Thankful Cooke, Pioneer Resident

Thankful Parker Cooke (sometimes listed as Cook) was born in 1792 to Asaph Cook and his wife Thankful Parker, who were residents of Wallingford, New Haven County, in Connecticut. Asaph Cook served in the Revolutionary War. (The first name “Thankful” is an example of the early American practice of naming daughters with reference to terms of comfort and consolation, while males were often named after men from the Bible.) In 1818, the Asaph Cook family moved to an area known as “Four Corners” in Huron County, Ohio, close to what is now the intersection of Route 99 and Route 113, in North Monroeville. Today, this area is at the boundary between Erie and Huron Counties.

Thankful P. Cooke died in 1858 at the age of 66, and she was buried in the family lot in North Monroeville Cemetery. Her sister Sarah was the first wife of Moors Farwell, the first Mayor of Sandusky. Her brother, Eleutheros Cooke, was Sandusky’s first lawyer. Her nephew Jay Cooke was a major financier of the Civil War.

You can read genealogical details about the Cook/Cooke family in the book The History of Wallingford, Connecticut, written by Charles Stanley Henry Davis in 1870. A portion of page 684 can be viewed below.

To learn more about the early residents of Erie and Huron Counties, visit the Sandusky Library, where several local history books are housed.