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

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.

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.

Shortly after his arrival, he visited the western frontiers of North Carolina, organized the construction of Fort Dobbs, and attempted to raise troops to fight in the French and Indian War.

Dobbs even dissolved the Assembly in 1760 and ordered new elections, but this plan backfired; a secret committee drew up outlandish charges against the governor to be sent to the King.

Only the succession of King George III, which brought additional powers to Dobbs, saved him from further conflict with the Assembly.

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.

[10] 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.