Francis Jarvis Cooke

Francis Cooke came to Texas in April 1835 after his father died on the journey. At San Jacinto he and his brother Tom fought in Robert Calder's company, and afterward Cooke briefly guarded Santa Anna. He received 320 acres for his 1836 service and 640 for San Jacinto, then joined the campaign against Adrian Woll in 1842 and served six weeks as a Ranger in 1843. He sold goods in Houston, Brenham, Chappell Hill and Hempstead before farming near here, and he and Emily Stockton, married in 1845, had eleven children.

What the plaque says

Francis Jarvis Cooke Francis Jarvis Cooke. A San Jacinto veteran born in North Carolina July 13, 1816, died November 11, 1903. His wife Emily Stockton Cooke, born in Tennessee, January 28, 1828, died September 4, 1908.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Star of the Republic Museum — 11 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 11 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.
• Navasota — 15 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 19 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.

More markers nearby

• Madison "Matt" "Kilpatrick" — 4.6 mi
• Union Army P.O.W. Cemetery — 4.7 mi
• Primus Kelly — 4.9 mi
• Hempstead, C.S.A. — 5.0 mi