This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------60326AC5F97E74D41CFFB68A Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark: Here is an article (attached) that I wrote and posted to the Cook List about a year and a half ago. It explains the name change very well. Maybe I can discover a cousin by posting it again. Warning! It is long-winded. Jesse W. Cook -- Yesterday is History, Tomorrow is a Mystery, Today is a Gift; That's why we call it The Present. --------------60326AC5F97E74D41CFFB68A Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; name="History - Text.txt" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline; filename="History - Text.txt" HISTORY - GEOGRAPHY - THE GREAT BUFFALO TRAIL = Many Americans have German ancestors and do not know it. Sharon recently= posted (KOCH 1700's Immigrants) several excellent pages calling attentio= n to her recognition that many of our early German ancestors, arriving ov= er a period of years, were related to each other. Brothers followed broth= ers and parents followed children. For some time I have believed that man= y Cooks were KOCHS and didn't know it. I have found it true in my own fam= ily. Some of us are fortunate to have been told of our Pennsylvania Dutch= ancestry and to have been taught that the spelling of our name has been = changed. = HISTORY - Let us begin in the late 1600's. The German Protestants, perse= cuted in their homeland, began leaving for America. They quickly learned = to avoid New York, where the first ones had bad experience. The word went= back "Go to Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania you will be received fairly". = For 60 or 70 years, almost all Germans came to Pennsylvania Colony. Howev= er, from the English perspective, these were strange people, wearing stra= nge clothing, speaking a strange language, with strange customs. So the E= nglish officials carefully took the names of the heads of families and th= en encouraged them to settle out on the edge of civilization where they w= ould make an excellent buffer between the more civilized citizens and the= Indians. And they did. And it also placed them where they had a head sta= rt on moving to more land than anyone had yet ever dreamed about. From ge= neration to generation they would move. Their presence defined the fronti= er. Another group of people would soon join them, the Protestant Scots fr= om North Ireland, calling themselves Scotch-Irish. They were English-spea= king but were not very fond of England. When the time for revolution arri= ved both groups would become excellent rebels. GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY - Get out your atlas and look at a relief map of t= he United States. This is the map that shows only mountains and flat land= s and rivers and streams. Look at that big mountain chain running all of = the way down the eastern side of the United States, the Appalachians. Rem= ember, it was a wilderness. There was NO road leading west, just row afte= r row after row of mountains. The mountains ran north and south. Therefor= e, if you traveled south you could walk between the mountains, in the val= leys where there was water in the streams for you and your horse. Don't t= hink about wagons yet. It requires a road for a wheeled vehicle and that = would have to come later. At this point, we might as well mention Indians= =2E Up in what is now southwestern Pennsylvania and for all of the length= of the Ohio River there were the Shawnees along with several other tribe= s. The Shawnees were at war with the whites almost constantly for sixty o= r seventy years. Their effective resistance to white expansion is an almo= st forgotten story of early America, probably because of the small amount= of printed news in those days and because it took place on the frontier = where the settlers were, not in the cities where the newspapers were. The= later stories of Sitting Bull and Gerinimo got a lot more ink because th= ey came after the invention of the telegraph and the steamboat and the ra= ilroad train and the building of countless miles of road. The Shawnee hel= d back the white man for decades. The mountains and the Shawnee discourag= ed most from going west. However there was one ready-made trail in exista= nce. It was the trail leading down through the mountain valleys called b= y the Indians the Buffalo Trail. War parties had used it for generations.= Now the Germans used it, some pausing in what we now call Cumberland, Fr= anklin and Adams Counties in Pennsylvania, then crossing Maryland Colony = and into Virginia Colony where they discovered the Shenandoah Valley and= there they settled down and began to prosper. = And this was where the young George Washington would find them when he w= as sent out by his older half-brother, Lawrence, Lord Fairfax and the go= vernor of the Virginia Colony to survey and find out what was in this par= t of their colony which they had never yet explored. The Virginia Englis= h established government, however they couldn't spell in German which pro= bably wasn't as important as it might seem because many of the Germans pr= obably couldn't spell in German either. What is important is the number o= f land records and probate records and court records that still exist s= howing the names Koch and Cook and other records showing Cook with the re= corder's notation saying "signed in the German language" meaning Koch. Al= so, there are the church records which were kept by educated clergy who c= ould write German very well. Many of these records still exist. The Germa= ns were very practical, resilient and flexible people who would avoid con= fusing an English official by agreeing that the name was Cook. The import= ant thing was to not jeopardise a land title or the recording of an estat= e. In church the name was usually Koch but,even there, it could be Cook. = Other matters required flexibility. Many of those Protestant German boys= and girls and a big bunch of those Protestant Scotch-Irish boys and girl= s were making goo-goo eyes at each other and many Germans were speaking E= nglish as well as German. Also, it had become apparent that officials wer= e not confused when you signed your name as Cook but that they frequently= were when you signed as Koch. Where is this tale leading? Well, that Buffalo Trail led right down to N= orth Carolina and North Carolina is bordered on the south by South Caroli= na and both of these locations were starting points for moving across the= Old South. It also led to Tennessee which would supply many early settle= rs for the Republic of Texas. However, if you went down the Great Valley = and then turned through the Cumberland Gap, the only pass through those t= errible mountains, there was the one-horse-wide Wilderness Trail and you = were in what would become Kentucky. Remember, all of these earliest ances= tors made this rugged trip on Shank's Mare (walking). A few rode horses b= ut for most, the horses had to be used to carry supplies. = If you have traced your Cook ancestors back to one of these states and i= f you know that they arrived by boat in Maryland, Virginia or either of t= he Carolinas then they were probably English. If you have traced your Coo= k ancestors back to one of these states in the early 1800's and at that p= oint you don't know where to look next, pause and think about the possibi= lities. They might have been German and the spelling of their name may ha= ve been changed from Koch to Cook. A German Cook family certainly did not= just pop up in North Carolina, over-night, like a mushroom. It came from= somewhere. And there is one likely place of origin, Pennsylvania. Look back north u= p that Buffalo Trail through the Great Valley of the Appalachians to the = Shenando and the Blue Ridge of Old Virginia. It will require some time to= investigate the Cooks and Kochs in Shenandoah County and maybe to figure= out who was Koch today and Cook tomorrow. And then search on further up = the Great Valley to the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania and don't ign= ore what is now the Pittsburgh area (and surrounding counties), for many = Germans came up from the Shenando and settled there while it was still Vi= rginia Colony (George Washington had two horses shot from under him up th= ere while fighting the French and Indians and he was a Virginian). All of= this takes time and effort but it also took a lot of effort and perhaps = a couple of generations for those German Kochs to make that trip from Pe= nnsylvania down to the Carolinas or Tennessee and to get that name change= d from Koch to Cook. If you are lucky, maybe you will find the spirit of = a Koch ancestor up there saying "Welcome to where your American roots be= gan, but why did it take you so long to learn to spell your name correctl= y?" Incidently, I live in Texas, transplanted from Indiana, and in the early= 1770's, George Cook, my German, Indian trader, third great grandfather b= ought Olithi, who became my third great grandmother. She was one of those= Shawnees who held back Daniel Boone and all of those other whites for so= many decades so if your name is Cook and if you have an old story in you= r family background about an Indian ancestor from way back there, get in = touch with me. You and I just might be cousins. Jesse W. Cook = = = --------------60326AC5F97E74D41CFFB68A--