3. Henry Cook II and III
Remembering our First Settlers
Voice of Hannah Benham Cook
As told in 1794
Land, land, more land! That seems to have been the main topic of conversation in the Cook family for five generations. The Cook family has always been interested in acquiring and settling new land. It seems that every generation for the past one hundred and fifty years has had its ‘first settlers.’ It was easy to be a ‘first settler’ because of this giant country of unsettled land. My husband, Henry IV, inherited his land so he broke the chain for a few years but our sons, Selah, True, and Lem have taken up the tradition of their grandfather and great-grandfathers as first settler and builders of this new experiment, the United States of America.
At the close of the Revolution our new American government granted each private and noncommissioned officer a bounty of $50.00, fifty acres of land in the public domain, and a new suit of clothes for his service. Selah and True claimed their Bounty Land in upstate New York. Lem for some reason that I don’t remember received 100 acres of Bounty Land. It may have been because he had served for the whole war or it could have been because Henry IV had not claimed his land from serving in the French and Indian War and Lem claimed his father’s land. Then little by little each of my sons acquired more land. After the war the government was selling unsettled land for $1 per acre with a year to pay the bill. When Selah and his family moved to Clinton, New York, I moved with them.
I think the story of the Cook men always looking to new land is pretty interesting so I will try to tell you a little about these men on the move. I don’t know too much about Henry’s great-grandfather, Henry Cook I. He was not one of the ‘first settlers’ in Salem because he came from England about five years after the village of Salem was established. If you settle land which has not been farmed before would you be called a ‘first settler’? I think it is pretty close call. Henry I was granted land several times by the Salem Common Council and his name is listed in the Salem Town Records as early as 1636. He was a successful farmer and family legend says he was also active in Massachusetts Colony politics.
In 1674 Henry’s grandfather, Henry II, at the age of twenty-two, migrated to Wallingford, New Haven, Connecticut. Henry II was only nine years old when his father died and he became very close to his oldest brother, Samuel. Henry II moved from Salem to the frontier of Connecticut to live with his brother Samuel who had moved to that wilderness in 1670. Henry and Samuel Cook are both listed as ‘first settlers’ of Wallingford as well as of the Commonwealth. I have been told that Samuel signed the Fundamental Orders in 1670 which was one of our first forms of a constitutional government in America.
In those days when they move from one settlement to the next settlement they were able to walk about 10 miles a day. There were no roads when Samuel and Henry II moved there. People usually used the narrow Indian foot paths so they often walked single file. They would have many head of cattle, goats and swine that they moved with them as well as some household items. The women insisted upon taking things with them to furnish their new homes.
Our family is a Puritan family like most of the early people who moved to Connecticut. We have strict standards of behavior for their members and everyone is expected to follow them or be punished swiftly and in public. The unmarried young men are expected to live with an approved family and be under the supervision of the master of the house. Of course drunkenness and infidelity are dealt with in a severe manner, usually by whipping, public scorn and ridicule. We usually had a stalk in the town square where they put people who disobey the churches standards.
There were Indian tribes everywhere those first planters went. In the beginning the Indians taught the first planters in Plymouth to live in this strange new world. About thirty years before Samuel and Henry II moved to Connecticut the Indians had been friendly. They had even sold land in the New Haven area to some Puritan first planters for twelve coats of English trucking cloth, twelve alcumy spoon, twelve hatchets, twelve hoes and two dozen knives, twelve porringers, and four cases of French knives. Then little by little different groups of Indians got upset for some reason. I don’t really understand why they should though; Puritans have always been good neighbors. Most people tried to get along with the Indians, but some of their young men were pretty cruel and attacked us. Our Puritan forefathers were usually afraid to have their little children go out alone because they never knew what would happen to them. Those savages have such strange ways and strange languages. You can’t understand a thing they said. Some time something happened and someone would get killed and then our men would go after the Indians and then the Indians came after us and it was a circle of little things happening to keep the settlers on their toes. It has been this way almost since the beginning.
