In 1888, it was renamed Cobb Divinity School in honor of Jonathan Leavitt Haskell Cobb (1824-1897), a prominent businessman at the Bates Mill in Lewiston who had donated $25,000 to the Divinity School at Bates.

[3] In 1891, President of Bates College Oren B. Cheney amended the school's charter requiring that Bates' president and a majority of the trustees be Free Will Baptists.

Following Cheney's retirement, the amendment was revoked in 1907 at the request of his successor, President George C. Chase, and the board of trustees.

In 1907, the Maine Legislature amended the college's charter removing the requirement for the president and majority of the trustees to be Free Will Baptists, thereby allowing the school to qualify for Carnegie Foundation funding of professor's pensions.

[4] Cobb Divinity School was disbanded in 1908, with much of its curricula and faculty and library becoming the Bates College Religion Department.