Francis Cooke

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For the American composer, see Francis Judd Cooke.

Francis Cooke (1583 – 7 April 1663 Plymouth, Massachusetts) was one of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower. This early settler is one of the twenty-six male Pilgrims known to have descendants. He is described in Leiden Walloon Church (Waalse Kerk) marriage records dating from 1603 as a "woolcomber out of (uyt) England".^[1] However, his origins are unknown. He could have been a refugee from religious persecution elsewhere in continental Europe.

In Leiden, sometime after July 20, 1603, as Franchoys Couck, he married Hester le Mahieu, the daughter of protestant refugees from the Walloon Flanders area.^[2] The Mahieus, from Lille, had resided in Canterbury, then London, since the 1570s before moving to Leiden in 1590. Hester le Mahieu's sister was Marie le Mahieu, wife of Jan Lano, another protestant refugee in Canterbury and then Leiden, whose son, Philippe de Lannoy (anglicized to 'Delano') migrated on the Fortune to join his uncle Francis Cooke and his cousin Robert at Plymouth colony in 1621, having been left behind with twenty others when the Mayflower's sailing mate, the Speedwell, foundered and returned to port in England leaving the Mayflower to sail alone. Philippe is the progenitor of the branch of the Delano family from which Franklin Delano Roosevelt descends.

While in Leiden, Francis and Hester were members of the Walloon church. In 1606, they left Leiden briefly for Norwich, England, where they joined another Walloon church, returning to Leiden in 1607, possibly for religious reasons. Between 1611 and 1618, the Cookes were members of the Pilgrim Separatist congregation in Leiden. ^[3] The Pilgrim church was not established in Leiden until 1609, so Francis was living there long before their arrival and must have met up with and joined them afterwards.

In 1620, Francis and son John embarked on the Mayflower, leaving Hester and their younger children behind to follow when the colony was established.

Arriving at what is now Provincetown, Massachusetts, on November 11 (November 21, new-style calendar), forty-one of the passengers, among them Francis Cooke, signed the Mayflower Compact as the boat lay at anchor.

Francis was active in Plymouth civil affairs in the 1630s and 40s - committees to lay out land grants and highways, petit jury, grand jury, coroner’s jury. He appears on the 1643 Plymouth list of those able to bear arms. At some point in 1638 or afterward, he settled at Rocky Nook on Jones River, within the limits of Kingston, a few miles from Plymouth.^[4]

In 1651, fellow Pilgrim William Bradford wrote of him: "Francis Cooke is still living, a very old man, and hath seen his children's children have children. After his wife came over with other of his children; he hath three still living by her, all married and have five children, so their increase is eight. And his son John which came over with him is married, and hath four children living." ^[5] Francis Cooke died in 1663 in Plymouth.^[6]

United States Presidents George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Franklin D. Roosevelt are direct descendants of Francis Cooke. Other famous descendants of Francis Cooke include Cephas Thompson, William D. Washburn, Mrs. Anna Mary Robertson ("Grandma Moses"),Lizzie Borden, Orson Welles, Julia Child, Abel Head "Shanghai" Pierce (Texas cattleman who introduced the Brahman cattle breed into Texas), Pete Seeger, Marjorie "Betty Crocker" Child, "Wild Bill" Hickok, John Bartlett, (presumably) Marilyn Monroe, Johnny Carson, George Mortimer Pullman, Elliot Richardson, Charles G. Dawes, Amasa Mason Lyman, Charles E. Merrill, Dane Cook, Kris Kristofferson, Richard Gere, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Beach Boys Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson.

[edit] References

^ Johanna W. Trammel, The Pilgrims and other people from the British Isles in Leiden, 1576-1640 (Isle of Man: Mansk-Svenska Publishing Co. Ltd., 1989), p.152
^ Walter J. Harrison, "New Light on Francis Cooke and His Wife Hester Mayhieu and Their Son John," Mayflower Descendant, Vol 27, 145-153. Their betrothal was recorded on July 4 and 5, so the 20th was the soonest the marriage could have taken place after banns were read.
^ Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs. "The Pilgrims and other English in Leiden records: some new Pilgrim documents." The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, July 1989, p.195-214.
^ Robert Charles Anderson, "Francis Cooke", The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633, 1995, Vol. I.
^ William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation 1620-1647, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (New York: Knopf, 1991), p. 442, 446.
^ Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, Nathaniel B. Shurtleff and David Pulsifer, eds., (Boston 1855-1861), Vol 8, p. 23