Richard Fielding Cooke

Putnam County had to be created twice, and Cooke's name is on the second try. The legislature formed it in 1842 from pieces of Jackson, Overton, Fentress and White Counties, but an 1844 injunction held that the act broke the state constitution's requirements. Re-established in 1854, the county then fought boundary disputes for decades. By 1860 it counted 8,591 people, 718 of them Black. Cooke, a veteran of the War of 1812, gave his name to the seat of a county that had to be founded twice.

What the plaque says

Richard Fielding Cooke Born in Virginia in 1787, Major Cooke served with Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812. Moving to Tennessee with his family in 1816, Cooke settled nine miles southwest of Cookeville, acquiring 3000 acres. Serving in the Tennessee Senate, 1851-1854, Cooke sponsored the 1854 bill to reestablish Putnam County; the bill named the county seat "Cookeville." Cooke died in 1870.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cookeville Depot Museum — 6.1 mi
  The 1909 Tennessee Central Railroad depot in Cookeville's west side, now a museum with a model of the town in 1955 and a steam engine in the yard.
• Burgess Falls State Park — 7.2 mi
  A day-use park on the Falling Water River, where a short trail passes three smaller falls on its way to a drop of more than 130 feet into a limestone gorge.
• Cummins Falls State Park — 7.9 mi
  A 75-foot waterfall and swimming hole on the Blackburn Fork, saved from a housing development in 2011 and opened as Tennessee's 54th state park.
• Rock Island State Park — 24 mi
  A park where the Collins, Rocky and Caney Fork rivers meet at the head of Center Hill Lake, with a gorge of waterfalls below a 1917 dam and the remains of a cotton-mill town.

More markers nearby

• The Walton Road — 4.7 mi
• Darwin School — 5.4 mi
• Putnam County's Only Public Execution — 6.1 mi
• Town Spring — 6.4 mi