The Cantrill - Cantrell Genealogy
Page 98
1093. iii. Mary, b Dec. 13, 1784, in South Carolina; m. William Henry
Cooke, in 1804. He was b. May 15, 1784, in Culpepper county,
Va., and was a son of Robert and Susannah Watson Cooke.
Robert Cooke was in the Revolutionary War and served under
Washington at Valley Forge; d. Nov. 12, 1841, at the age of
eighty-nine years.
William Henry cooke was deputy surveyor in Spartanbury
county, S.C., in 1807. In 1820 he moved with his family to
McMinn county, Tenn., where he purchased a large tract of
land in the Hiwassee district, on the Conesuaga. One of his
descendants writes:
"It is over eighty years since William and Mary
Cantrll Cooke came to their new home in Tennessee. The
country was new and they reached the end of their long, tire-
some journey just at nightfall. It was raining; there was no
house to receive them and a temporary shelter was hastily
erected. Beneath that, wrapped in quilts, with her babe in he
arms, all through that dark, rainy night, sat Mary Cantrell
Cooke weaping, so dreary and lonely seemed the prospect.
Nevertheless she was a woman of strong mind and great capa-
bilities. Her husband was an upright and enterprising citizen,
but she was the poetent factor in the training of her children:
one of their sons became a noted lawyer and judge; another a
Baptist minister; another an excellent physician, and still
another, one of the most influential citizens in the section in
which he lived. She was founder and promoter of the Conesauga
Baptist church. The hill where the family spent their first
night in Tennessee was afterward given as a burial spot for his
kindred by William H. Cooke: his wife was the first to be laid
there, and one week later he was placed by her side. Now many
of the descendants of the first, second and third generation are
sleeping there."
James R. Blanks
Burial: Conasauga Baptist Church Cemetery; McMinn Co, TN (Cooke Cemetery)