John R. Cooke

Born in Bermuda to Stephen Cooke and his wife Catherine Esten, John Rogers Cooke would first live with his parents in Alexandria, Virginia, the read law and move westward along the Potomac River. He moved to Martinsburg circa 1810, where he married into the First Families of Virginia. He and his wife Maria Pendleton, daughter of Col. Philip Pendleton, would have 13 children, of whom lawyers Philip Pendleton Cooke and John Esten Cooke would achieve distinction as writers, the latter also becoming a Confederate soldier.[1]

During the War of 1812 he served in Berkeley County's volunteer artillery company under Capt. James Faulkner and later Capt. Robert Wilson, all of whom helped defend Norfolk, Virginia as part of a battalion commanded by Major Andrew Waggoner and Col. Elisha Boyd.[2]

Cooke operated plantations using enslaved labor, and the common practice was to move when the soil lost nutrients because of common farming practices of the day (which under-fertilized and also rarely used crop rotation). Residents of Berkeley County would elect Cooke and George Newkirk as their (part-time) representatives in 1814, but neither would be re-elected.[3] Cooke would also be elected to represent the County during the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829-1830.

For a time he lived at "Ambler's Hill," a plantation near Winchester, Virginia in Frederick County, Virginia . In 1838, "Glengary", the family estate to which the Cookes had moved, burned down. The family moved to Charles Town, Virginia and in 1840 to Richmond, Virginia.[4]

Cooke died in Richmond, Virginia in 1854, and was buried at Shockoe Hill Cemetery.[5]