Remembering the Revolutionary War

4. Remembering the Revolutionary War                 

         Voice of Hannah Benham Cook

         As told in 1794

         I guess you can say that the men in the Cook family are warriors. In 1725 Henry III was serving in the 2^nd Connecticut Regiment when he first saw the Litchfield area. In 1762, my husband Henry IV was a private in the army during the French and Indian War. He served in the 2^nd Connecticut Regiment in the same unit that his father, Henry III, had served. Then in 1775 when the Revolution broke out my three sons joined the same 2^nd Connecticut Regiment. There were three generations of the Cook family in the same regiment. My son Lemuel was the first to enlist and served for the entire war. He was injured a few times but it didn’t keep him out of the thick of things. Selah joined second in 1776 and served for six months, then returned to Plymouth, and then in 1782 he reenlisted for three years. Trueworthy enlisted in 1777 and served for three years then returned home to help me. Two of the boys were always at war and I always was able to have one of the boys home on the farm to help me.  

         The war began in April 1775 at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts Colony. On July 4, 1776 the Continental Congress adopted what we called the Declaration of Independence. We had been experimenting with governing ourselves for over one hundred fifty years. We were getting pretty good at it too. We were tired of being told what to do by people from across the ocean. Our family has been in America since the beginning. Most of us have never been to England. The King was always putting a new tax on something and the money always went to England. It was time for us to be independent. Our men were not prepared for such a war but they were committed to our cause of independence from England. General Washington was a good commander and the men all liked him and they were willing to follow him. I was so thankful when they signed the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and my boys could all come home safely from the war. Now we are thirteen states called the United States of America.