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- [S46] Find A Grave, Ancestry.com, (Name: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.; Location: Provo, UT, USA; Date: 2012;), 1691 Find A Grave John Cook.
John Cook
Birth unknown
Kent, England
Death 16 May 1691
Portsmouth, Newport County, Rhode Island, USA
Burial
John Cook Jr. Lot
Portsmouth, Newport County, Rhode Island, USA
Memorial ID 21863959
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INSCRIPTION:
HERE LYETH THE
BODY OF IOHN COOK
WHO LIVED NEARE
60 YEARS AND DYED
Digging away some dirt the next line reads ---- 1691
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Son of Thomas Cooke and Mary ____ Cook of Portsmouth,RI.
Baptism: 30 Mar 1630, Netherbury, Dorset, England
Children:
Mary Cook Manchester, Elizabeth Cook Briggs, John Cook Jr, Sarah Cook Waite, Hannah Cook Wilcox Briggs, Joseph Cook, Martha Cook Cory, Deborah Cook Almy, Thomas Cook, Amey Cook Clayton, and Samuel Cook.
Cause of death possibly smallpox.
John Cooke's will dated 15 May 1691:
Although of sound memory and understanding, yet being aged and calling to mind the brevity and uncertainty of this life not knowing how soon the Lord may call me from hence especially considering the sore visitation of the smallpox wherewith many are now visited and many have been taken away.
To my son John Cook I leave the land at Puncatest Neck, it being about 150 acres, together with the housing thereon, 4 acres of saltmarsh meadow at Sapowet in Little Compton, together with one-half of the upland, 8 head of neat cattle, the feather bed and bedding in the house John, Jr. now lives in at Puncatest, and 20 sheep. From this bequest 15 head of cattle at Puncatest reserved for Joseph Cook during his lifetime to keep and to harvest hay there for the wintering of those cattle.
To my son Joseph Cook the housing where John now lives in Portsmouth, together with all the land and outbuildings, 4 acres of saltmarsh meadow at Sapowet and one-half of the upland there. If Joseph should die without male heirs this property then goes to son Thomas and his male heirs. Within a half year of my decease, Joseph is to pay his sister Mary, wife of William Manchester, £10 and to deliver to her 10 sheep. To his sisters, Elizabeth, wife of William Briggs, Sarah, wife of Thomas Wait, Hannah, wife of Daniel Wilcox, and Martha, wife of William Cory, Joseph is to pay £10 apiece. Sister Deborah, wife of William Almy, is to have only one shilling. Sister Amy, wife of David Clayton, is to be paid £10 in money, and to each of his other sisters being six of them he shall deliver to each of them a cow. Elizabeth Briggs also to receive a feather bed, bedding and furniture. To Joseph I leave my Negro man called Jack who is of service for time of his Life and my Indian woman Maria to be his servant for ten years and then to be freed, and my Indian boy Goan Francisco to serve with him until he be twenty-four years old, at which time Joseph is to put him in good apparel and give him corn and a horse. Joseph also to receive feather bed and bedding.
To son Thomas Cook I leave the 16th lot in Pocasset Purchase, divided or undivided, and 4 acres of salt marsh.
To son Samuel Cook I leave the 19th lot in Pocasset Purchase, but Samuel is to have the disposal of this without the advice and consent of the executor and overseers of the will.
To son John Cook I bequeath my Negro woman Betty and to son Thomas 20 sheep, 3 cows and a mare.
Joseph Cook was named whole and sole executor of the will and Request and Intreat my Loving friends and neighbours George Sisson and Isaac Lawton to be my overseers to do their utmost that all Things may be managed aright according as I do hereby dispose. Moreover I will and bequeath to my Granddaughter Sarah Manchester a cow to be delivered her at the day of her marriage....
Will was proved 25 May 1691(Portsmouth TC 2:266). A copy of this will is included in Court Files, Suffolk, 42579, where it was entered into evidence over fifty years later by John's great-grandson William Cook when he was seeking to recover his inheritance.
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John Cooke was made a freeman of Portsmouth on 10 July 1648, when he was only eighteen years old (Early Records of Portsmouth, p. 39). His name appears again on a 1655 list of freemen, and on the Conanicut Purchase agreement, date 10 March 1656/7 at Newport, for 1/250th part of [Jamestown] Island (R.I. Archives). On 14 May 1660 his parents deeded to him sixty acres of land in Portsmouth, using for both father and son the name "Cooke alias Butcher."
The ear mark for John's cattle was recorded 26 April 1668, as of fourteen years standing: "a crope one the left Eare and a hapene under the crop one the under side of ye Eare and a slitt on the Right Eare and a hapeny before or one the fore side of the same Eare," wich, translated into modern English, meant a corp (small cut) on the left ear with the brand of a halfpenny under it, and a slit on the right ear with the brand of a halfpenny in front of it.
On 22 February 1665/6, John Cooke was among those Portsmouth men chosen to serve on a committee to make a rate (i.e. an assessment for tax purposes) of £100 to pay Dr. John Clarke. Dr. Clarke had gone to England to obtain from King Charles II a new Royal Charter which would give the Colony much needed legal guarantees and freedoms; his efforts were successful and the General Assembly voted to pay his expenses and to give him an additional sum for his trouble.
John Cooke was chosen 17 October 1667, along with his brother Thomas, to be a grand juryman at the Court of Trails, a duty he performed again in 1669 and 1673. In 1670 he was a deputy to the General Assembly in Newport, and on 5 June 1671 was chosen a constable of Portsmouth.
