♂John Cook

John Cook (about 1656 – before 7 August 1737) was a yeoman of Tiverton, then part of Bristol County in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, whose will left the keeping of his widow to his daughters: she was to have an annuity of forty pounds a year, paid by their four daughters, ten pounds each, while his two sons received five shillings apiece. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007) by two separate lines of descent, through his daughter Ruth Cook (died 1775).

Early life

He was probably born in 1656, a son of John Cook (1631–1691) and Mary Borden of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where his father was a butcher. This was not the family of the Mayflower passenger Francis Cooke, though the names are easily confused.

Punkatest

He married Ruth Shaw, who had been born at Boston in 1660; by 1665 her family had moved on to Portsmouth, and it is said to have gone later to Little Compton. The couple probably married in the early 1680s and made their home at Punkatest, in Tiverton, where their eldest daughter, Ruth, was born about 1683 by one account. When his father died in 1691, his will reportedly left John 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. In February 1707, according to the family histories, Ruth’s brother Israel Shaw, of Little Compton, sold him two more parcels of land.

They had two sons, John and Thomas, and four daughters, Ruth, Mary, Deborah and Ann. Ruth married Preserved Fish of Portsmouth in 1699, Deborah married James Howland of Dartmouth in 1717, and Ann married James Tripp in 1719; Mary also married a Howland. John passed land at Punkatest Neck to his son John during his lifetime, and in 1727 the younger John is said to have deeded it on to his brother Thomas.

Will and death

John made his will on 23 January 1736/37 and died at Tiverton before 7 August 1737, when it was proved. He left Ruth an enslaved woman, Phillis, and an annuity of forty pounds a year for the rest of her life, to be paid by their four daughters, ten pounds each: Ruth Fish, Mary Howland, Deborah Howland and Ann Tripp. The two sons were left five shillings each in silver money, and the four sons-in-law, Preserved Fish, John Howland, James Howland and James Tripp, were named executors. The daughters shared the rest of his movable estate equally.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through their daughter Ruth and her husband 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

Birth and parentage

The year 1656 and his parents come from John Osborne Austin’s Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (1887), which places him in the family of Thomas Cook of Portsmouth as “JOHN, b. 1656, Tiverton, m. RUTH SHAW”, son of John Cook and Mary (Borden). The same book calls his father a butcher and abstracts his father’s will, proved in May 1691, which leaves “son John, 150 acres at Punketest with all housing, &c., and 4 acres at Sapowet, in Little Compton” and “negro woman Betty and child”. American Family Antiquity (1880–81) calls him John Cooke Jr. and gives his eldest daughter’s birth at “Punketest” about 1683. These are compiled family histories; no birth record of his own is known.

The Mayflower Society’s genealogy of the John Alden family (volume 16), which treats his son John’s wife, states that this son “was not a descendant of Mayflower passenger Francis Cooke”.

Wife and her brother

Austin’s Shaw entry gives “RUTH, m. JOHN COOK, b. 1656, of John & Mary (Borden)”, and under her brother Israel: “1707, Feb. 11. He sold to brother-in-law John Cook of Tiverton, two parcels of land”. American Family Antiquity independently gives the same purchase, in 1706/7, “from his brother-in-law, Israel Shaw, of Little Compton”. Lester Warren Fish’s The Fish Family in England and America (1948) calls his daughter Ruth the “dau. of John and Ruth (Shaw) Cook of Tiverton”. The will names his wife Ruth but not her maiden name.

The will

The will is entered in the Bristol County, Massachusetts, probate records. It is dated the twenty-third day of January in the tenth year of George II (1736/37) and witnessed by Peleg Shearman, Richard Sisson and Giles Slocum. It leaves “Ruth Cook my well beloved wife my Negro woman called Phillis” and gives each son, John and Thomas, “five shillings in silver money”. It appoints “my four sons in Law Preserved Fish John Howland James Howland and James Tripp” executors, and leaves Mary Howland and Deborah Howland one hundred pounds each. American Family Antiquity gives his death as “about the 20th of July, 1737” and says the will was recorded at Taunton, in Book 8, page 505.

Children and their marriages

The John Alden genealogy, citing the Tiverton town book, gives the son John’s birth at Tiverton on 1 November 1685; American Family Antiquity gives 5 November 1685. The same Alden volume abstracts a Bristol County deed of 6 September 1727 in which “John Cook, Jr., of Tiverton, yeoman” conveyed to his brother Thomas Cook land in Puncatest Neck “that he had received from his father John Cook of Tiverton”. The printed Tiverton marriages give “Jeames, of Dartmouth, and Deborah Cook, of Portsmouth”, married by Job Almy, justice, on 25 July 1717, and “Anna, and James Tripp”, 13 March 1719. Ruth’s marriage to Preserved Fish was on 30 May 1699 at Portsmouth. American Family Antiquity says Mary married Joseph Howland, but the will names a John Howland and a James Howland as sons-in-law, and James was Deborah’s husband, so Mary’s husband’s first name is uncertain.