John Joseph Cook

Taken from "Some Cooks", an unpublished manuscript by Louis Cook

Clayton Sehulster told me the following, as he heard it from his father, concerning John & Mary of page 5. Mary was working in the kitchen for Martin John Ryerson when she met John, who was working on Ryerson's farm. John was a mild man but tough enough to amputate 2 frozen gangrenous fingers of his own on the back of a kitchen chair with a knife in his brother-in-law's home. John continued to work for Ryerson after he and Mary married. According to Clayton, Ryerson paid an enlistment bounty so that John could stay out of the service during the Civil War and work on Ryerson's farm. Some time after the war they moved to Charlottesburg, N.J. He worked in the iron mines according to his daughter, Nora. They moved to Butler before 1884 as I believe their last child was born there. John worked for Farrlells Box Factory on Keil Ave. and lived in a company house on Gifford-St. When Farrells started cutting back production he went back to Ryerson. When Ryerson closed he went to Wood-cutting.

My great-grandmother has some small memories of John Cook. She lived with John's daughter Matilda for a while, and remember him stopping over for coffee every once in a while. John Cook was remember by all to be a kind, generous man.

A famous story in the Cook family concerned John knowing an incantation which could remove a child's warts. It was presumably taught to him by his Indian neighbors whom he lived by in the Midwest as a boy. Lou Cook remembers the ritual needing tobacco and an Indian-head cent. My great-grandmother also remembers hearing of this tale.