleman by the name of Lovell, who moved to Fauquier county, and it may be he erected the residence. The old, one and a half story frame building on the corner of Prince Edward and Fauquier streets, now owned and occupied by Mrs. Mary Knox Moncure, takes its place among the oldest buildings of the town. It was the birth-place and home of John Forsythe, who made such a brilliant record as a Statesman from Georgia, to which State he moved while a young man. His father was Robert Forsythe, a major in the Revolutionary war, who died in Fredericksburg early in the nineteenth century.