♂John Cook

John Cook (about 1630 – before 25 May 1691) was a butcher of Portsmouth, in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations^W, who ran the ferry at Pocasset, sat as a deputy, and gave evidence at Newport in the last summer of King Philip’s War^W. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007) by two separate lines of descent, through his son John Cook (1656–1737).

Early life

He was probably the John, son of Thomas Cooke alias Butcher, christened at Netherbury, Dorset, in England, on 30 March 1630; his own sworn age points to a birth about 1631. His father, Thomas Cook, was a butcher too, and settled at Portsmouth. On 14 May 1660 Thomas, “Sr. alias butcher”, is said to have deeded eighty acres to his son “John Cook, alias butcher”. John had been admitted a freeman^W in 1655.

Portsmouth

John Cook married Mary Borden, daughter of Richard Borden and Joan Fowle of Portsmouth, most likely in the early 1650s; their daughter Elizabeth was born in 1653. They had eleven children, seven daughters and four sons: Mary, Elizabeth, Sarah, John, Hannah, Joseph, Martha, Deborah, Thomas, Amey and Samuel.

On 3 June 1668 he and Daniel Wilcox were reportedly given the privilege of running the ferry at Pocasset, on the mainland across the water from Portsmouth. In 1670 he served as a deputy for Portsmouth. Near the end of the war, on 25 August 1676, aged about forty-five, he is said to have testified before a court martial at Newport that was trying a group of Native men, telling how he had asked several of them at Punkatest who had killed a man named Howland. They answered that six of them had been together, and that one, Manasses, had pulled the man out of the water.

Will and death

He made his will on 15 May 1691, calling himself aged and writing, by the abstract of it, at a time when smallpox was visiting many and had already carried many away. He was dead by 25 May, when it was proved, and Mary, who is not named in it, had died before him. To his son John he left 150 acres at Punkatest with all the housing on it, four acres at Sapowet in Little Compton, and an enslaved woman, Betty, with her child. His son Joseph, the executor, had the house and land at Portsmouth and was to pay most of his sisters ten pounds each. Thomas and Samuel each had a share of land at Pocasset.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through their son John Cook (1656–1737) and his daughter Ruth Cook, who married Preserved Fish. Two of Ruth’s children carried them on: her son Thomas Fish (1703–1786), whose granddaughter was Waite Allen (1766–1850), and her daughter Amy Fish (1705–1745), whose grandson was Batchelder Sherman (1761–1828). Waite and Batchelder married each other, and the two lines meet again in their daughter Salena Sherman (1806–1842), through whom both descend to Roger.

Notes

Sources for his life

Nearly all of what is known of him comes from John Osborne Austin’s Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (1887), which abstracts the Portsmouth records in its account of the family of Thomas Cook: “I. JOHN, b. 1631, d. 1691. m. MARY BORDEN … Portsmouth, R. I. He was a butcher. 1655. Freeman. 1668, Jun. 3. He and Daniel Wilcox were given the privilege of running the ferry at Pocasset. 1670. Deputy.” The same entry gives the testimony of 25 August 1676, the will of 15 May 1691 (proved 25 May 1691, with George Sisson and Isaac Lawton as overseers) and the eleven children with their marriages. Austin is a compiled work; the original town and probate records behind it are cited but not reproduced.

English origin

The Netherbury christening is on the parish register itself. The Netherbury register for 1592–1704 (Dorset Record Office, PE/NBY:RE1/1) has, under “Anno Dni 1630”, the entry “Martij 30 Johannes filius Thomae Cooke als Butcher”. A FamilySearch index of the Dorset parish registers gives the same christening, and its alias “Butcher” for both father and son matches the 1660 deed in which Austin has Thomas Cook “Sr. alias butcher” give land to “son John Cook, alias butcher”, and so makes the identification likely. The christening year, 1630, is about a year earlier than Austin’s 1631 and his statement that John was “aged about forty-five years” in August 1676. Weld’s Borden genealogy (1899) calls him “John Cook, son of Thomas Cook of Providence”; Austin places the family at Portsmouth.

This family is not that of the Mayflower passenger Francis Cooke, whose son John Cooke (1607–1695) lived at Plymouth and Dartmouth.

The court martial

Austin gives the testimony as made “before a court martial held at Newport (on certain Indians)”: being at Punkatest “in the middle of July or thereabout”, he asked several Indians who had killed Howland, and they answered that there were six of them in company and that Manasses “fetched him out of the water”. The first name of the dead man is unclear in the printed text.

The will

Austin’s abstract has him “considering the sore visitation of the small-pox” then visiting many and having taken many away. The married sisters Joseph was to pay were Mary Manchester, wife of William; Elizabeth Briggs, wife of William; Sarah Wait, wife of Thomas; Hannah Wilcox, wife of Daniel; and Martha Cory, wife of William, ten pounds each; Amey Clayton, wife of David, also had ten pounds and Deborah Almy, wife of William, one shilling. If Joseph died without male heirs, the Portsmouth house and land were to go to Thomas. The abstract also leaves a cow to his granddaughter Sarah Manchester.