On 3 June 1668 John Cooke and Daniel Wilcox were given the privilege of running a ferry at Pocasset. This was the ferry at the northern end of the island, sometimes called Howland's Ferry, about where the Stone Bridge to Tiverton was later built.
On 20 March 1669/70 John Cook signed his mark to a receipt for "six hundred and three quarters and three pounds of good and merchantable barr iron received from Capt. Thomas Leonard and James Leonard Jr. of Taunton in the county of Bristol upon ye account of Theodotious Moore Chaynmaker of Boston in New England for the use of Jonathan Blackman of Little Compton in ye county of Bristol" (scrapbook in office of Taunton city clerk, p.301).
John Cooke of Portsmouth on 22 August 1671 purchased from Thomas Burge of Newport one-sixty share of land in Dartmouth "at Acushnet Ponegansett" for £11, 5 shillings. He evidently owned land in New Jersey before 15 July 1673, when, calling three-fourths of a share of land at Portapeage, N.J., the deed being witnessed by John Sanford and Francis Brayton. The deed was annulled 24 January 1674 by mutual agreement (R.I. Land Evidences 1:30,31). In 1677, a warrant for 240 acres in the Monmouth Patent, "to be subsequently located and surveyed," was issued by the East Jersey Proprietors to Caleb Shrife (Shrieve) in the firht of John Cook (Edwin Salter, A History of Monmouth and Ocean Counties [Bayonne, N.J., 1890], p. 30), but the deed from Cook to Shrieve was apparently never recorded. alter comments that many of those "to whom warrants were issued in 1675 or later had been settlers for a number of years previous".
Zoeth Howland was murdered by Indians at Little Compton, and on 24 August 1676, John Cooke, aged about 45 years, testified that he "being at Punckatest in the middle of July or thereabouts, did ask of severall Indians named as followeth, Woodcoc, Matocoat, and Job, whome they were kil'd Zow Howland...answer was that there was six of them in company and Manasses was the Indian that fetched him out of the water" (Newport Court Book A, p. 36, Providence College Archives).
Thomas Cook Sr. died in 1677 and sometime "in the year of 1678" John Cook, Sr. signed a receipt for his inheritance under his father's will, "of my mother-in-law (i.e. stepmother] Mary Cook as executrix to the estate of my deceased father Thomas Cook." Under the terms of the will, he received only one cow, (probably because his father had already given him land in 1660), and each of his children was to have one shilling.
On 30 April 1680 John Cooke of Portsmouth sold to Thomas Ward of Newport for £18, 5 shillings the land in Dartmouth that he had bought from Thomas Burge in 1671 (R.I. Land Evidences 1:134). Although he was not one of the original proprietors of the Pocasset Purchase in March 1680, whereby the area which became Tiverton was bought from the Plymouth Colony, John Cooke on 24 November 1680purchased two shares in the Purchase from his son-in-law William Manchester, who owned five. Called John Cooke, Sr., of Portsmouth, yeoman, he paid £73:05:08 to William Manchester of Punckatest, yeoman, and his wife Mary (R.I. Land Evidence, 1:138). When the Great Lots were laid out, from the Sakonnet River eastward, John Cooke drew numbers 16 and 19.
On the same day that he bought the Pocasset land, John Cooke purchased one-half of thirteen shares of land lying in Punckatest Neck from William Manchester and his wife Mary for £60, it being land which Manchester had bought from Thomas Lawton of Portsmouth in 1677. On 17 July 1682 John Cooke, aged 51 years, and John Cooke Jr., aged 26 years, both of Portsmouth, testified that in March last they had witnessed the delivery of Premises in Portsmouth deeded by William Browne of Salem, Mass. to George Sisson. This deed, dated 11 February 1681/2, conveyed a 400 acre farm which had been given to Mehitable Brown, wife of Joseph Brown, by her father William Brenton. It was bounded on the south by land "late in the Teanure of Thomas Cooke Senr. deceased and Westerly ... partly by the land lately in Teanue of John Cooke senr. and partly by the land of the late Widow Cooke".
John Cooke Sen'r of Portsmouth and Mary his wife on 1 June 1686 deeded to Thomas Waite of Punckatest five shares in the 13th lot and one share in the 11th lot at Punckatest Neck. William Manchester and Ephraim Turner witnessed the deed (Bristol Co. Deeds 4:78). On 28 February 1686/7 Benjamin Church of New Bristol in New England, for £36 paid by John Cooke Sr., inhabitant of Portsmouth on Rhode Island, deeded to him land on Punckatest Neck, the whole of the 10th lot which was laid out for 22 acres, which Church had bouht of Edward Gray of Plymouth and Arthur Hathaway of Dartmouth by Deeds dated 4 March 1679. George Sisson and Gilbert Magick witnessed this deed (Court Files, Suffolk, 42579).
On 29 March 1688 Jeremiah Browne of Newport and his wife Mary, formerly wife of Thomas Cooke Sr., deeded to John Cooke of Portsmouth for £39 ten acres in Portsmouth bounded on the east by land of George Sisson, north by Stephen Cornell, west by land formerly of Thomas Fish, deceased, and south by land of said John Cooke and the Common. Robert Little and Weston Clarke were witnesses (R.I. Land Evidence 1:211). This was evidently the ten acres which Thomas Cooke in his will had left to Mary for her own use.
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Family Members
Parents
Thomas Cook
1600–1677
Spouse
Mary Borden Cook
1633–1690
Siblings
Thomas Cooke
1626–1670
Children
John Cook
1648–1705
Elisabeth Cook Briggs
1653–1716
Hannah Cook Wilcox
1660–1736
Thomas Cook
1664–1726
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Abt 1631 - 1691 (60 years)
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