We Puritans believe that people of the Christian faith have the Divine Right to land which we want, even if the savages who worship their own false gods are there first. We have even sent out missionaries to try to convert the savages to the Christian faith but they don’t seem to want to learn. So of course it has been our right to take their land. So that is how it was with the Indians when Henry and Samuel moved to Wallingford. There are not so many Indians now because a lot of them got killed in the Indian Wars and most are now living on the Reservations. I guess a lot of them died from our childhood diseases. The Indians didn’t seem to have those diseases before the Europeans came here.
Henry II and Samuel were both farmers. Those early settlers had to be totally self sufficient for their own needs. Henry II, like his father, was active in local politics and was elected to several offices by the people of the Wallingford. Grandfather Henry Cook II married Mary Hall on September 30, 1678 in New Haven Connecticut. They were married for twenty-seven years and they had eleven children. Grandfather Henry II died when he was only fifty- three years old. He left Grandmother Mary with Jedediah, age 2, David, 4, Jonathan, 7, Elizabeth, 11, Isaac, 13, Hannah, 18, John, 20, Henry III, 22, Jane, 24, and Mary, 27 years old. Ten of their children grew up to marry and have children of their own. Henry II left an estate valued at 301.5.06 pounds when he died. I don’t know why so many of our husbands die so young.
Henry II died in 1705 and later that same year Henry III married Experience Lyman, the daughter of Richard Lyman.
Experience died in 1709 after a daughter, Martha, was born. The next year he married, Mary, who was the daughter of John and Mary Frost and widow of John Wheaton. Mary had two children, Jonathan and Pheobe before she died. Then Henry III married Sarah daughter of Richard Turner and widow of Samuel Frost in 1719. Sarah and Henry had four children; Sarah, Ebenezer, Henry IV, and Thankful. Henry III had three wives and seven children.
In 1674 Henry II was one of the ‘first settlers’ in Walling-ford. In 1725 while Henry III was doing guard duty in the Indian war, he saw the land around Litchfield County and liked it enough to move there. Henry III moved to Northbury about thirty-five miles north of Wallingford and was one of the ‘first settlers’ there. One of the earliest lists of people in Northbury parish was made in 1736 because they were asking for winter privileges. Henry Cook and his son Jonathan are the first names on the list of sixteen signers.
Henry III followed his father’s footsteps as a farmer and was also somewhat involved with politics. He signed a petition to the General Assembly requesting that the Commonwealth grant parish privileges to Northbury. In 1737 his property was entered on the Waterbury Grand List at a value of 66 pounds and stood 40th in value in the town and 7th of the early inhabitants of Northbury.
We have had many names for the New Haven and Litchfield County towns because of boundary changes and growth of the little towns. Some of the area names are Wallingford, Northbury, Thomaston, Hanover, and Waterbury. Today the little towns almost run together. I suppose someday it might be one big city. Today we have dirt roads which make travel by wagon much easier. But in 1725 thirty-five miles was a three day trek on foot.
The people in Cook family are longtime members of the First Congregational Church, which was founded by Henry’s father, Henry III, in 1740. It was called the Northbury Society then. We have always been active members of the congregational church which had its beginnings in the Puritan movement. A family story tells how Henry III got real mad one time at the church for the tax levied on him. He thought it was too high so he refused to pay it and he changed his affiliation to the Church of England. I don’t think that was much better though. After all he did start the church.
My Henry VI was only seven when his family moved to the Northbury area and he lived there for the rest of his life. All of our children were born in Northbury, Connecticut. There had been a Henry Cook living in the Wallingford/Northbury area for one hundred years.
NOTES:
1. In 1795 the Northbury area was incorporated as the village of Plymouth, Connecticut. The name Plymouth was chosen in tribute to the first planters as it was thought that the Cook family originated at Plymouth, Massachusetts. If they had known the facts it might have been called Salem. In any event Henry IV’s son Lemuel was still living there at that time and was one of the incorporators and represented his grandfather and the family.
2. Hannah Benham Cook died in 1795 in Clinton, New York. She was seventy-two years old and was living with her son Selah and his family.
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